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What made you want to be a writer? I couldn't do math.

You know, it's almost as simple as that, but I learned how to read at a very young age,

and I was possessed by writing in a way.

My mom tells a funny story about when I was three, four,

and reading these storybooks. My imagination was such that I would demand everybody call me by

the names of my favorite storybook characters. And it ticked my dad off so much. He was a big

old country boy. He died in 2015, but he was a big old country boy, classic Southern Patriarch.

And I was calling myself Pedro one day. There was a resourceful little borough named Pedro in one of

my storybooks, so I wouldn't be called by anything but Pedro. My dad was so mad at that, he said,

so Pedro, we brought Rod home from the hospital five years ago. Where's Rod?

I said, oh, Daddy, he's on top of the sweet olive tree

at Aunt Louis' Aunt Hilda's house, my two old aunts.

So Daddy marched me up through the pecan orchard

under the sweet olive tree and hoping to do reverse psychology.

He said, son, you can see there's nobody at the top of that tree.

And I went over there and started shaking the limbs.

Rod, come down from there.

Come down from there.

Daddy, he's not coming.

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