I wrote this story a few months before my eighth birthday for Mrs. Cassel who had sent me a doll. It was a Campbell Soup's doll and I was very impressed with it because it had red striped panties. (I hope this explains the note on that back page, which could be open to misinterpretation.)

When I was little, my dad read us bedtime stories. I loved listening to his voice and falling asleep to the magic of an imaginary world. After I learned to read, my dad stopped the bedtime stories. I missed them, so I made up my own stories at night. I started dreaming stories and writing them down. As an adult, I learned to control my dreams. If a dream isn't going the way I want, my director personality steps in and says, "This is boring. It would be better if this happened next." And the dream will take off in a new direction. The advantage of this is that I rarely have nightmares. The weird part is when I'm directing Cloris Leachman climbing a wall and telling her she's making it look too easy. "Where's the drama? Where's the emotion? You need to make it look difficult!"