W. Bruce Cameron 6/9/11

Jun 09, 20110

An Unauthorized Autobiography

W. BRUCE CAMERON

One of the main things I like about the following autobiography is that it’s not written posthumously. Another attractive feature is that, in the spirit of recent memoirs like “A Million Pieces at a Buck Each” or whatever it was called, I’ve been able to take certain “artistic liberties” in order to make me seem more “good.”

I was born in 1960. Well, more like 1968. 1970. I was born in 1982. So I’m, what, nearly 30 years old. Actually I’m 25, so whenever you have to be born in order to be 25, that’s when I was born. Can we just get on to the good stuff?

All right, so I was born and was very popular. I deny that when I was 3 my mother had to pin a note to my sweater that said, “Please do not feed Bruce cheese.” Stories about me being 6 years old and getting beaten up by a little girl 2 years younger miss the point that she was a very mean little girl. I never once tried to actually murder my sister — my aim was to kill her just a little. No jury would have convicted me once I showed them evidence she had stolen my baseball and left it out in the rain.

Reviewing what I’ve just written, I’m concerned that I’m not coming off as well as I intended. I should probably delete the above paragraph and start over, except that as a professional writer, I strive to be lazy. Let’s just stipulate that I had a wonderful childhood because I was a wonderful child.

I was a star athlete in high school, as evidenced by the fact that my football uniform was spotlessly clean. In fact, it was so well maintained that it would be easy to conclude I’d never even worn it, except for the fact that all of my classmates remember me running for touchdown after touchdown, often hopping on one foot just to make it more fair. I was so talented that even the other team would cheer for me, and often boththe offense and defense would leave the field, figuring it would be more entertaining for the crowd to just sit there and watch me run around.

I was elected both prom king and queen. My date to senior prom was the cast of “Charlie’s Angels,” except of course for that Bosley guy, and probably also not Shelley Hack because that perfume commercial still haunts me to this day. My classmates voted me “best.” I got tired of them always carrying me around on their shoulders.

When I graduated from high school, there was some concern I might not go to college because I already knew everything. Many people thought I should be made president or king or something, and Harvard and Yale unanimously voted that even were they to merge, the combined school “still wouldn’t be good enough” for me.

I eventually decided to attend an all-male liberal arts college in the Midwest, which I can’t believe even as I am saying it. What was I thinking? Of all the activities I was interested in, the words “all male” never figured into any of them.

OK, I’ve gotten negative again, which seems to happen whenever I stray too close to what might irresponsibly be called “truth.” Back to what matters: After turning down offers to join the Rolling Stones, to quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, or to be given France, I settled in for a remarkable stint as a college student who could write complex essays with such ease that professors often said it was as if I hadn’t even read the book I was writing about. I wasn’t president of my fraternity because that would have been too obvious, and anyway I lost the election, but I was social chairman, a position of great power and influence over beer.

With college in the rearview mirror, I worked for General Motors during its heyday, where “heyday” means “a perfectly good company was run into the ground.” I eventually quit to write books, several of which were almost Nobel Prize winners.

I also write this column, which I think we can all agree is the best.