32 Fans

I now have a Facebook fan page, and I have 32 fans. Thirty-two fans! It's nice to know I have 32 fans online, in one place. Such a friendly place, too.

This message is just for you, you 32 fans. Welcome to the fan club! I have never had a fan club before, although, as a kid, I started a secret club or two... the kind where you had to have a password or a secret knock to get in. I loved the idea of those clubs, but we really didn't know what to DO with them. It was more the idea that we had a club, than we actually DID anything. So we ended up disbanding after a while, just sort of frittering away from one another, bored, nothing to do, might as well go watch cartoons.

I don't want that to happen to the Deborah Wiles Fan Club. So let's make some plans. Let's have cookouts and pinochle parties and make peanut brittle. Let's camp out in summer and use flashlights to chart the constellations. Let's build snow forts in winter and play outside until ice cakes our mittens. And let's exclude nobody. Nobody. I mean... there is nothing worse in a secret club (or any club) than feeling excluded.

So all 32 of us -- let's get to know one another. Let's make sweet tea and egg-salad sandwiches and have a get-to-know-you social, so we're all comfy with one another, and let's build a fort in the woods with sticks and mud. I know a place, a great place.

Let's ride bikes!

We'll get to know one another so well, we won't even consider new members, but of course we will, because we're an inclusive bunch, remember, so we won't turn new members away. But we won't advertise ourselves, either -- when we have meetings, we'll hide under blankets draped over the furniture because, with just 32 of us, we've got a really intimate group! The perfect number for two teams of touch football and a heap of cheerleaders, and even a few someones to supply us with Fizzies and cheese dogs.

I think we're pretty perfect, just as we are. 32 fans. Geeez. Thanks so much.