Bobby Darin

As I was showering, searching for a line of authenticity for NaNoWriMo, an idea came to me: how many kids could claim playing If "I Were A Carpenter" on a cheap palomino pony guitar to the guy who actually wrote the song?

OK, so Bobby Darin was NOT impressed with my playing or singing skills...when I began to play, he said No, no, it goes like this. He took the guitar from me roughly and showed me the right bar chord. Not Em. Winced, when he realized how hard it was to play those steel strings. He handed it back.

I stood, with bare foot on the coffee table, biting my lip, as I slid that chord progression up the neck. Blood on the strings.

He lounged back on our hand-me-down sectional couch, a long tall cool drink of a man in tight jeans and cowboy boots, greased back hair and the longest sideburns I'd ever seen.

My mom purring beside him saying he was a cool cat—dismissing his vague Las Vegas Daze. They had that high daze in common, and both were graduate cum laude of the Timothy Leary School of high education: Turn on, tune in and drop out.

As the song goes: Let me take you higher....