The Schube: I’m staring at a hand wrapped in gauze. Unblinking eyes stare back at me from fingers on the hand. I’m in the second grade, and my mind has just officially been blown.

The cover art on this dog-eared paperback book fascinates me. I recognize the title phrase – “Night Shift” – because my mom’s a nurse and works overnights. I wonder if she’s ever treated a patient whose hand has eyes peering out of it. I’d ask her, but she’s busy chatting with my godmother who’s chain-smoking cigarettes in the kitchen.

I open the book among a fog of nicotine and try to read the words as my eyes burn from the smoke.

I can make out many of the words, but I don’t really understand what they’re saying because of the way they’re strung together.

This isn’t like any of the books I’ve read in school. This is a grown-up book, far too complex for me. I’m probably not supposed to be reading it, which makes me yearn to comprehend it even more.

The book has several stories, many with titles that set my imagination on fire. The Mangler. The Boogeyman. Sometimes They Come Back. (They do? Oh lordy, who are “they?” And what kind of bad business do they do when they return?)

Children of the Corn.

This last one is especially enticing, even haunting. Because outside the nearby window (its glass grown beige with a sticky film of nicotine) is what seems like the world’s tallest cornfield.

Wait, there are kids walking among those crops? Do they have eyes in their hands?

I know a few things in this instant. One, I can try to read these stories all day and they’re not going to make sense to me. Not yet. But one day they will, and I absolutely cannot wait for that day. I’d give up candy for a month, maybe a year to be able to understand them right now. For now, all I can do is stare at that cover, and the table of contents, imagining what kind of wild ideas must exist in those stories.

One thing I don’t know yet, and won’t know until at least a few years later: This is the moment I became a writer. Those stories I was coming up with in my mind to fill the void of not being able to read…they weren’t great, but they weren’t bad either. They kept me entertained, even gave me bad dreams. And when my mom left for the night shift that night, I didn’t ask her about the hand with the eyes.

I was pretty sure she’d laugh and tell me that stuff never happened.

That was just fine. I already liked my version better.

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And so what about you, ya maniac? What was the moment that inspired you to become who you are today? (Bonus points if it turned you into someone who taps a keyboard for a living, of course. Heh heh…)  Hit us up in the comments section on the blog. Don’t be shy. After all, your hand is staring at that mouse, unblinking, and it’s itching to click…