My memoir

I’ve been thinking about it for the last few years and maybe now is the right time to write my memoir.  I’ve seen a lot and done a lot of things in my life that I’m sure will be of interest to not only the people I know and members of my generation but also the younger people.

A sneak peek:

One time in the mid-nineties while buying a car when I got the dealer to replace the hub caps with full wheel covers for only an extra $200 he threw in a set of floor mats.  No, really, that’s what happened, I swear.

As I began to organize my thoughts and put together my notes I started to think of all the autobiographies that I have read and how they all seem to be similar in the way the authors use a story format to tell their tales.  They all kind of blend together.  Some examples:

“I was thrilled when I opened the mailbox and found that I had been accepted to both Harvard and Yale…”

“My doctor said he had never seen a tumor that color…”

“George Steinbrenner was disappointed when I told him I would only pitch for the Yankees on the weekends because during the week I wanted to focus on my work in medical research…”

“As I walked into the room all eyes were on me and the statuesque goddess who had my arm…”

“So I said to President Kennedy, ‘Hey, Jack, as long as you’re up grab me a root beer, will ya?’”

See what I mean?  All those snippets are presented in pretty much the same way. The question is how do I make the exciting story that is my life stand out so I don’t get lost in the crowd? Then last week when I was working on a dog training presentation for the upcoming Pet Expo (“How to train your dog to be a vegan without getting bit”) I looked at the computer screen and thought, instead of just storytelling why not present a PowerPoint memoir?  I don’t think that’s been done before.  We live in a fast-paced world where people read their books on Kindles or Nooks or iPads and I think they might just be ready for a PowerPoint autobiography.  Sometimes I amaze myself.  A PowerPoint memoir.  And that’s how I’m writing my autobiography which is now about half done.

After covering the early years with a multimedia presentation which includes some really nice pictures of me in 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th grade I finish off the first chapters with pictures of me in 5^th, 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade.  I am thinking about adding some snappy background music, bright presentation wallpapers, animation and transition effects like fade or wipe or dissolve to pump up the excitement and then maybe add a “bing” as the pages turn.

The story, my story, was falling in place at a pretty rapid pace when my wife came in to see what I was up to and that’s when something happened that might postpone the release date. When I told her about writing a memoir she laughed but when I told her about my idea for a PowerPoint memoir she screamed.  About 15 minutes later when she was just about done laughing and asked me how it was going I described the chapter covering my college love life and how I was using bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts to compare the height, weight, looks and personalities of old girl friends.  She didn’t say but maybe it was the animation she didn’t like.