When my kindergarten teacher asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” my friends would say, “An astronaut!” “A firefighter!” Well I wanted to be a columnist.
As I grew older, my dream became more of a reality. I traveled to the Roman Colosseum to study their world-famous columns. Some people call that studying architecture, but I call it being a columnist.
I visited New York City to practice writing columns. Columns in buildings, columns in alleyways; I wrote on any column I could find. Some people consider that graffiti, but I consider it real-world experience.
For more real-world experience, I would go to my local newsstand and pick up the New York Times. I rapidly flipped through the pages to my favorite part of the newspaper – the columnist section. I crossed out the existing columns in red cherry-scented marker and wrote my own columns next to them. Then, I placed the newspaper back on the stand. Publicity is key for an amateur columnist to become a renowned, but still amateur, columnist.
I knew it was my destiny to become a columnist but not everyone agreed. My mom thought I lacked the charisma. Every night after she read me a bedtime story, she would whisper in my ear, “Dustin, you’re never going to be a columnist.” Well guess what mom; I’m doing it right now.
But that’s not enough. I want – no – I need to be famous. I will be the first columnist with a Justin Bieber caliber of fame. I have it all planned out. The first part of my plan is to write a column about babies and have Ludacris as a guest writer. The second is to start dating Selena Gomez. Well I don’t know if Justin and Selena are still dating. They have been on and off for the past couple of months. Of course I prefer to be on Selena Gomez rather than off her. And the third part is to uh… I haven’t planned that far ahead yet. But you know what they say: today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. Basically, I should start worrying about what’s happening right now.
Like what do columnists wear, a plaid button-down shirt with jeans? Do columnists even wear clothes? What will my friends think when they find out I’m a columnist? Do girls find columnists attractive or is that just me? If no one reads my column, then did I ever write one? And what is dustinalper.com? (cue in smooth transition explaining dustinalper.com)
For those of you who don’t know, during my senior year I was the columnist for my high school newspaper. After I graduated, I had a dark void in my soul. Something was missing. It was me being a columnist. So I decided to start dustinalper.com, where I’m going to first share my original (but remastered) columns and then I’ll start sharing new columns once a month. What do you mean by remastered? Good question. I’m going to re-edit and add new jokes/ideas to my old columns. I am also going to add hidden links, like this one, to help you better understand references that I make in my columns.
If there are any new readers, I want to let you guys know off the bat that my writing style tends to be very sarcastic – no that wan’t sarcasm. If you enjoyed this column you can subscribe via email in the “Subscribe via Email” section down below. Lastly, I have to talk about this so there are no copyright issues. I don’t know if you could tell, but my website is based off Perez Hilton’s. We both have our name in the URL. We both write about pointless topics. The only difference is that my website has a little less pink. No but seriously, the real difference between Perez Hilton and myself is that he is a blogger and I am the columnist.