Zen 8

I HATED climbing the rope in gym class in elementary school. I hated the humiliation...I hated everyone watching me in anticipation... I always felt like I'd been attached to the end of the string like a big piece of pink chewing gum as some giant from the ceiling was trying to pick up the blue mat two inches beneath my toes... I hated that I couldn't even get a grip on the rope...and right after I'd fall off, Andy Klein would jump up, shimmy up the rope like a little trained monkey and touch the ceiling before I'd found my place around the matt again. Gym class was never my favorite time of day.

It may surprise you that this was one of the reasons I felt I would make a good spy. Hang in here with me, I promise you'll see my point...

Picture for me, if you will, a tree...the tree you think of when you're reading a book and the main character passes a tree...any tree...the first picture of a tree that pops into YOUR mind: this would be your idea of "treeness." Everyone's picture of this tree will be different. Some would imagine an apple tree, or a great oak... perhaps your ideal tree would be a weeping willow, or something with lots of spanish moss hanging from its branches. You get the idea. This was just a test run to get your brains going in my direction.
NOW imagine a spy. What does this spy look like? Have a complete picture in your mind with all of the details worked out before you read on. Man or woman? James Bond? Sydney Bristow? Whatever your idea of "spyness" I certainly hope it's not a picture of a young girl who is unable to climb a rope in gym class... I don't look like a spy, which makes me THE PERFECT SPY. I don't fit the profile, nobody would pick me out of a room full of people as "spy material," and this (I thought) was my greatest strength.

Did you know that Mata Hari, the female spy executed in World War I for being a double agent..who claimed to be an Indonesian Courtesan....was actually a Dutch woman who had already had two children and been divorced before she started dancing and working in the world of international intrigue!?! If she can do it, I can. I'm part Dutch....I think.

So: My two points FOR becoming a spy so far are 1) I like to have secrets 2) I don't look like a spy.