Fat Lester: The Novel

I received a spam email from Ebay the other day announcing some contest in which a participant (presumably the winner) could have a character in an upcoming novel named after him or her.

I deleted the email, as it did not interest me in the least. However, it did get me thinking. It's about time someone wrote an entire book about me. Yes, you read that correctly.

It is my humble opinion that an entire book should be written about me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if opportunistic author were to publish an account of my unusually interesting life, it would constitute a grave travesty and a great disservice to the world.

Imagine if you were to combine Ferris Buhler's Day Off with Forrest Gump, substituting a remarkably good looking guy with a freakishly high IQ in place of Tom Hanks, that would in effect be the story of my (now close to 30 years of) life.

A country boy, son of an Irish immigrant who came to America having taken a vow of poverty as a Catholic priest, who got away with literally everything imaginable while in high school and college, only to rub shoulders with the likes of world leaders, professional athletes, embattled politicians and a list of other famous people way too long to list here - achieving great success and miserable failure all in a span of a couple of years.

Well, that's what would be written on the back of the book cover anyway.

From a financial standpoint, I'm quite poor, and my family came from literally nothing. I live in a remote, rural area that almost no one in the public eye (save for John Goodman, who has a house about 20 miles away) has even heard of - much less had any reason to visit. Also, there's not much about me that really stands out or makes me any more important than any other average Joe (hence the Forrest Gump comparison).

Despite my handsome appearance, women don't seem to be particularly fond of me (I guess I come across as weird --- working on a computer for 14 hours a day will do that to you). Despite the fact that I work 80 hours a week, I'm still pennyless. That said, I have had a couple of near-misses, any one of which would have made me a multi-millionaire had God, nature, the Devil and/or bad luck not intervened.

For example, I was due to sign a contract with the Planet Beach corporation, a worldwide tanning salon franchise corporation, that would have guaranteed me almost two million dollars for about six months worth of work, on August 29, 2005. That wouldn't have been a big deal had both myself and Planet Beach been based out of New Orleans, LA. August 29, 2005 was the day the levees broke, flooding the warehouse that contained all of the $4 million of merchandise the company was going to allow me to sell at a 50-50 split. To add insult to injury, the lady with whom I had negotiated the contract did not return to work after the storm.

Less than a year later, I had built an online empire selling medical equipment via an Ebay Store, had achieved the #1 overall ranking in all of the major search engines for my primary and dozens of secondary keyword targets, and was poised to seize control of the online retail market for the medical equipment industry, only to watch the business fall apart after selling WAY more than the company for whom I was employed was able to handle, both infrastructurally speaking as well as from a personnel standpoint. Once again, I had to postpone my target age for retirement from 25 to 30 - a number that in less than two months I will again have to adjust, this time probably to 35. If I'm not a multimillionaire by then, there's a good chance I'll just give up and try to reinvent myself as a 21st century John Galt.

That is why when looking back on it, I find it so remarkable that I've literally met hundreds of people, any one of whom most folks would consider themselves lucky to shake hands with. I don't particularly relish these opportunities as would most, and I certainly do not go out of my way in the slightest in order to facilitate these meetings. Yet, nonetheless they happen, and with an inexplicable degree of frequency.

In any case, if anyone reading this happens to know any author(s) who'd like to make a novel out of a true story of a normal dude who has lived more in 30 years than most people would in several lifetimes, please put them in touch with me.

My story is just too good not to be told and preserved for all to see long after my time here has ended.