24/11/2015
"my first professional writing was published
under the name of Al Marcus.
One day, my mother came running into the
apartment, breathless. She hugged me and exclaimed,
“Sidney, I’ve just come from Bea Factor. She says
you’re going to be world-famous! Isn’t that
wonderful?”
Bea Factor was a friend who was reputed to be a
psychic and there were many acquaintances of hers
who verified it.
To me, it was wonderful that my mother believed
her.
In the twenties and thirties, Chicago was a city of
noisy elevated trains, horse-drawn ice wagons,
crowded beaches, strip clubs, the smell of the
stockyards, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,
where seven mobsters were lined up against a wall in a
garage and machine-gunned down.
The school system was run like the city—tough and
aggressive. Instead of “show and tell,” it was “throw
and tell.” And it wasn’t the students who were throwing
things; it was the teachers. One morning, when I was in
third grade, a teacher was displeased by something a
pupil said. She picked up one of the heavy glass
inkwells that were set on each desk and hurled it across
the room at the student. If it had hit him in the head, it
would have killed him. I was too terrified to return to
school that afternoon.
My favorite subject in school was English. Part of
the class assignment was taking turns reading aloud
from a book called the Elgin Reader that contained
short stories. We would turn to a story by Poe or
O’Henry or Tarkington, and I would dream that one
day the teacher would say, “Turn to page twenty in
your reader,” and lo and behold, there would be a story
written by me. Where that dream came from, I do not
know. Perhaps it was an atavistic throwback to some
long-gone ancestor.
The tenth floor of the Sovereign Hotel was the
neighborhood’s ole swimmin’ hole. Whenever possible,
I would take Richard there to play in the pool. He was
five years old.
On this particular day, I deposited him in the
shallow end and I swam to the deep end. While I was
talking to some people, Richard got out of the pool,
looking for me. He came to the deep end of the pool,
slipped and fell in. He went straight to the bottom. I saw
what had happened, dove down, and pulled him up.
No more ole swimmin’ hole for us.
When I was twelve years old, in the seventh grade
at Marshall Field grammar school, in Chicago, I was in
an English class where we were allowed to work on our
own projects. I decided to write a play about a
detective investigating a murder. When it was finished, I
turned it in to my teacher. She read the play, called me
to her desk, and said, “I think this is really good,
Sidney. Would you like to stage it?”
Would I! “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll arrange for you to put it on in the main
auditorium.”
And suddenly I remembered Natalie’s excitement
about Bea Factor’s prediction. Sidney is going to be
world-famous.
I was filled with excitement. This was the beginning.
When the class heard the news, everyone wanted to be
cast in the play. I decided that not only would I produce
it and direct it, but I would also star in it. I had never
directed before, of course, but I knew exactly what I
wanted.
I began casting. I was allowed to rehearse after
school in the huge auditorium and soon my play was the
talk of the school. I was given all the props I asked for:
couches, chairs, tables, a telephone . . .
It was one of the happiest times of my life. I knew
without question that this was the beginning of a
wonderful career. If I could write a successful play at
my age, there was no limit to how far I could go. I
would have plays on Broadway with my name in lights.
I held a final dress rehearsal with my classmates
who had been cast by me, and the rehearsal went
perfectly.
I went to my teacher. “I’m ready,” I said. “When
would you like me to put the play on?”
She was beaming at me. “Why don’t we do it
tomorrow?”
I got no sleep that night. I felt that my whole future
depended on the success of the play. Lying in bed, I
went over it scene by scene, looking for flaws. I could
find none. The dialogue was excellent, the plot moved
swiftly, and the play had an unexpected twist at the end.
Everyone was going to love it.
The next morning, when I arrived at school, my
teacher had a surprise for me.
“I’ve arranged to have all the English classes
dismissed so that they can come down to the auditorium
to see your play.”
I could not believe it. This was going to be a far
bigger triumph than I had imagined.
At ten o’clock in the morning, the huge auditorium
was filled. Not only were all the students in the English
classes there, but the principal and teachers who had
heard about my play were present, eager to see the
work of the child prodigy.
In the midst of all this excitement, I was calm. Very
calm. It seemed only natural that this was happening to
me at such an early age. You’re going to be worldfamous.
It was show time. The conversations in the
auditorium began to die down and the theater became
hushed. The set consisted of a simple living room where
a boy and girl were playing a husband and wife whose
friend had been murdered. They were seated next to
each other on a sofa.
I was playing the detective investigating the murder.
I stood in the wings, ready to make my entrance. My
cue was the boy on stage looking at his watch and
saying, “The inspector should be here soon.” But
instead of “soon,” he started to say “any minute,” and
he caught himself and tried to change “minute” to
“soon.” What came out was, “The inspector should be
here any minsoon.” He quickly corrected himself, but it
was too late. Minsoon? That was the funniest sound I
had ever heard. It was so funny, I had to laugh. And I
could not stop. The more I thought about it, the louder I
laughed.
The boy and girl on the stage were staring at me in
the wings, waiting for me to make my entrance. I could
not move because I was laughing too hard. I was
helpless. The laughing took over completely and I
became more and more hysterical.
The play had come to a standstill before it started.
After what seemed an eternity, from the auditorium
I heard my teacher’s voice calling, “Sidney, come out
here.”
I forced myself to leave the shelter of the wings and
stumble out to the center of the stage. My teacher was
in the middle of the auditorium, on her feet, listening to
my frenzied outburst. “Stop it,” she commanded.
But how could I? Minsoon?
The audience began getting up and drifting out of
the auditorium and I watched them go, pretending that I
was laughing because I wanted to, pretending that what
was happening was not important.
Pretending that I did not want to die."
- Sidney Sheldon, The Other Side of Me
