When I was a little, I had the makings of a budding actor. Whenever I launched into a crying fit, I stared in fascination at my reflection in the mirror like it was a sobbing face staring back at me from the big screen. If we were outside playing and I was the only kid who didn’t get an ice cream cone from a passing Mister Softee truck, I’d stare at my blubbering image in the passenger window of a parked car.

Plus, I grew up in the era of “Star Wars”— the real movies, not those watered-down prequel and sequel trilogies. I spent hours pretending to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, acting out very detailed and very made-up storylines.

With lofty expectations, I made my theater debut at age 9. I was part of the sound effects crew for the fourth- grade presentation of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” at St. Cecelia grade school in Clearwater, Florida. You have to start somewhere.

To maintain the illusion of reality, our expert team was tucked away out of sight under the fold-out wooden bleachers in the school gym. With a nonexistent budget, we relied on one microphone and a slew of cafeteria supplies to work our magic. A straw inside a wax paper cup half-filled with water recreated a babbling brook. Two overturned empty cups rapping against the top of an ancient wood desk mimicked horse’s hooves approaching. A three-foot high stack of trays and pans was at the ready to produce a loud crash during the climactic scene when the Headless Horseman hurls a pumpkin at the fleeing Ichabod Crane.

There were problems from the start. Just as the less-than-rapt audience of students and teachers could not see us, we could not see the play from our position under the stands. To work around this, we had a classmate stationed as a spotter next to the bleachers to signal us when it was time to unleash the next effect. Unfortunately, like most in the crowd, he decided the play was too dull to watch.

Suffice to say, our sound effects crew missed its mark frequently, culminating in a thunderous crash that rang through the gym several seconds before the Headless Horsemen let loose with the pumpkin. In disgust, I cursed under my breath. Based on the gasps from the crowd, the microphone picked it up clear as day.

So ended my career in theater. But as I recounted the disastrous day on the bus ride home from school, Chuck, a kindly eighth-grader who lived in my neighborhood, said, “You tell a pretty good story. You ever think of becoming a writer?”