jordane

I was born to wander. Couldn't wait to get out my mother's womb and see the world. When I was four years old I got up in the middle of the night, escaped from the house, and walked a few blocks to the Hollywood Freeway. A concerned citizen stopped his car along the side of the eight-lane exchange when he saw me wandering north toward San... more »

I was born to wander. Couldn't wait to get out my mother's womb and see the world. When I was four years old I got up in the middle of the night, escaped from the house, and walked a few blocks to the Hollywood Freeway. A concerned citizen stopped his car along the side of the eight-lane exchange when he saw me wandering north toward San Francisco. He took me to the nearest police station, where the cops asked me what I was doing walking on the Hollywood Freeway at four in the morning. They got an earful. They also go my name and phone number, called my house and woke my mother up. "Who is this!" she shouted (my mother loved her sleep). "This is the Los Angeles Police Department, and we have your son here." She hung up and rolled over back to sleep. Moments later the phone rang again. "Who is this and it better be good, otherwise I'm calling the police!" she said. "M'am, this is Officer So-and-So, and we have your son here. We found him walking on the Hollywood Freeway." My mother sat up. "Nonsense! My son is alseep in his bed upstairs. He's four years old; what the hell would he doing out on the Hollywood Freeway at..." She squinted at the clock. "...4:30 in the goddamned morning!" "M'am, wouldya go upstairs and check in on him? Maybe we've got the wrong kid here."

Yep, it was me, little Jordan Elgrably, ready for action and adventure. Well, I don't think my shenanigans ever stopped after that night, despite a good butt-whacking from my mom with a warning "never, NEVER do that again!" When I was old enough, I left town, moved back east, a freshman in college with a job and girlfriend at sixteen. A few years later I moved to Paris to finish school and never looked back. I was an expatriate for ten years, reading all the great writers, and interviewing some of them, too, for publications like the Paris Review and the International Herald Tribune. I became a journalist for the French and Spanish press, a correspondent for media in the U.S., and otherwise had a great life.

Books have always been a part of it. In fact, I'm reading one now, and writing one. « less