I have a problem with inspirational quotes.

"You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream another dream," is a quote attributed to C.S. Lewis. He didn't say it.

"It is never too late to be what you might have been" is something George Eliot is supposed to have said. She never said that, either.

I could keep on going, but it's a safe bet that, if you read it on Facebook and it is attributed to Mother Teresa, Einstein or Keanu Reeves, they almost certainly did not say it.

For the longest time, I'd hop on Facebook and debunk a quote and, while it was satisfying to let folks know that Einstein was much too busy making discoveries to say the things he supposedly had said, and Mother Teresa did not spend her time writing poetry, I don't think I made anyone any happier by pointing it out.

I thought it was important to set the record straight. But what I finally realized was that inspiration doesn't inspire us because it comes from a reputable source. The real reason the quotes incorrectly attributed to George Eliot and C.S. Lewis troubled me was because I worried they were incorrect in more ways than one.

George Eliot died at 61. C.S. Lewis was dead by 64. Maybe they didn't say it was never too late, or you were never too old because, in fact, it sometimes is too late, and maybe I am too old. This is the sort of thing I worry about, some of the time. I wonder if I might be showing up a little too late for some of my dreams.

I consider myself a very fortunate person. I've gotten to do so many interesting things in my life, and I spend every day doing things I genuinely enjoy. But sometimes, I look at the careers of people I admire, and I realize they didn't dither around as long as I did. They stuck with one thing from a very early age. While here I am, at 62, looking forward to a first novel that won't be published until I'm 63, and I wonder (because how could I not?) if I didn't get kind of a late jump on things.

Of course, none of us knows how much time we get. So many authors and artists I admire died very young. They made this huge splash, and their ripples are still being felt, but they didn't live long. I like to imagine that, since I eat a lot of broccoli and don't drink bourbon, I might squeeze out more than the expected number of years to write things and tell my stories. I like to think that the actuarial tables do not apply to me. But, of course, they do.

And, because they do, I will do what I can with whatever time I have left.

I'll do this because I believe with every fiber of my being that starting late is so much better than never starting at all. And I'll do it because knowing that life is short (no matter how long it is) provides my greatest incentive to make this time -- now -- matter.

And, honestly, I don't care how much or how little I am remembered after I die. I'd just as soon make room for new people to tell their stories when the time comes. My goal is to make meaning of life now. To be useful today. Maybe even offer a little inspiration -- even if I am not the most reputable source.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

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I wear used clothes.

I remember going to clothing stores years ago and buying new clothes. But about the time I stopped wearing business suits and flying in airplanes for work, I started going to used clothing stores. Then I discovered online consignment stores and, since then, I've hardly bought a new item of clothing except socks and shoes and underwear.

I like used clothes.

Of course, I like the prices. I've always been frugal and when I see how much a pair of new jeans cost or a new dress, I am shocked. But buying used clothes also eliminates buyer's regret. If the jeans I bought refuse to stay on my hips, or the color of a top is brighter than I like, or my sister tells me I look like an automatic car wash in the new dress I bought for Christmas (and once you see a thing like that, it's hard to unsee), I can donate the clothes to another used clothing store and let them go on their merry way to the next customer, guilt-free.

My mother tells me she wore almost exclusively hand-me-downs as a child, which is not surprising since she was the ninth of 11 children, and most of them were girls. She remembers when she got what she called her "Joyce coat," which delighted her to no end because, instead of coming from several sisters before her, this coat had been owned by only one person -- a neighbor named Joyce -- before my mother got it. There is a picture of her standing in front of the farmhouse wearing her Joyce coat, and she looks very pleased.

I was much more spoiled and usually had new clothes as a child. I occasionally got hand-me-downs from a neighbor across the street who was the same age as me but much taller. Lynn was the youngest in her family and the only girl, so she had a lot of nice clothes that she quickly outgrew. I remember I got a beautiful green dress from Lynn that required about an hour to iron. My mother was grateful when I also outgrew it.

These days, I occasionally wonder where my clothes came from.

It sometimes feels wicked to imagine my clothes living on someone else's body. I imagine there are people who wouldn't like the idea, and that's why they buy new clothes. But I have lived in plenty of houses where other people have lived, so the idea that my clothes have had another life is not troubling.

Still, it would be interesting to know the history of my clothes. They are usually in good shape and a lot of my used dresses still have the tags on and little bags of extra buttons, which I promptly lose. I wonder why a particular dress never worked out. I wonder if it was purchased for some occasion that never materialized. I wonder if that was disappointing. Maybe it was bought to wear when the owner lost 20 pounds that remained stubbornly where they were. I will never know. But at some point, someone decided it would be better to get a few pennies on the dollar than to keep it in their closet, and that is where every dress I own has come from.

"Where have you been?" I want to ask. The dress remains mum. And that's OK.

I imagine my dress had a very dull life, living in someone's closet, never being worn. It makes me want to put that dress on and make sure I have an especially good time while wearing it.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

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I have never been able to watch scary movies.

My mother will remind you (if she gets the chance) that I can't even watch embarrassing television programs, which is, frankly, embarrassing. I would watch that terrible moment when Lucy was about to get caught doing something embarrassing by her employer, Mr. Mooney, on "The Lucy Show" reruns, and I would have to leave the room in a hurry -- making excuses about how I suddenly needed to help set the table. The truth was, I just couldn't stand to watch Lucy get caught.

Scary movies, of course, are much worse. If getting caught by Mr. Mooney was bad, imagine getting caught by a maniacal murderer or flocks of birds or a shark. As a result, I've never seen the scary movies everyone else has seen. I've seen photos from the movies, and I know the general plotlines, but when it comes to sitting down and watching the shark attack someone, I haven't been able to do it. Until recently.

Recently, I've seen a few scary movies, and it's not because I've become any braver. It's because my husband, Peter, has started signing out DVDs from the library with what is called "optional commentary." The movie plays but, while all the scary stuff is happening, the director -- and sometimes an actor who was in the movie, or an historian or a film editor -- jabbers away on top of the dialogue and the music, explaining how all the effects in the movie were made.

You might think this would be very annoying -- particularly if I hadn't seen the movie without all the jabbering beforehand. Instead, I find it enormously comforting.

I watch the movie, miss some of the dialogue (but not too much), and the scary music is covered up by cheerful folks talking about how they made it so scary. I love hearing how all those terrifying birds were enticed into flying after the children in "The Birds" (they put snacks in the children's hair!) I am delighted to hear the mechanical shark in "Jaws" was named Bruce, purportedly after Steven Spielberg's lawyer, and he broke down all the time and caused so much trouble that Spielberg feared that his career might be over. I even enjoyed hearing how the shower scene in "Psycho" was made and how the film, made in black and white, used chocolate syrup for the blood that circled down the drain after the murder -- a murder that is never actually even seen, but seems so real with that terribly scary music playing.

I've been able to sit through all of this, almost like a normal person, just because I am reassured every minute that Janet Leigh was safe, no children were pecked by birds, and that terrible shark was, in fact, a very troublesome mechanical device named for a lawyer.

The whole experience makes me feel like I'm about six, and I wonder why I require so much reassurance. But I suspect I've always felt a little too responsible for the fate of others, even if (especially if) there is nothing I can do to change the outcome.

It's good for me to see, in every case, it's just ordinary people doing an extraordinarily good job of tapping into these primal fears of things that fly down from the sky and swim up from the depths and come after us when we least expect. It helps me to understand that I do the same thing in my own life, artfully fabricating fears of unlikely things, and doing an excellent job of scaring myself.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other things can be found on Facebook at CarrieClassonAuthor.

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