You don’t often recognize a particular event as a turning point in your life until after the fact, when you can look back and see the precise moment everything changed. But once in a while the turning point is so big and obvious that you can’t miss it.

So I’m called into someone’s office and told that I’ll be handling the copywriting for the nation’s preeminent ointment for the painful burning, itching, and discomfort that comes from swollen hemorrhoidal tissue. I mean we’re talking the ass cream. You are familiar with it, I’m sure. I say “hemorrhoids” and you think of this topical cream, definitely.

(I’ll also be working on a new children’s vitamin sponsored by an animated anthropomorphic Porifera who sports orthogonal trousers. Made by the same pharmaceutical conglomerate!)

As I received this news I nodded and thought: This is it. When I was a little boy and my dream of being a writer first took hold, I knew that someday I would use my talents to bring some magic into this crazy old world. And as I sat down today to write “gently insert dispensing cap partway into the anus” — I knew that I was finally living that dream.