• I'd give $100,000 to my high school sweetheart's mother.
• I'd donate $100,000 of it to a community oriented cause, most likely involving aid for recovering drug addicts or resource centers for education.
• I'd spend about $100,000 to open my own space. There, I'd make/display art, have live music every week, sell vegan deli and baked foods, have discussions and open forums around voting season, and run a barter-system shop of trade.
• I'd pay off my student loans, which are about $50,000 (yikes!).
• I'd spend $10,000 to revamp my Ghia! New upholstery, new transmission, new brake system, new engine, new wood panel dash. Hot.
• I'd buy a miniature wire haired dachshund for about $600.
• I'd use the time off of work to write a n...

• That little redhead boy named James. I had such a big crush on him! He had a Metallic shirt in the second grade.
• Playing "Around the World" for math. Mikey Mauer and I always won.
• The 6th grade performance of that western play. They cast me as a Native American girl and I sang "The White Man is Coming." Talk about sowing the seeds of early racial shame.
• Making tamales with Stephanie's Mexican family. They always made fun of me.
• The day I left my homework in my dad's car. He drove all the way back to bring it to me before the bell rang.
• Riding my bike to Taco Bell after school. Getting kicked out for starting food fights.
• Semi-permanent hair dye.
• Awards assemblies.
• The boy named Andrew. We had braces at th...

• Natalie Portman
• Audrey Tatou
• Jennifer Love Hewitt
• Jennifer Lopez
• That one guy from Fall Out Boy
• Scarlett Johansson
• Ben Affleck
• Amanda Peet

• cocktail dress designer
• graphic designer for print
• fashion illustrator
• political blogger
• short story author
• magazine journalist
• lawyer
• surgeon
• teacher
• on-air personality

There was a reason he was my favorite author for so many years. Here are some good ones from ol' Tommy.

• "In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable."
• "Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide."
• "There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for."
• "Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."
• "If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it."
• "Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, may...