It's darn near halfway through National Novel Writing Month, which means I should have around 25,000 words written.

I'd love to say that I do. But I don't.

I'd love to say that I'm close. But I'm not.

I've been hovering steadily around 8,000 for several days now. That's still near two dozen pages worth of hard-earned typing. But it doesn't compare to the 15, 20, 25K word counts of some of my NaNoWriMoing pals.

Day after day they continue to shame me.

I tried to chalk it up to the fact that I write a good deal for work - so my creative stockpiles are tapped out by the time NaNoWriMo hour sets in.

Of course even I know deep down that my theory is just a poorly designed excuse intended to hide an inherent and obvious laziness.

But the NaNoWriMo effort hasn't all been for naught. In fact, I've learned a few things over the last 14 days. For example: I was an evil, evil child.

Two weeks ago I had plunged headlong into a work of pure fiction. But somewhere around word 2,179 a memory began to creep forward from the quiet corners of my brain. There was no time to ruminate on the memory before I watched it retell itself on the white Word doc canvas in front of me:

I was six, maybe seven, and my best friend Sarah was diabetic. And I, like a good friend, was jealous. That's right. Jealous. I wanted to be diabetic, too. I wanted special sugar-free cookies and I wanted the kindergarten teacher to glance empathetically in my direction.

I insisted Sarahs' mother check my blood sugar on a regular basis. Sometimes she humored me. Sometimes she'd refuse, so I'd talk loudly about how thirsty I was all the time. And always the tests proved that I was Diabetes-free.

When Sarah's little sister Beth was then diagnosed, I was livid. I threw Barbie doll heads at her in the playroom when no one else was looking.

A year or so later I tried to convince my neighborhood friends that I had polio. I'd uncovered a set of once-used croquet mallets in the garage, grabbed two, flipped them upside down and tucked them under my arms like crutches.

I limped up and down the street for the better part of an hour before the aching in my armpits compelled me to give up the endeavor.

Then, of course, are the horrendous ways my older brother and I tried to punish each other (he with hazardous wrestling moves and me with sharp objects and a package of Twizzlers).

I can chalk it up to kids being kids or to the adolescent perspective that doesn't quite comprehend the consequences of anything.

But I also think there's a reason I'd forgotten some of my early evildoings. Who wants to remember that stuff?

Let me stick with memories like the near-dead bird I attempted to nurse back to health in the back yard (sure, it died anyway. But at least I tried). Or the time I told my mother I wanted to be a gold digger when I grew up.

"Gold digger?" She asked, probably concerned and wondering where she'd gone wrong as a parent.

"Yea, I'm going to dig for gold so I have a ton of money so I can cure Sarah's diabetes."

Sweet, right? I was a good kid, right?

At least I wasn't any more awful than any of my young cohorts. I mean, I remember a kid who trapped his infant sibling inside a makeshift cage constructed out of laundry baskets.

Ah, kids.

So who knew National Novel Writing Month also doubled as Psychoanalytic Month?

Thus, for what it's worth: Beth, I'm sorry I chucked Barbie heads at you. And Cliff, I'm sorry I tried to kill you…a few times.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a phone call to Dr. Phil to make.