I stared blankly at the paper with the table on it. Around the table were twelve chairs, one on each end and five to a side. I was in health class and our assignment was to prepare a guest list for a dinner party. We could invite anyone, living or dead, real or fictitious. We were to prepare who would sit where, including us, as one of the twelve. It was a (deceivingly) simple assignment.

While the others wrote steadily, I continued to stare blankly at the paper. The voices of my classmates were tuned out to a meaningless drone as I thought of who to write. It's not that I was at a loss for people. Quite the contrary: I could think of too many.

A plethora of names filled my head from Nostodamus, the great foreseer of the centuries past to Elvis (the Pelvis) Presley. Out of all the world's greatest, how do you choose eleven?

Then I thought of the not-so-famous people who are still working to make their names known. How I'd love to talk to Gary Sinise and ask how he liked going from doing Grapes of Wrath on American Playhouse to movies like The Stand and Forrest Grump. Speaking of The Stand brought Stephen King to mind, one of my favorite authors. Or how about Jim Hensen, a man who I think was meant to live forever, a man whose Muppets I still love. Or Carrot Top who is, if you ask me, the greatest prop comedian of our time! I could go on forever. And I still haven't mentioned the characters from books and television I would love to invite, like Holden Caufield or Robin Hood or Tiny Tim.

When I finally stopped staring blankly at the paper with the table on it and made a list of all the people and seated them, I sat back with a sigh. My health teacher announced it was time to read our lists to each other. She started at the other end of the room, and I prepared to listen to which all-time celebrities the first student chose.

"Um, there's me at the top, then my mom and dad, my friend Joe, my best friend Mark, my girlfriend Kristina, um there's my dog under the table and my sister Jane ..." c