My Annette Fantasy.

Do you know the story of Annette Funicello? She was 12, and in her school "Swan Lake" production in Burbank, Walt Disney saw her perform and picked her to be a Mouseketeer - and she went on to become one of the most popular TV stars on the show.

Perhaps you are too steady and mature to have ever had an Annette fantasy... where you're performing in a play, or even just walking down the street, and a casting director decides you are PERFECT FOR THE ROLE, and your life changes in the blink of an eye with, ahem, precious little work on your part.

I've had my share of Annette daydreams, and I suppose they fit the usual bill - when I performed in the 6th grade play, when I went to the state Geography Bee, when Kathleen Kennedy came to the theater I worked at in college for a film premiere of hers - of being selected at random, for no reason, to fulfill a great destiny.

Walking this past weekend on a lovely spring afternoon to the grocery store, I slowed down in front of the house I always slow down in front of, which has been for sale for 18 months or more, and is the perfect Craftsman with a big yard, a fireplace, it looks small from the front but is actually quite spacious and large, and sighed. I had an Annette moment. Maybe someone would say to me, "Oh, do you love this house?" And I would be able to answer, "Oh I've loved it since I moved to this neighborhood nearly four years ago. I would make it such a happy house with BBQs and Christmas decorations, gardens and music, gatherings and neighborliness!"* And they would say, "Then you shall have this house! For the enormous down payment of zero, because you are so worthy!"

It's funny - and I know it is - but it's dangerous too. When this type of entitlement attitude, this type of "above the rules" feeling goes too far, then grandiosity and isolation from my fellow man isn't far behind.

But hey, maybe the owners of the house are reading, and I can wish, right? For it is a fine distraction from the bore of plunking away money, week after week, into the savings fund that'll get me to that house, some house, eventually.

(*This house/Annette moment is also a nod for those Anne Shirley-lovers who read the blog, and how she secured the rental at Patty's Place by so loving the home and honestly vowing to not change its name.)