Here it is by request. It's baaaad but I made it the morning before it was due.

Many successful people have had profound influences on my life. They have given me aspirations to become a master musician, a talented cartoonist, or a hardworking programmer. The most influential celebrity that I�ve ever met, though, is Jim Davis, the cartoonist of the popular comic strip �Garfield.� It�s not his humor or his drawing ability that has affected me the most � it�s the lesson I�ve learned from what he�s become.

Everyone knows Garfield, the fat cat with an attitude, who�s always there to make his owner Jon�s life worse, and to beat up on his canine counterpart, Odie. Garfield was my source of hours of enjoyment, reading through the old archives of the 25-year-old comic strip. I learned from the strip�s drawing style and improved my own. I knew all about the history of Garfield and bought almost every book in stores. It was time to show my Garfield craze to the one who started it all, Jim Davis.

I wrote a letter to Jim raving about how I love Garfield and his hilarious antics. The heartfelt letter was littered with my own little sketches of Garfield and stunning statistics of my Garfield craze. I dropped the letter into my mailbox, and eagerly waited for a reply.

Weeks passed, and I received nothing. I devised many theories as to what could have happened, most of them having something to do with the unreliability of the United States Postal Service. However, one day, a miracle occurred. My mom handed me an envelope complete with Garfield gracing the cover. I ran to my room, opened it up, and discovered nothing more than a Garfield merchandise catalog.

There went my dreams. Jim Davis turned from a comedian, an artist, and a friend, into a giant corporate monster with no love for his fans or his own work. Did anyone even read my letter, or was it thrown into a giant box titled �FANS� en route to a particularly large furnace? I quickly found his comics to be repetitive and dull, and later discovered that he almost has no part in the production of the comic anymore (his corporation, Paws, does most of it for him).

Although it seemed that I had lost my hero, I learned a lot from this whole account. I asked new, dynamic questions of myself. Do I want to achieve fame? Would I still be a real person if I did? Is it worth being world-renowned to break the hearts of millions?

My true goals have been realized. I want to stop trying to achieve stardom in exchange for my own integrity. No matter what position I achieve in life, I will care for the people who have helped me through, and the people who look up to me. I will know that I�m not just doing work for my own benefit � I realize that I, like Jim Davis, will serve as a role model for future generations to come.