When I was seven, I carried around a pocket dictionary. 

I can remember it perfectly. It was maroon, with gold edging on the pages, and a huge crease down the front cover, where my grandmother's fingers had bent it roughly during a particularly intense game of scrabble.

I got the old one. She got a new one.

I took my little dictionary everywhere, and should anyone question why a small child would be carrying around a tatty pocket dictionary, I would tell them, "Um, dah... Cos it's magic."

I remember telling the boys who lived on the corner, as they lent gormlessly on their BMX bikes, mullets blowing in the wind that whipped the barren landscape our new housing estate, that my book, contained all of the knowledge in the universe, and more importantly, it was mine. Not just the book. The knowledge. And they couldn’t have it. So there.

They were not nearly as upset as I felt they should be. Didn’t they know what I held in my hands? Had they no concept of the magic I had been given? I gave them a warning look, and assured them, that if I wanted, I could use my magic words, and destroy them. And their bikes. I had the power. And maybe I'd do it later, when they least expected it...

I was absolutely convinced, that my tiny book, with its gold edged pages, was magic, and I had been chosen to receive it! It was not just a coincidence, that I was standing by the bin, at the exact same time that my grandmother went to throw the book away. No, it was fate! Like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, I was the rightful heir to that magical pocket dictionary, and all the secret spells it there contained.

The words were too long for me to begin to decipher, and what was with all those weird squiggles, the italics, the bolds... surely it was some sort of mysterious magical hieroglyphics, that only I could decipher... But one day, one day, I would unlock all the secrets, and the magic would be mine. 

But it was not just my book, itself, that was magic. No, no. The real magic was the words. Words were not just words. Words had powers. And, all of the words in that dictionary, which, my seven year old brain assumed was all the words in the world, had been given, specifically, to me. I was the chosen one. This was my fate. This was my destiny.

But as everyone knows, when it comes to magic, you have to learn how to wield it. You have to be trained. I was going to have to learn how to use those magical words...