Editor’s Note: To make creative writing a little easier for my dad (though no less expressive), I wrote the opening phrases of this piece (As a boy, etc.) and he filled in the blanks. You could call it a thought experiment in succinctly describing the experience of a life in 100 words or less– a “micro-autobiography”. The name “Dad Libs” is a play on the popular word game Mad Libs, where players fill in empty spaces in a template story with their own words. You can find the template below- try it yourself if you’d like. Here is what we came up with.
-Max
Template
As a (boy/girl), I was…
As a teenager, I was…
In my twenties, I was…
In my thirties, I was…
(And so on, however long your story may be.)
Dad Libs
Michael Gollin
August 2017
As a boy, I was silly and adventurous.
As a teenager, I was dissolute, thrill-seeking, and intellectual with low emotional intelligence.
In my twenties, I was diligent, motivated by science and law.
In my thirties, I was building emotional awareness, a family, and a career.
In my forties, I was expanding expertise and keeping up with a growing family.
My fifties were five years of fitness and spiritual awakening, then five years of illness and confronting mortality.
My sixties is the peaceful decade.
innovationlifelove 
Thank you, Max, for bringing DadLibs to the world! And thank you, Michael. I probably still have some old MadLibs we did on long summer evenings in Mashpee. So many memories — and this is a particularly nostalgic time of year.
So I took the challenge:
As a girl, I was trusting and a bit of a ham.
As a teenager, I was creative, insecure, self-centered.
In my twenties, I was passionate and impractical.
In my thirties, I started growing up and was filled with wonder: having kids tends to do those things to you.
In my forties, I lost most of my illusions, and also gave myself permission to do some of the things I had always wanted to do.
In my fifties, I began to find my voice, then learned the consequences of raising it.
My sixties, I don’t know yet, but a good friend says she thinks that I’m growing tougher.
This is a fun idea. Such a good exercise for father and son.