Originally published June 22, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1440
April 27, 1994
Teacher: So class, today we’re going to discuss where you went on Take Your Daughter to Work Day!
Jessica: My Daddy’s a caterer, and he works in a restaurant!
Lindsay: I went to the gym, ’cause my Mommy’s an aerobics instructor.
Courtney: My Dad’s a doctor. He helps people feel better.
Gwen! (age 9): My Daddy has a very important job. He sits around all day and plays on his computer in the basement. I went with him to the Central Offices. It had a bunch of video games and toys and a Batmobile. Everybody there’s real nice and some of them even spend the whole day coloring! It’s so much fun.
Teacher: Gwen!, what exactly does your father do?
Gwen! (still age 9): He writes comic books!
Yep, a day in the early life of being Peter David’s middle daughter Gwen! Let me introduce myself. My name is Gwen! David. I live in a house with my dad, Peter David, his newly married, Kathleen O’Shea David, my little sister, Ariel, five kitties (Pandora, Stalin, Treat Williams, Milli, and Vanilli) and a bunny (Lazy Pancake). I am in 11th grade and only have 14 more days of school left. Then I will be in 12th grade. Wahoo! I like to do computer art and photography at my school. This summer I’m stage-managing Guys and Dolls at the Bald Hill Amphitheater, so come and see it! Umm… Oh, I just took my SATs. I got an 1,190. (That’s good.) I love the Powerpuff Girls, John Wayne, and Treat Willams (the actor and the cat). They’re so cool. Well, anyway, at this point, you may be asking, “Hey, where’s Peter?” Well, he’s kinda been a little crazy lately, due to his wedding and all—so crazy, in fact, that he let me write this week’s column. Here, I will tell you what it’s like being Peter David’s daughter. I will make up a list of pros and cons:
Pros
1. I can go up to just about any dealer at a comic-book convention and say, “My dad’s Peter David. Can I get a discount?” To which the reply is generally a yes.
2. In my English class last year, my teacher, Ms. Dinkel, told me that all “great writers” use the Harvard outline when writing, and to be a “great writer” we had to use the Harvard outline. Well, I thought that was a big waste of time, so I went home and asked my dad if he used a Harvard outline when writing. “Not if I don’t have to,” he said (or something like that). So I went back to my teacher, and informed her that my dad was a “great writer,” and he did not use the Harvard outline. I was excused from having to write an outline for the rest of the year (so cool).
3. Last November I went to Portugal! It was lots of fun. People asked me, “Hey, Gwen!, why are you going to Portugal?” to which I would reply, “For a comic-book convention.”
“Don’t you think Portugal’s a little far to travel for a comic-book convention?” they would say.
“Not if it’s for free!” I would reply. I actually get to go to a boatload of cool places: Portugal, Maryland, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin…
4. My best friend Cayley has come with me to Star Trek conventions called Shoreleave and Farpoint in Maryland every year for the past three or four years. We have lots of fun there. They’re the greatest conventions, ’cause there’s a Pizza Hut and a pool in the hotel. How cool is that?
5. My house is filled with books. Lots of them. Tons and tons of them. A lot of them are my dad’s and his friends’, but most of them are other people’s (who are not nearly as good writers as my dad, of course, but we have their books there, anyway). If I ever get bored, and somebody’s using the computer, I can find lots of different books on subjects ranging from Star Trek to Shakespeare.
6. I, along with my sisters (Ariel and Shana), am the only person in the whole world who can call Harlan Ellison “Uncy Harlan” and still live to tell about it.
7. Number seven is going to be more of a “Why it’s great to be Gwen! David’s father,” but, anyway, I won two tickets to go see a sneak preview of Pearl Harbor from a radio station (94.3, ’80s rock. Oh, yeah.), and my Dad said that he’d go with me. Isn’t that neat?
8. People come up to me in the hallways all the time and say, “Your dad was in Wizard this issue.”
“Again?”
9. My dad likes to act in shows at community theaters. Two summers ago, we did L’il Abner together. He was Marryin’ Sam, and I was Scarlett. It was lots of fun, despite all the driving. He’s made lots of friends doing community theater, which is good, ’cause social interaction is always a plus for him. He was also in a production of 1776. Not everybody can say that their dad wore tights on a regular basis for a month and a half.
10. People come from far and wide on Halloween to our house, ’cause my dad gives out comic books, instead of candy. Why? Well, there’s a few reasons. First of all, we get a bunch of free ones every month from random people and they just sit around and collect dust. Also, there’s the philosophy of, “Why rot your teeth when you can rot your brain?”
Cons
Those are the pros to being Peter David’s daughter. However, whenever there’s a pro, there’s a con. (Oh, wait, that reminds me of this great joke: Since pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?)
1. I was traumatized as a young child. My dad thought he was being funny when he taught kindergartener Gwen! the rhyme, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea!” Yes, well, little Gwen! quickly became the laughingstock of her class when she eagerly volunteered that information. I was traumatized, I tell you…
2. There’ve been reports of a teenage boy going around saying with utter glee and delight (unfortunately, truthfully so), “I went out with Peter David’s daughter!” If you see him, punch him. Punch him right in the head. Hard.
I can’t really think of any other cons—so that’s good! ’Cause my dad’s really cool. I think so, and you should think so, too. So send him a congratulatory letter for getting married and not stressing out so much as to cause a heart attack, which would be bad.
Gwen! David, student of… stuff? can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.
So how is Gwen doing nowadays? What is she up to? The last I heard of her was when she was working at that comics shop (in Boston, IIRC?), and was interviewed by the news over the guerilla marketing used by Aqua Teen Hunger Force that some interpreted as the work of terrorists.