Robin Gold

Robin was born on April 9, 1974, in Highland Park, Illinois, a quaint suburb of Chicago also known as "that town where all the John Hughes movies were filmed" in the totally awesome '80s. (Trick-or-treating at Ferris Bueller's house was an annual thrill, even though the home's real owner was a crabby orthodontist who gave out miniature bottles of plaque-resistant mouthwash each year.)

When she was three, her sister, Mandy, came along and Robin scored an instant best friend. If her life were a MasterCard commercial, Mandy would be the "priceless" variable. Though they never had an Easy-Bake Oven, they had a great childhood and always enjoyed creating their own entertainment over the store-bought stuff. Their parents encouraged them to use their imaginations and applauded their plays, poems, and other demented fruits of their labor as if they were diamond encrusted. Looking back now, Robin probably wouldn't have become a writer if her mom and dad hadn't insisted insisted insisted that her childhood haikus about bacon and sonnets about cat barf were the most brilliant works of genius in the history of mankind.