 I’ll start with this:
Joanie was sitting on the bus and looking out the window when the truck hit George. It’s not a compelling sentence, much less a great first sentence. It doesn’t tell us if Joanie actually saw the truck hit George, does it? It uses the boring ‘was sitting’ and ‘looking’ verbs, too. So—I’ll begin with what I’m trying to say. Here are the facts the author knows, but so far, the reader does not: Joanie’s on a bus. What kind? School bus. Where is it? Boca Raton, Florida. Where was she seated? Second row behind the driver—window seat. Who is she? A public school attendee. How old? Fourteen. Where is she going & why? She’s headed home after school, presumably to have a snack & do her homework. Who is George? A young man from Texas. How old? Twenty-five. Was he in a car or in the street when he was hit? He was running and darted into the street. Does Joanie know him? No. What kind of truck was it? An F150, black. Who was driving it? An old man. Did Joanie see the accident? Yes. Where were they when the accident happened? On Palmetto Park Road heading west. That’s enough facts to get me started with a better opening. I don’t have to use all those facts in the first sentence (or in the first paragraph), of course, but I do want to pique the reader’s interest. So, second attempt: Yawning, Joanie shifted in her seat as the school bus jolted over the train tracks and returned to staring out the window. Okay, it’s better—way better—especially the verb choices, but is it compelling? Starting a book with a yawn may not be the best thing to do, either. Unless the sentence becomes overly long, the action involving George (and other details) now has to happen in subsequent sentences. And that’s okay. But if I want a power-packed first line, this won’t do it. How about: As Joanie relieved her boredom by staring out the school bus window, a dark-haired man ran from the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, and a huge black pick up slammed into him. Still ‘eh’. Also starts with an ‘as’. And it sounds ‘passive’—like the storyteller is bored telling it. It doesn’t put the reader into the scene. The reader is merely watching from afar. Stop for a moment and assess—what are the most important facts to establish? Joanie’s young. George gets hit. Joanie witnesses it. I’ll try again: Bored and tired, Joanie switched her gaze from her phone to out the school bus window just as a dark-haired man darted from the sidewalk into traffic, and a huge black pick up slammed him into the air. I’m getting close. We know Joanie’s a kid, because it’s a school bus. We know George gets hit. We know Joanie doesn’t know him, or the sentence would use his name—being in Joanie’s POV. I’m going to add ‘screaming’ to George’s description—to show he wasn’t simply careless. Something was terribly wrong that made him think his only option was going into the street. I’m taking out ‘out’ because it’s an extra word that doesn’t need to be there. We can assume when she switches her gaze to the window that she’s looking out of it. I’m taking out ‘just.’ It’s a word that almost never needs to be there. ‘As’ tells us the action happens at that exact moment. So: Bored and tired, Joanie switched her gaze from her phone to the school bus window as a screaming dark-haired man darted from the sidewalk into traffic, and a huge black pickup slammed him into the air. This works for me. It tells me it’s a normal day. Whether Joanie’s either on her way to school or on the way back (morning or afternoon) will be established soon. She looks out the window in time to see a crazed man running into traffic and get hit by a truck. To assess, we have to put ourselves in the reader’s head. What questions come to their mind immediately? What question comes first? I think the first is—what was so wrong that a man would risk running in front of a truck? Then—because of the word ‘slammed’, not ‘hit’—oh, my God, where did he land? Is he alive? The reader is seeing the carnage in their head without my having written a word about it. What was he running from? Was someone/something chasing him? Next is concern for Joanie, the school girl. No one ever wants a kid to witness that. Did any of the other kids see it? What about the driver? Does the driver stop the bus? It’s safe to say by re-writing it the way I did, I’ve piqued the reader’s interest, yes? I’ve gotten them involved in the story from the first sentence. Let’s look at the verb usage. Switched, darted, and slammed. No ‘was watching’, ‘ran’, ‘looked’, ‘changed’ or ‘sat.’ The verbs are dynamic, not boring. Notice I didn’t say ‘up into the air?’ Directional words are extras that aren’t needed and slow down your writing. There is no other way but ‘up’ if you’re tossed into the air (from Earth, that is), so it’s not necessary. I used ‘huge black pickup’ instead of F150 because we’re in Joanie’s POV, and most fourteen-year-old girls don’t know or care about truck models. (Your character might, but mine doesn’t.) I didn’t use the word ‘crazed’ in the sentence, because that’s a judgment call on Joanie’s part, and that’s also telling, not showing. By saying a screaming man darted into traffic, I’m showing that he’s crazed. Also notice I didn’t describe how anything looked, other than George’s dark hair and the fact the truck was black. We have to put tiny bits of detail into the sentence, or the reader can’t create as full a picture. I picked dark-haired, because Joanie’s fourteen, and she’d most likely notice his hair, as his face might have been a blur, since it happened so fast. The truck’s color is black, because it paints a more ominous picture than a red or white truck, or no color mentioned at all. We don’t really care what anyone’s wearing at that moment, or whether Joanie is black, white, purple, blonde, brunette, or a redhead. Keeping the description to a bare minimum keeps the action going. Details of all sorts can be added in subsequent sentences. And voila! I have a first sentence. Next time, I’ll work on what comes after.
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If you haven't read Kling's Seychelle Sullivan series, you should. Seychelle, besides having the best first name ever (she and her siblings were named for islands, how cool is that?), is a smart and clever woman who can't stand injustice. That last part is probably why I like her so much.
I'll tell you the worst I can about these books: Seychelle can take a licking and keep on ticking - sometimes to excess, and I have to suspend my disbelief at those times. (Happy to do it, BTW.) And - there are plot points that seem a might too convenient. That's it. But!! Kling's writing is so clean. She gets you rooting for the underdog. She makes you love her characters. And she always has a good, solid mystery. Mourning Tide is the 5th in the series, and yes, you can read it without having first read the others - it will stand alone very nicely. Seychelle owns a tugboat, so Kling takes us to places we'd never see or know about because of it, and that is a big draw, in my mind. Seychelle's efforts to find a friend's missing sister & who was responsible leads her into the world of a smarmy money-grubbing 'preacher' and his cult-like followers. Things are even slimier than they first look, and Seychelle inadvertently endangers her sweet little family - boyfriend B.J. Moana & their adopted, adorable son, Nestor. Kling herself is a life-long sailor, has a zillion stories to tell, and I hope she keeps doing so. Check out her other series, too - The Shipwreck Adventures - featuring another great female lead character, Maggie Riley.  That’s what my older sister, my dear departed Stephanie, labeled the weird phenomenon of always—as the old knight in the Indiana Jones movie said—choosing poorly.
You walk into a bar with a few friends. There are enough vacant stools, all looking perfectly fine. You choose one. While the others in your party take their seats, you hang your purse on the hook under the counter, then boost yourself up on your stool. And it’s the one with a leg shorter than the other three. It’s the tippy barstool. Every bar has one, and you’ve picked it. Again. My family excels at this. Welcome to our world. A world where your brand new package of three pairs of socks has a sock missing. You have five socks, not six. The package hadn’t been opened—it was simply a freak from the factory. Or your seat on the plane is in front of the only kicking toddler on board. You get the idea. Nowhere does Tippy Barstool Syndrome kick in as hard or as often than at the grocery store. First you select a cart. So many to choose from, yet you take the one with the sticky wheel. The next has loud, squeaky wheels. A third has gum stuck to the underside of the handle. Around you, other shoppers are putting no thought at all into cart selection. They simply grab one, and off they go happily—on silent and gliding wheels. As you peruse the store, placing items in the cart, Tippy hovers like Eeyore’s dark cloud. The first bag of flour you lift has a rip on the bottom that you don’t notice until it leaves a trail of white powder and the floor feels slippery. You glance down to notice your new shoes are dusted white. The first jar of jam you select has its little safety bubble already popped. The yogurt container’s sealed top has a slit in it. The bag of M&Ms was opened via the bottom seam by somebody sneaking some out, and they spill everywhere when you pick it up. You’ve completed your list. Now you scout out the shortest or fastest line. You zip past all open lanes. For each line of customers, your brain is calculating, rapid-fire, what types of people are in that lane and how much they’ve got in their carts. A line may have fewer people with fewer items, but experienced shoppers know if more than one of those waiting are elderly, skip that queue. You don’t want to be smiling politely while grandpa can’t figure out the debit card or granny endlessly searches for her checkbook, then takes five excruciating minutes to write the check. Are there any harried moms with screaming toddlers? Does the cashier look new? Does the bagger pack slower than sludge? So many factors, and your brain calculates them brilliantly. The analysis from your logical quadrant reports in, and you get in a line. Two people soon stand behind you. And this is when TBS kicks in. The customer at the register realizes she bought a wrong thing. She panics, says “I’ll be right back,” dashes out of line, and disappears down an aisle. The rest of you make small talk about the drivel on the gossip magazines’ covers in the checkout rack. Which, I have to say, are so unfair. Either the celebrities are too skinny or they’re too fat. Whatever the starlet weighs, it’s never good enough for the tabloids. Alien babies and people selling their grilled cheese sandwiches that look like Jesus, however, are never criticized on those covers. I’m digressing. After a few minutes of us showing incredible patience and restraint in resisting eye rolls and sighs, the lady scoots back, apologizing. Those who can’t fake a nice reply merely nod. She pays and vamooses. The next person does everything right, but the register runs out of receipt paper. It continues like that as the lanes on either side flow effortlessly along. I often tell people I meet in line to memorize my face. If they ever see me in line again, they’d be smart to get in a different one. A Note: My beautiful sister Stephanie passed away from a particularly ugly and aggressive throat cancer, 4 years ago this week. She was so flipping fun and funny. I begged her for years to quit smoking. She always said, "I'm going to. I promise." She never did. Please, if you smoke, quit now. Find a way. If you could see the pain it caused all of us, but especially our mother, you'd do it. Maybe you'll beat the odds, but why take that chance? We want you here - with us.  This is an essay from 2014 - and it appears on page 74 of my book, A Little Bit Sideways - but it (sadly) never grows old. There's a whole new generation of young (and older) men who are ridiculously clueless when it comes to romance and Valentine's Day in particular:
My new editor asked me to write my February column about romance. Borrowing from the great Bugs Bunny – “She don’t know me very well, do she?” Poor thing probably hasn’t had time to read many back issues and doesn’t realize what my track record is. But I take pride in doing what I’m told (sometimes). And I relish relaying romantic tales. So here goes. Valentine’s Day means a lot. To women. Not so much to men. Most men do what they’re told to do by their woman in order to maintain the household peace. This I know with certainty, because I have three adult sons and have had three semi-adult husbands. I believe this makes me an expert in the romantic gifts and gestures department, or—perhaps more accurately—what not to give the woman in your life if you ever expect to have intimate relations again. After all, every man hopes that giving the right gift will lead to what we women call romance. The men call it something else that I can’t say here. The smart ones realize that a thoughtful, mushy gift will open a woman’s heart and make her feel all warm and tingly inside. Which leads to a long walk in the woods, then some playful swapping of baseball caps, then a relaxing soak in twin bathtubs outside in the yard while watching the sunset. Oh. Wait. No. That’s a special pill commercial. Most men these days do know that most women are wired differently and require a little schmoozing. They don’t understand it—because, honestly, all they need is a simple nod toward the bedroom, and they’ll be out of their boxers and under the sheets before you take three steps down the hall—but if some affectionate gestures and canoodling make his woman want to jump his bones, a man will comply. But this is where some of the worst stories come into the picture. Seems that even what comprises those gestures is a mystery to men. Just when they think they’ve got it nailed and are doing something romantic, it can all blow up in their faces, poor things. A few things not to do: Shoulder rubs are wonderful and most women will welcome one—but not when standing at the kitchen sink scrubbing pots—you’re likely to get hit over the head with a frying pan. Better idea? Gently nudge her away from the sink, dry her hands, pour her a glass of wine, and you finish the job. By the way, this only works if you do a good job of it, not the old - I’ll do a crummy job, and she’ll never ask me to do it again ploy. Because that just pisses her off worse and gets you further from your goal. Much further. You have no idea how much further. One of the best pieces of advice for a male cohabitating with a female is to learn early on how she likes certain household tasks done, then actually DO them that way. If more nookie is what you’re after, listen and follow my directions. Doing chores badly only makes her think of you as she would an irresponsible teenager. Someone she needs to supervise—so she’s still on duty, not relaxed. And if your woman is the weird exception that finds a grown man who acts like a petulant teenager a turn-on, well, it’s up to you, of course, but I say there’s a whole lotta trouble coming your way. If you stay, then you deserve what you get. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Don’t tell her you’ve planned a romantic evening, have the wine poured, get her all comfy on the sofa, then have a porn movie start playing when you hit the remote. (Unless you know, for a very, very, solid fact, that she’s into it. Come to think of it, get that in writing and have it notarized.) Women will compare themselves with the gorgeous, but anorexic, girl with huge boobs on the screen and wonder why you need to look at her to get turned on. Which leads to massive feelings of inadequacy and lower confidence and not so much fun in the bedroom—if the door hasn’t been slammed in your face already. Do not write her a poem that has any words rhyming with bucket. Just don’t. In addition, do not give her the following ‘gifts’—all courtesy of my exes: Fencing lessons when she’s never expressed ANY interest in it. A white yarn mop head (without even the accompanying mop stick to put it on). Yeah, wish I was kidding you on that one. A box of real coal chunks in a pretty box from the most expensive jeweler in town. No jewelry hidden inside, just the chunks. A used coffee mug. A scrub brush for the car. And a framed picture of your mother. You are welcome. One of my greatest fears from early childhood was that I’d fall into the three-quarter-inch gap in the seaside boardwalk planks in Asbury Park, New Jersey. We lived a few miles inland and would go to the boardwalk amusements every once in a while. I remember so vividly the smell of tar mixed with the tang of salt air. Every time I smell tar, I go back to childhood and the boardwalk. Here’s the weird thing—I love when that happens. I love the smell of tar. But for some reason, the little gap in the boards absolutely terrified me. In my mind, they were a foot wide.
Such is the strangeness of childhood fears. What’s also strange is how we all remember what those crazy fears were. So, I’ve been asking people about theirs, and, to a person, they had no trouble dredging up an example from early in their lives. One man was completely freaked out by Winnie the Pooh. Screamed bloody murder when he saw the cartoon or, heaven forbid, came face-to-face with a stuffed one in the toy store. He can’t figure out why, though. Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet? No problem. Only the cute little soft-voiced, gentle bear made him cringe. A more common one was mannequins. That, I can understand. Some of them creep me out, even now. Especially when they’ve been made to have facial expressions. I saw one recently whose face was cast in a freakish wide-mouthed laugh. He had heavily painted eyebrows that pitched together over his nose and way-too-bright blue eyes. He looked maniacal, like something the Joker would leave around to taunt his next victim. How that mannequin was an asset in selling men’s clothing was beyond me. What store owner would buy him? I ponder the good judgement, not to mention the sanity, of such a business owner. He’d be the type to have a trap-door in the dressing room or a secret two-way mirror. An older man confessed to a paralyzing dread of chalk as a kid. Chalk? He had this fear long before the jumping into Bert’s sidewalk chalk drawings happened in the Mary Poppins movie, so we can’t blame Walt Disney or Dick Van Dyke. Maybe his mom banged the dust out of chalkboard erasers near him when he was an infant? One little girl went nuts if she saw colored sprinkles. All-brown chocolate ones were okay. Just the happy and festive multi-colored sprinkles gave her nightmares. In an unexpected side note, clowns, known for multi-colored faces and outfits that universally give us the willies, didn’t affect her at all. You’d think they’d trigger the same reaction. Speaking of nuts, a boy had a near-panic attack if confronted by peanuts. Not peanut butter, but the nuts. He didn’t have an allergy. All he can fathom now, as an adult, is the Mr. Peanut icon spooked him. Product mascots when we were young were everywhere and pretty bizarre, come to think of it. The Jolly Green Giant? I was leery of him. Thought he was always about to squash those cute little green sprouts dancing around him. Speedy, the Alka-Seltzer boy? On the old black and white TV, he looked like a demented ventriloquist’s doll, and I hated those things. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man with his stupid tilted sailor’s cap? I can’t explain why he creeped me out, but he just did. And why did he look so much like The Michelin Man? And for the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend Mr. Clean. An adult man who helped women clean the house? Oh, Please. My dad never cleaned anything, except the grill and the lawn mower. None of us kids fell for that one. We were supposed to like and trust these icons? We were supposed to be happy to eat Charlie the Tuna’s friends? I submit that maybe the reason for our childhood terrors had more to do with the Madmen's three-martini lunch where they dreamed up such stuff, rather than anything actually being wrong with us.  Have you ever seen the aftermath of an exploded, spoiled can of cranberry sauce? When I was a kid, I didn’t like the taste of cranberries. Mom taught us how to string them with popcorn to make Christmas tree garlands, but eating them? Nah. By my teen years, my palate had matured, and I realized Mom’s homemade cranberry relish was pretty darned good. Made with oranges, a few spices, and not too much sugar, it became my go-to for consuming cranberries. This was way, way before sweetened dried cranberries—Craisins—were temptingly dangled in front of us on TV like the California dancing raisins’ long lost cousins. The problem with having a mother who made most things from scratch, and very well at that, is almost nothing served by others—individuals or restaurants—measures up. So I tend to take a pass on canned anything. Sometimes my Thanksgiving guests will come with donations for the dinner, which is so very thoughtful and nice. For the record, I prefer fresh flowers or wine as a hostess gift. But once in a while, that donation is a can of cranberry sauce, which I conveniently forget to open and serve. At the end of the meal, I’ll politely slap my forehead and apologize for forgetting. While cleaning up, I feel heartless just tossing it, so the can gets shoved to the back of the pantry. Perhaps my guilt will go away, and I’ll throw it out in a week or two? Several years go by. I legitimately forget all about it, and if I haven’t cleaned out the pantry (which I almost never do), disaster strikes. Purplish-red gooey stuff goes everywhere. It’s sticky, and it stains, and it’s a pain in the rear to wash absolutely everything down. True confession here, though—it’s only happened once. But once was enough. Some might say I got what I deserved, but I really, really, really hate serving that gelatinous goop. I don’t know why they call the jellied stuff that slides out of the can cranberry sauce. It looks and acts more like Jello. I suppose it tastes like cranberries, in a way. But it’s a far cry from real cranberries. Another reconfigured and reconditioned Thanksgiving food I can’t stomach is fake mashed potatoes. There are people who buy a box of dried potato flakes (I guess they’re flakes, I really don’t know), mix them with water or milk, and the resulting mush is supposed to be instant mashed potatoes? It’s shocking. That sounds blasphemous on top of unappetizing. Plus they have all sorts of chemicals added to them. I guess I don’t understand, because boiling potatoes, then mushing them up with some milk and butter, is one of the easiest things to do in the world of cooking. There’s nothing complicated about it. The English and Irish were able to do it, for crying out loud. No offense meant to either nationality, but you are not famous for your great food. We love you for other reasons. (I do have English and Irish in my mixed-mutt heritage). And real potatoes taste good. So I don’t get it. According to info I found on the Internet, instant mashed potatoes have been through ‘an industrial process’ of cooking, mashing, and dehydrating—resulting in ‘a close approximation’ of mashed potatoes. Ewwww. Sounds yummy. Not. Unless you’re cooking for Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, where he uses a gallon of mashed potatoes as a sculpture medium, please try to do it yourself at least once. Your grandmother would be so proud. What I never figured out was—why Teri Garr made enough potatoes to satisfy a famished fire department when they had three little kids who each probably consumed a couple of forkfuls. But then Spielberg would have had to make Dreyfuss raid his kids’ Playdough stash, and that would have been too hard? There’s a lot I don’t understand about movies. Like why Bryce Dallas Howard’s heels didn’t snap and break while doing all that running from dinosaurs—through the forest, over rocks, on asphalt—those were some impressive shoes. Or why babysitters open the closet or basement door, when they know darn well what’s behind it? I spent much of my adolescence in babysitting mode, and that is just plain insulting. I suppose there’s much I don’t understand about a lot of life’s mysteries. But I do understand the wonders of homemade, from scratch—food. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Author J.D. Allen tackles two difficult subjects in 19 Souls. One is male rape. The other is female serial killers.
From the first line, the plot grabs you. I won't spoil it, but there are several twists that surprise in this story. The male rape aspect is told well, from the male point of view. Still, today, in many quarters, the whole idea of a man being able to be raped is considered preposterous - making it that much more difficult for the victim to come forward or make a complaint without worries of being lampooned or ostracized. Allen's take on it feels believable. She manages to be in the man's mind and makes us understand. Apparently, getting deep into people's heads is Allen's specialty. Because the race through this fast-paced book also puts us into the female serial killer's mind. She does it so well, that I almost - almost - started rooting for the crazy killer. It's a fast, good read. Give it a try. (First written for and published on Janice Hardy's Fiction University Blog - Dec. 2017)
When you’re starting your writing career and finish your first full manuscript, what should you do next? Besides celebrating by opening that emergency bottle of bubbly you keep in the back of the refrigerator? What was that? You don’t keep a bottle of Champagne on hand? You absolutely should, because finishing the first draft of a novel is a big deal. So take an evening to celebrate, then get back to work. Should you write a synopsis, or two, or maybe even three, so you’ll have a single paragraph one, a one-pager, and perhaps a multiple pager? Do your homework and drive yourself further down the road to a nervous breakdown as you write, and seemingly forever rewrite, your query letter to send to literary agents? Well, yes. But not yet. The first draft is only the beginning. A thorough self-edit or two comes next, along with finding a few beta readers to give you feedback. More about choosing those later. What you absolutely must do, if you want to produce the best book you can write, is take a good, hard look at your ego. Because it’s about to get seriously banged up if you don’t prepare yourself. When we type The End, it feels like giving birth. And that baby, your book, is as precious and perfect as a baby. To you. To everyone else, not so much. (The book, not the baby, who I’m sure truly is/was perfect and precious.) This is a tough lesson to learn, and you are far better off if you learn it early. If you don’t, your pride in your accomplishment will blind you to any faults in the manuscript. Beta readers and a critique group, if you choose them wisely, will tell you things you don’t want to hear. You’ll go on defense, get mad, and argue with them. You’ll refuse to accept advice from seasoned writers who are trying to help you. Basically, after all that work, not getting your ego out of the way for the next steps is like shooting yourself in the foot. And, if you do, over time, get the ego under control and ask for help once more, those same people who you sniped at the last time are not going to want anything to do with it—and quite possibly you—again. You’ll have marked yourself as difficult. Find a few beta readers. They cannot be a relative, in-law, or a good friend. Because they love you, and no matter how many times you stress that they should be absolutely honest with you—they will not do it. If your book is terrible, they will lie and say it was great, while swearing they are telling you the truth. This is not a bad thing. The people who love us want to protect our feelings. It’s kind of their job. So—how to find readers who will be honest? Ask your friends who belong to book clubs for the names of members you don’t know who regularly go for your type of book. Or call that friend who reads a lot, they’re bound to know others who do also. Don’t ask someone who reads/loves thrillers, horror, or fantasy, and zero cozies at all to read your cozy mystery. When you find these people who do not know you, call them and ask if they’ll read a PDF copy. Then ask if they think they can be brutally truthful. Explain to them that you’re most interested in getting any weak spots corrected before you send it out to agents, and they’d be doing you a wonderful favor. That the only way to be sure you’re sending out your best efforts depends on them. That way, you’ll have given them a mission. They’ll want to be helpful and will make notes about pages or sections that weren’t clear or anything else that bothers them. This is where a lot of newbies panic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “But how do I know they won’t steal my book and try to publish it as theirs?” There are a few reasons that won’t, and doesn’t, happen, but perhaps the best way to allay any such fear is—these days, when you create a document on Word or Libre, or whatever you’re using, it’s immediately time/date stamped as being created by you—using your name. The software does it automatically. And every time you make a change, it notes that as well. You’ve got an iron-clad chain of custody for proof that it’s yours. So take that worry off the table. When they’ve finished the book, ask them questions. Lots of them. Take notes. And listen. Don’t interrupt their answers with a defense. Take your ego out of it. Ask them if the oh-so-clever plot twist you put in Chapter Twenty surprised them or did they see it coming? What part or parts of the book dragged for them? Did they find themselves skimming over pages? Which ones? Why? Do any of the characters seem shallow? Like they’re out of central casting? Which ones did they like best/worst and why? Was the ending good or predictable? Did the overall plot make sense? Did they get a solid image/understanding of the setting or time period? I could go on all day, but you get the idea. After many years of training, I finally have my mother able to give me honest feedback. I want hers because she reads everything. She’s voracious. If my plots or characters seem trite or done to death elsewhere, she’ll tell me. But I think my mother is the exception to the rule, and it did take years to get her there. I’m telling you all this because I wish someone had told me in such an unvarnished fashion. I didn’t get belligerent way back when, but I did put up defensive barriers. In doing that, I delayed my progress as a writer. In not knowing the advantage of putting ego aside, I found criticism and rejection so hurtful. Had I known to find avid readers to test-read my book, I would have saved so much time in getting to the polished version it finally became. Do yourself a huge favor. Send your ego on a long vacation. That’s what my older sister, my dear departed Stephanie, labeled the weird phenomenon of always—as the old knight in the Indiana Jones movie said—choosing poorly.
You walk into a bar with a few friends. There are enough vacant stools, all looking perfectly fine. You choose one. While the others in your party take their seats, you hang your purse on the hook under the counter, then boost yourself up on your stool. And it’s the one with a leg shorter than the other three. It’s the tippy barstool. Every bar has one, and you’ve picked it. Again. My family excels at this. Welcome to our world. A world where your brand new package of three pairs of socks has a sock missing. You have five socks, not six. The package hadn’t been opened—it was simply a freak from the factory. Or your seat on the plane is in front of the only kicking toddler on board. You get the idea. Nowhere does Tippy Barstool Syndrome kick in as hard or as often than at the grocery store. First you select a cart. So many to choose from, yet you take the one with the sticky wheel. The next has loud, squeaky wheels. A third has gum stuck to the underside of the handle. Around you, other shoppers are putting no thought at all into cart selection. They simply grab one, and off they go happily—on silent and gliding wheels. As you peruse the store, placing items in the cart, Tippy hovers like Eeyore’s dark cloud. The first bag of flour you lift has a rip on the bottom that you don’t notice until it leaves a trail of white powder and the floor feels slippery. You glance down to notice your new shoes are dusted white. The first jar of jam you select has its little safety bubble already popped. The yogurt container’s sealed top has a slit in it. The bag of M&Ms was opened via the bottom seam by somebody sneaking some out, and they spill everywhere when you pick it up. You’ve completed your list. Now you scout out the shortest or fastest line. You zip past all open lanes. For each line of customers, your brain is calculating, rapid-fire, what types of people are in that lane and how much they’ve got in their carts. A line may have fewer people with fewer items, but experienced shoppers know if more than one of those waiting are elderly, skip that queue. You don’t want to be smiling politely while grandpa can’t figure out the debit card or granny endlessly searches for her checkbook, then takes five excruciating minutes to write the check. Are there any harried moms with screaming toddlers? Does the cashier look new? Does the bagger pack slower than sludge? So many factors, and your brain calculates them brilliantly. The analysis from your logical quadrant reports in, and you get in a line. Two people soon stand behind you. And this is when TBS kicks in. The customer at the register realizes she bought a wrong thing. She panics, says “I’ll be right back,” dashes out of line, and disappears down an aisle. The rest of you make small talk about the drivel on the gossip magazines’ covers in the checkout rack. Which, I have to say, are so unfair. Either the celebrities are too skinny or they’re too fat. Whatever the starlet weighs, it’s never good enough for the tabloids. Alien babies, however, are never criticized on those covers. I’m digressing. After a few minutes of us showing incredible patience and restraint in resisting eye rolls and sighs, the lady scoots back, apologizing. Those who can’t fake a nice reply merely nod. She pays and vamooses. The next person does everything right, but the register runs out of receipt paper. It continues like that as the lanes on either side flow effortlessly along. I often tell people I meet in line to memorize my face. If they ever see me in line again, they’d be smart to get in a different one. Some folks just hate to say goodbye. We all understand. We’ve been there. Separation brings tears when your baby gets on the school bus for first time. When your best friend moves across the country.
When children go to college - Wait. No. Most of us throw a secret party when that happens. We love our teenagers, but by the time eighteen rolls around, everybody needs a break. I remember thinking, don’t let the door hit you in the patookie on the way out. He knew everything, and I knew nothing. Boy, did he need to get out in the world. Of course, the final goodbye is the hardest. And there are some who simply can’t handle the departure. Will never handle it. I like to think that those who have passed on to their soul’s next phase are at peace, maybe at long last. We who are left behind are the ones who endure the pain of loss. But for a strange demented few, they do pretty bizarre things - as I’ll explain in a bit. It’s October. Halloween month. Creepy stuff displays are in the stores. Some of it way too icky for me. Especially the pretend corpses shown in various states of decay. I know lots of people who love that sort of thing as Halloween décor, but I am not one of them. How in the world did the idea of displaying fake ‘dug up’ corpses ever become a thing? Well . . . it stems from real life episodes over the centuries where people did exactly that. Dug up their deceased loved ones and moved them back into the house. Yes, really. There are references all through our history of folks doing it. Not a lot, thank God, but enough to make it not unheard of. Now, why the people way-back-when did it isn’t really explained, but the knowledge that they did do it was passed on. And on. And on. And now it’s a decorating thing in the age of glorified zombies. Granted, a person would have to be missing more than one belt loop to even imagine committing such a gross act for real. But the human population has always had its percentage of loopers, hasn’t it? A Detroit man moved his father’s body into a basement freezer because he was convinced Dad would come back to life. Ickier was a woman named Jean. Jean and her twin sister, June, were very close. When June passed away from cancer in 2009, Jean had her dug up after a few days and placed in a spare bedroom. But they weren’t alone. Jean had also been living with her husband’s corpse propped up on a couch for ten years. Ultra-ickier still, a man in Vietnam slept in his wife’s grave for years, until his kids made him stop. So he moved her into his bed, where he slept with her for another five years. It’s not an ‘only lately’ kind of quirk. Nor is it limited to western nut jobs. There’s an island in Indonesia where the locals exhume their ancestors’ mummified remains every year. It’s like a holiday. They clean out their graves, put new clothes on them, take them for a pleasant walk about the village, then place them back underground. The kicker is, from the pictures I saw, the poor dead people are at the mercy of their descendants’ fashion sense. This one poor old man got paraded around in a suit with a Hawaiian-print shirt and a red, green & white plaid tie. Lesson? Throw out your ugly clothes you kept meaning to give away before you kick that final bucket. Yes, some folks just can’t bear to say goodbye. And if your skin isn’t crawling at the thought of these stories, it’s time to check your belt loops. |
Author noteI believe the only way to get through the slings and arrows life throws at all of us is to find the humor. Archive
March 2019
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