Just two days after she broke up with me, my ex-girlfriend was spotted holding hands with the poetry professor. (image via wikimedia)
I’m not sure if the guy was really a professor. He wrote poetry and taught poetry in a class I took my sophomore year at the State University 30 years ago, and even though I was a lousy poet, he encouraged my effort and even highlighted to the class a humorous piece that I wrote. As a teacher of poetry, he was pretty good. I give him credit for that.
But a couple years after I took his class (I got an A), he stole my ex-girlfriend.
It was my senior year, long after the incident at the University Library (which I’ll finally get around to explaining). People still remembered what had happened, but they rarely associated me with it anymore.
My ex-girlfriend was a junior, and we had been dating since the summer. She was extroverted but liked to read, so we could talk about a bunch of stuff. When I told her that I didn’t like Interview with the Vampire and I couldn’t articulate a good reason (I might have said “It just sucks.”), she broke up with me. There were some other issues too. I had to work a lot, I had already set up a job interview several states away, and it was autumn so I wanted to watch a lot of football and she thought that was beneath her/us. Interview with the Vampire was the final straw.
Just a couple days later, I heard that she had been seen several times on campus holding hands in public with the poetry professor. I was floored. I had expected us to get back together after she’d had a few days to be mad at me. That type of reconciliation had already happened once during our times together. I was pretty sure it was going to happen again. Then the poetry professor had to go and ruin it.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the poetry professor had been a nice-looking smooth guy. Instead, he was old, bald with a scraggly beard, and wore ratty jeans, and all my friends gave me grief about how I’d been replaced by a guy who looked like Shel Silverstein.
A couple weeks after I heard about the poet and my ex-girlfriend, I noticed him standing next to me while we were both taking care of business in a public men’s bathroom on campus. Since men aren’t supposed to make eye contact in that situation, I wasn’t sure it was him until I stepped back. At that point, you’re always supposed to look upward (without making eye contact) anyway, and that’s when I knew.
We both washed our hands at different sinks at the same time too. Yeah, the guy had been my poetry instructor a couple years earlier, but I wasn’t sure he recognized me or if he knew I was his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. He avoided eye contact, so he probably knew I was somebody and wasn’t sure what to say.
I wanted to ask him how he had managed to get involved with my ex-girlfriend so quickly after we had broken up. Two days was fast. They had to have had something going on before she broke up with me. There was no way I could ask that, though, and I probably was better off not knowing.
On the other hand, I couldn’t walk out of there without saying something. If he knew who I was (and I sensed that he did), then he’d tell my ex-girlfriend that we’d met face-to-face in a bathroom and I hadn’t said anything to him. I couldn’t let that happen.
“I read your book,” I said.
I could tell that startled him. At the end of his course, he had given all of his students a copy of his poetry collection. He didn’t do it to brag. He said he didn’t want any of his students to feel compelled to read it. Since it wasn’t forced on me, I had read it when there wasn’t any football on. It was a thin paperback, and I hadn’t understood all his poetry (I don’t think in metaphors), but a lot of it was comparing/contrasting where he was from to our campus, which was almost a completely different side of American culture.
“What did you think?” he asked after a little hesitation.
I don’t remember the exact words. I thought about telling him that his poetry sucked, but I didn’t. Instead, I said that his poetry wasn’t what I expected. I told him that most people on campus who move here from other parts of the country brag about where they came from. He could describe the shortcomings of his home and our campus without being mean or condescending. He had never made fun of people in class, but he was good at gently mockery in his poetry.
He didn’t say anything, so I inwardly panicked. Did I misinterpret his book? Was it even the right book? He was going to tell my ex-girlfriend that I was too stupid to read his poetry.
“Did I get it wrong?” I asked. “It was two years ago. Maybe I was thinking of a different book.” Somehow I had made an awkward situation even more uncomfortable. I have that talent.
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’m always surprised when students read my book.”
“I know I’m not the only one who’s read it,” I said, which was true, and I wasn’t even thinking about my ex-girlfriend. I had discussed the book with another student a long time ago, and that might have been the only reason I remembered the poetry enough to mention it.
As we left the bathroom, I told the poetry professor that I was getting a job in another state after the semester and we might not run into each other again. He wished me good luck, and we shook hands, and that was it. Nothing dramatic.
Months later, I went through a spiteful phase where I kicked myself for not telling the poetry professor that his book sucked when I’d had the chance. That would have been perfect retribution; at least that’s what I thought at the time.
Now, I’m glad that I didn’t do that. You should never tell a poet that his or her poetry sucks. It’s too emotionally damaging to the poet. As retribution, it’s too harsh, even for the poet who stole your ex-girlfriend.
When I read from a writer’s point of view, the strangest things can stand out.
The Fix by David Baldacci starts off with a fast-paced scene that juggles the actions of three seemingly random characters. You know something bad is going to happen to one or more of them because it’s a thriller and good things rarely happen to characters at the beginning of a thriller. The only character whose thoughts are revealed is Amos Decker, and his name was listed in the book’s blurb, so I figured he would survive the upcoming horrific event, whatever it was.
All three random characters seem to be going to work in Washington DC when a guy named Derbey (we don’t know much about him) shoots a woman named Berkshire (we don’t know much about her either) in the back of the head in public. Here is how the murder is described as Decker watches. It’s kind of graphic, but not really:
Berkshire jerked forward as the round slammed into the back of her head at an upward angle. It blew out her medulla, pierced her brainpan, banged like a pinball off her skull, and exited through her nose, leaving a wound three times the size of the entry due to the bullet’s built-up wall of kinetic energy. She fell forward onto the pavement, her face mostly obliterated, the concrete tatted with her blood.
To me, this short paragraph stood out from the rest of the chapter for a couple reasons. First of all, some of the details seem unnecessary to an action scene. The author uses specific anatomical terms such as medulla and brainpan. I think I used to know what a medulla was, but I’ve forgotten, and a brainpan has something to do with the brain.
I’m not against specific (or clinical) details in a thriller. I’m not even against this paragraph. To me, this was just an odd description of a murder when the rest of the scene was moving at a fast pace. The next scene a couple pages later was the autopsy, and all the details about bullet entry and exit could have been put in dialogue as the body was being discussed.
Also, the second sentence in the excerpt (the one describing the bullet’s path) has four verbs in it and then a participial phrase. I know it was a participial phrase because I looked it up. I don’t usually gripe about participial phrases in sentences. My point is that a sentence with one subject followed by four verbs and a participial phrase is most likely going to make a sentence feel awkward. Maybe I’m wrong because David Baldacci keeps getting books published, and I have a blog that a few people read.
Anyway, I thought that the four-verb plus participial phrase sentence was unnecessary and maybe confusing, so I rewrote the action to get rid of the clinical details and maybe speed up the action.
Before Decker could respond, Derbey shot Berkshire in the back of the head and ran. Berkshire fell to the pavement, the concrete tatted with her blood.
My version isn’t perfect. I’m just saying that Decker was watching the action unfold, and it would have happened quickly, so his point-of-view would not have anything to do with the medulla or brainpans or pinballs.
Also, the bullet banging “like a pinball off her skull” might not be the best phrase to use. The bullet could have ricocheted a little, but I see a pinball as bouncing off wall to wall, and I’m not sure that’s the visual the author intended. Does the bullet bang off the skull more than once? Maybe I’m being too literal with a simile.
I don’t mean this as criticism (though it might sound critical). As an aspiring writer, sometimes I read a book NOT to see what happens, but to see how an author writes what happens. Unfortunately, that means I can get stuck on whether a bullet bangs “like a pinball” or words like medulla and brainpan should be used in a different scene.
It’s usually easier just to read a book as a reader.
*****
What do you think? Do you ever read books from a writer’s point of view? If so, what types of things do you notice?
Beginning a book is easy, but…
With so many books available today, it’s tough to choose which ones to read and what to finish. A discriminating reader doesn’t want to waste time with the wrong book, and it doesn’t take much to set off a warning that sends us to other books.
While sampling the bestselling mystery novel Golden Prey by John Sandford, I got thrown off by a minor detail in the opening scene:
The flagstones underfoot were cool but dry; not much rain this year. The moon was up high and bright over the garden wall, and he could hear, faintly, from well off in the distance, the stuttering midnight sound of Rihanna singing “Work.” He opened the shed door, turned on the light, sat down in the office chair, fired up the joint, and looked at the guitar he was building.
The paragraph is fairly bland with adjectives like cool, dry, high, and bright, which is typical for a thriller. But then the author mentions Rihanna and her song “Work.” I’m over 50 years old, and the only reason I know anything about Rihanna and “Work” is because I have two daughters, one of which plays a bunch of pop music, so I know a bunch of today’s references that I probably shouldn’t know.
If I didn’t have kids, I might not have known who Rihanna is and I would have been confused. Who is this Rihanna and why is she singing faintly “from well off in the distance”? And why isn’t this singing character ever mentioned again in the chapter?
Plus, I think this song is kind of annoying, and once the author mentioned it, the tune got stuck in my head, which ticked me off and kept me from wanting to read further. I didn’t want to blame the book, though. It wasn’t Garvin Poole’s fault that somebody else was listening to Rihanna. Since Garvin Poole is the character in the first scene, there’s a strong possibility that he’s about to get killed off. I don’t want to criticize a guy just before he gets killed off in the murder mystery.
Either that, or Garvin Poole is the villain. If he’s the villain, then I have no sympathy if he has to tolerate annoying music in the background.
Just so you know, it’s not just Rihanna. Almost every song from today is annoying. Before I go into an old fart rant about how today’s music is horrible, I’ll remember that most stuff played on the radio in the 1970s was pretty bad too. The cool classic rock that we remember fondly often wasn’t played on the top 40 stations, so kids back then listened to pop schlock too. And it’s almost all been forgotten.
I’m pretty sure that Rihanna’s music will be forgotten in 30 years. That’s not meant as an insult. Most pop culture disappears quickly. And the only reason I mention it is because if people decide to read Golden Prey 30 years from now, they might be confused about who Rihanna is and why she’s singing “from well off in the distance.” That’s the danger of putting a pop culture reference in a novel.
People might actually read Golden Prey in 30 years. I remember reading a couple Prey novels in the early 1990s. That was almost 30 years ago. I had no idea at the time it was going to be such a long series. Maybe Sandford will still be writing mysteries 30 years from now too.
I’m not a published author and I don’t know much about publishing, but if I’d be careful about which pop culture references I put in my books. I wouldn’t want to make my book feel outdated after just a few years. Maybe instead of saying Rihanna, the author could have mentioned the character hearing a pop song faintly “from well off in the distance.”
Yeah, that’s what I’d do. But I’m not a published author.
*****
What do you think? Does it throw you off as a reader to see a pop culture reference in a novel? As a writer, would you put a current pop culture reference in your stories?
A coworker listens to audio books without headphones, and it usually doesn’t cause problems. She keeps the volume down, and she turns it off during conversations and meetings, so nobody cares. At least, I’ve never heard anybody else mention it in a negative way.
One day this week I stood next to her in the elevator and realized an explicit sex scene was quietly being described in her audio book. It wasn’t just a sex scene. It was a poorly written sex scene. At least I thought it was, but maybe it was a good sex scene and I was reacting in an immature way. I wanted to laugh, but I knew that she would ask what I was laughing about, and I didn’t want to admit that I was eavesdropping on a sex scene from an audio book.
With sexual harassment charges getting thrown around, I didn’t want anything that could be misinterpreted. True, she was the one listening to a sex scene, but if I made her uncomfortable by mentioning it, the fault could be seen as mine, so I kept my mouth shut.
Later that day, when I saw her, I asked, “What book are you listening to?”
“The Murder House,” she said cheerfully. “You know who James Patterson is?”
“Zoo was really good,” I said in my monotone voice. And that was enough for her.
Once I had the title, I looked up The Murder House and found a sex scene in the first chapter, and now I’m wondering if I was wrong for almost laughing inappropriately.
Just so you know, everything in parenthesis is my thoughts as I read the scene.
WARNING: OFFENSIVE MATERIAL ALERT!!!!
SECOND WARNING!!! THIS MIGHT BE PRETTY BAD!!!
THIRD WARNING!!!! I’VE WARNED YOU (which is more than James Patterson and his coauthor did)!!!
*****
The electricity between them is palpable (cliché). His big (lazy adjective) rough hands (well, if he has big hands…) trace the outline of her dress, cup her impressive (lazy adjective) breasts, run through her silky (lazy adjective) hair, as she lets out gentle moans (in this scene, only the woman moans) and works the zipper on his blue (do we care?) jeans.
It continues a few sentences later.
Noah carries Paige into the family room (with his zipper undone?). He lays her down on the rug (there’s no comfortable furniture?) and rips her dress open (very inconsiderate of him), buttons flying (What is she going to wear when she leaves?), and brings his mouth to her breasts (I’ve heard they were impressive), then slides down to… (and I’ll stop here).
*****
I admit, it’s tough to write an adult scene. I’ve tried it once, and I’m not sure I’ll do it again. To me, the worst part of this scene, the breaking point, the part where I almost laughed inappropriately, was the “button’s flying” line.
I always thought ripping buttons off a woman’s dress was poor etiquette. Every woman I’ve known (in that way) would have ended the romantic encounter at the moment I ripped the buttons off and made them fly. At least, I think they would have ended the encounter. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe women like their clothing being destroyed, and I’ve been too stupid to know that.
I think I’m reasonably intelligent and empathetic, but I have gaps in my knowledge. Have I missed this? Have I gone through half a century without realizing that women like to see their buttons fly? If I’ve missed this, why did I have to learn this from a James Patterson novel?
I’ll be really depressed if I’m wrong about this. I would ask my coworker, but I’d probably get sued for sexual harassment.
*****
What do you think? Is it appropriate to listen to a sex scene in public? And was I wrong about the buttons flying?
I originally read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood decades ago because of a college girlfriend who recommended it. If I remember correctly, she wasn’t exactly my girlfriend until after I finished reading The Handmaid’s Tale. Maybe the book was a litmus test for me, but if it was, I passed, at least for a few weeks.
I didn’t really enjoy The Handmaid’s Tale back then because I never like books that I’m forced to read. Plus, I remember a slow pace and a bunch of sentences that I had to read more than once. Now that The Handmaid’s Tale is making a comeback (it’s a television series now), I thought I’d go back and see if my original perception of the novel was right.
The Handmaid’s Tale starts off simple enough, with a Chapter I titled “Night.” And then the first few sentences:
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
Good opening sentence. I get it so far, and I had to read it only one time.
The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone.
Here’s where I had to start thinking while I was reading. I wondered if Atwood thought her readers wouldn’t understand that the stripes and circles were for the basketball court and that’s why she mentioned “the games that were formerly played there” and basketball nets when she could have just said the hoops had no nets. I watched a lot of basketball in college when I originally read this.
A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in miniskirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair.
I had to read this sentence more than once. It started off okay, and then there were a bunch of commas and girls in skirts and miniskirts and pants and earrings. I’ll give myself credit, though; I figured it out the second time I read it.
Dances would have been held here; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue-paper flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light.
I had to look up the word palimpsest. And I had to read this sentence more than once. That’s two sentences in a row. If I have to read that next sentence more than once, I’m going to have to rethink rereading this book.
There was old sex in the room…
… yeah, and I’m going to stop right there. I have to be in the right mood to read prose like this, and I’m not in it right now.
30 years ago when I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, I had incentive to finish it.
Besides The Handmaid’s Tale, I read The Mists of Avalon and later on Interview with the Vampire for that girlfriend. When I told her that I didn’t care for Interview with the Vampire, she broke up with me and shacked up with a professor a couple days later. I bet he told her he thought Interview with the Vampire was awesome.
I always thought being a professor was scam, and that incident just confirmed it. It still chaps my hide. He wasn’t even a young professor. He was an old guy who dressed in ratty jeans and looked like Shel Silverstein. I felt cheated. This girlfriend told me she distrusted the patriarchy, and then she got attached to an old dude authority figure.
I could have been a professor, but I chose not to. Maybe I couldn’t have been a poetry professor, but I could have been a professor of something.
*****
What do you think? Do you enjoy reading books where you have to read a bunch of sentences more than once? If you could be a professor, what would you be a professor of?
(image via wikimedia)
Bill O’Reilly has had a rough couple weeks. He just lost his show on Fox News. A bunch of women are accusing him of sexual harassment. Late night comics are making fun of him. Advertisers want nothing to do with him. In other words, it’s the perfect time to write another book!
The common joke is that he’s going to title his next book Killing O’Reilly. That’s too easy, but O’Reilly set himself up for it with book titles like Killing Jesus and Killing Kennedy.
Normally I stay out of celebrity/political stuff, and I don’t want to pile on O’Reilly when everybody else is creaming him, but Bill O’Reilly sells a lot of books. As long as people keep buying his books, some publisher will still be willing to put those books out. And I’m curious if these charges will affect his book sales at all.
After covering news and politics for so long, Bill O’Reilly should have known that sexual harassment is nothing to mess with. I take it so seriously that I make sure that I’m never alone with a woman at work. I keep doors open. I don’t make comments about appearances. I don’t have lunches or dinners with them. When I talk to women, I always look directly at their eyes and foreheads and that’s it. I’m an expert on women’s foreheads.
I’m not in a position of power (plus I’m not rich, famous, or attractive), so maybe I’m not the type of guy who gets accused, but there are a lot of rich, powerful, and famous people out there who never get accused of sexual harassment, so if it happens a lot to one guy, it makes me wonder. When it comes to the work environment, there are things you can do to make sure you don’t get accused of sexual harassment (besides paying women not to say anything).
I’ve probably just jinxed myself. Great.
My issue with Bill O’Reilly (besides the possible sexual harassment thing) as a celebrity author is that celebrity authors often don’t write their own books. To me, it’s a dishonest way to make money. True, it’s also a victimless way to make extra money. Nobody really loses from it. The celebrity makes money from the book. The unknown coauthor makes money that he or she otherwise wouldn’t have made. The publishers make money. And fans of the celebrity get pleasure from reading (or at least buying) the book. Nobody really cares if the celebrity really wrote the book. Even so, it seems dishonest to me.
Now that O’Reilly no longer has a show on Fox, he can take this opportunity to write a book all by himself. If he wrote his Killing O’Reilly book, he wouldn’t need a coauthor for research or anything like that (except for maybe a lawyer to strike out everything that’s incriminating).
I rarely watched O’Reillys show, but his meltdown video from his Inside Edition days is a family favorite. My daughters have never watched The O’Reilly Factor either, but they’ve seen his “We’ll do it live!!!” meltdown several times, and it never gets old. That’s how people under the age of 20 (or 30?) know who Bill O’Reilly is. And whenever somebody in my family gets frustrated with a task, we shout: “I’ll do it live!!!”
Bill O’Reilly’s first step to potential media recovery is the podcast, which makes sense because he has a built-in following and people want to hear his side of the story. But he might not want to talk too much about the sexual harassment thing, not if he wants to write his bestselling book about it. He could still use a podcast to talk politics and do interviews and it might look a lot like his old show.
The other good thing about a podcast is he has complete control over it, with no corporate execs looking over his shoulder or bungling crews forcing him into a meltdown. In other words, Bill O’Reilly can “do it live!!!!” whenever he wants. If we learned anything from O’Reilly’s Inside Edition meltdown, it’s that he likes to “do it live!!!”
Books that are turned into movies almost always cause literary rants.
A literary rant doesn’t have to be long. Even though ranting bloggers can get long-winded, sometimes we want to be brief, especially when there are three rants instead of one.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
A new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie (The Long Haul) trailer was released a couple weeks ago, and fans hate it. It reminds me of how last summer’s Ghostbusters trailer was vilified too, but this time the movie cast can’t accuse the critics of being misogynist.
Who would have thought that the Diary of a Wimpy Kid cast would become iconic?
The thing is, the first movies were okay, but they weren’t THAT good. It wasn’t memorable like the first Ghostbusters. I thought at the time a cheap animated version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid would be better than humans simply because kids aging out wouldn’t be an issue with a cartoon.
I almost feel sorry for the kid playing Rodrick in The Long Haul. The kid actor was probably ecstatic when he got the the role, and now everybody hates him. It’s one thing to hashtag hate an adult, but I feel bad for a kid (#NotMyRodrick) who’s on the receiving end of that.
If it’s any consolation, I remember that Deborah Norville received a lot of hate too, and she made a comeback, but that was before hashtag hate existed.
13 Reasons Why
13 Reasons Why seems to have replaced Stranger Things as the Netflix series that kids (such as my daughters and their teen friends) want to binge watch. It’s based on a YA book, and so I expected my daughters to want to read it after they saw the show.
That’s what I always did when I was their ages. I read James Bond books because of the movies. I read classics like The Three Musketeers and War of the Worlds because of the movies. I expected them to read 13 Reasons Why as well.
But my daughters didn’t seem interested in the book.
“You liked the Netflix series, right?” I said.
They nodded.
“Then why wouldn’t you read the books?” I asked incredulously.
“Because I already watched it on Netflix,” one daughter said.
It took me a while to understood the logic. The Netflix series covers a lot more ground than a movie could. A movie can only cover the basics of a novel, but a Netflix series can cover everything (and maybe even make up new stuff too). After watching so many episodes of 13 Reasons Why, I can see why viewers might be too drained to read the books. But I hope the author still sees a spike in sales in the book and can profit from it.
Game of Thrones
It’s April, and Season 7 of Game of Thrones is still about three months away. I’m not obsessed like other fans, but its late starting date still irks me. Football season (American football training camp) also starts in July, and I don’t want the two to conflict. There’s no football in April through July, and Game of Thrones got me through a lot of boring weekends over the last few years.
Now I’m going to have to juggle Game of Thrones and football training camp. And you can’t save watching Game of Thrones until later because everybody who watches it wants to talk about it right away. I don’t blame them. Everybody talks about football games right away too.
Nobody complains about spoilers the day after football games when we talk about who won and who lost. It’s kind of like that too with binge-watching shows. If you can’t watch an episode when it’s on, that’s your responsibility and the rest of the world doesn’t have to put themselves on mute for you.
That means for a few weeks, I’ll have to juggle football and Game of Thrones. It’s bad enough that George RR Martin is late with The Winds of Winter. Now some of that is rubbing off on HBO too. At least football season usually starts on time.
*****
What do you think? Which books turned into movies or TV shows would you rant about?
Be careful when you recite a movie quote in public.
Using movie quotes in conversation can be a great ice breaker, but sometimes the quotes can put people into awkward situations. Saying “Use the force, Luke”(Star Wars) is safe because even people who have never seen a Star Wars movie know what you’re talking about. 30 years ago, everybody liked to say “Go ahead, make my day” (Sudden Impact) or “Welcome to the party, pal” (Die Hard).
But last week, a co-worker got in trouble for using a movie quote at the wrong time. First of all, this guy likes to insert quotes into a lot of conversations, and it gets annoying sometimes. Maybe I’m being harsh, but I don’t like getting upstaged by a guy who quotes a line from a movie when I work really hard to come up with (my few) original thoughts.
Anyway, this guy has a reputation for being late to meetings, and he showed up about 20 minutes late to this particular meeting and walked in with a cheese-eating grin. Looking back, a little facial humility might have helped him.
The boss said, “Have a seat. We thought you were going to miss this today.”
The coworker said, “Well, I wouldn’t have really MISSED it, Bob.”
This was a loose paraphrase of a quote from Office Space, and if there’s a movie to quote from, it would be Office Space. But this was the wrong time and the wrong place and the wrong boss. The boss’s name isn’t even Bob.
I don’t think our boss has ever seen Office Space. “You don’t have to be here,” he said harshly.
The co-worker’s grin disappeared. “No, I didn’t mean it like…”
“If you don’t want to grace us with your presence…”
“It’s okay, I…
“If all you have to contribute is snide comments…”
“But… I…”
The coworker didn’t have any movie quotes in his repertoire to bail him out, and he got kicked out of the meeting. We haven’t seen him since.
The uncomfortable silence lingered in the conference room for several minutes after the coworker left, and it was torture because I wanted to laugh. I really did, but I couldn’t show any signs of it, or I could have been called out too. I felt guilty for finding humor in my coworker’s misfortune. Plus, I’m too old to laugh at inappropriate situations.
I kind of understood what happened to my coworker though because something similar happened to me a few years ago during a boring meeting. It had gone on for too long, and it was the end of the day, and we were tired. After a couple hours of pointless idea exchanging (I’ve forgotten what the topic was), one co-worker said, “That’s it. We’re done.”
There was a silence because our boss (this was a different boss, a young Ivy League female) usually decided when we were done, not the co-worker.
“Did you say ‘done’?” I said in a mock animated voice.
My co-workers were surprised. I hardly ever talked (especially back then), and when I did, I had a monotone voice (I still do). I’m actually pretty good at impersonations, though, so my impression of an emotional guy must have been convincing.
“Nothing is done until we decide it is!” I continued in a fake outraged manner. “Was it done when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!”
One co-worker (who was old enough to understand the reference) laughed.
Then my young boss said, “The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Jimmy. You should know that.”
And we brainstormed in drudgery for another hour.
I have to admit, that was a bad time for a brain glitch. I usually don’t quote movie lines in conversations, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. The meeting was probably about to be over due to exhaustion, and I inadvertently gave my boss a new momentum. Plus, she thought I was stupid because she believed I thought the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
Maybe my boss’s generation was to blame because everybody should recognize the “Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” line. When the movie Animal House came out, I was too young to see it because it was rated R (pre-cable and pre-internet days), but the line was legendary. Everybody knew it. But not anymore. If young bosses from Ivy League schools don’t understand the context of “the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor,” then that generation is lost.
I hope my coworker learned a lesson from this experience. If you’re late for a meeting, don’t grin. Even more importantly, don’t quote from a movie, unless you’re 100% certain everybody will understand the context.
*****
What do you think? What movie quote could get you into an awkward situation?
The brain is a magnificent organ that encourages lots of bad ideas. (image via wikimedia)
When I was a teenager decades ago, I saw a lot of smart adults do stupid things. For example, my boss at a fast food place would leave the restaurant for hours at a time. That was a bad idea because the teens running the place when she was gone stole a bunch of money from the cash registers (I never did, but I suspected it was happening).
My high school teachers were usually smart, but sometimes they did stupid things too. One of them would often leave the classroom to make copies and would always act shocked that her room was destroyed when she returned. Another teacher would invite students to her apartment after school (she sincerely was helping students though), and that was stupid because it gave her a bad reputation even though I don’t think she ever did anything inappropriate (except invite students to her apartment in the first place).
Another teacher always showed his son tests ahead of time, and that was dumb because the kid sold the answers to desperate students. The son didn’t even charge much. Looking back, all of that stuff was dumb, and it doesn’t look any better now.
But there was one high school English teacher who did something that I thought was really stupid, and now I’ve changed my mind.
His name was Mr. Randall, and he was okay, but every week he’d give us a pop quiz over a story in the our literature book. That might sound reasonable, but he never told us ahead of time what the story being tested was. It wasn’t a pre-reading test or a pre-test that didn’t count. The pop quiz actually was a grade that he kept and counted.
“It isn’t fair,” a brave student complained to him early in the school year. “You never assigned that story to us.”
“Anybody can pass a quiz if he or she has read the material,” Mr. Randall said. “It takes true talent to excel when you don’t know ahead of time what is being tested.”
I thought this was a stupid idea, especially since it was hurting my English grade. I was used to getting great grades in English during previous years, and it had always been easy. Now I was struggling. I couldn’t believe Mr. Randall was counting the grades. I told my mom and dad, expecting them to take my side. I thought maybe my parents would call the school and complain to them about Mr. Randall. Instead, my dad laughed.
“You’d better read everything in that literature book then,” he said.
I failed a couple more quizzes about stories from the literature book, and the grades always counted. When my first term grade was a B+ (the pop quizzes weren’t the only grades, and I got 100s on everything else), I knew I had to change strategies. One weekend, I skimmed over all the stories in our literature textbook. It took a while, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
My teacher “surprised” us with a pop quiz that week (I think it was “The Tell-Tale Heart.”), and I scored a 100. If you knew a little bit about the stories, the quiz questions weren’t that bad. After that, I was a straight A student in English. At the end of the year, I was one of only a few students with an A for the year, and other students (who were probably much smarter than I was) were angry that they got a B+. I just imitated my dad and said “You should have read the literature book.”
Maybe it was a poor teaching technique, but this pop quiz idea doesn’t seem so bad now. Maybe I’m biased because I had an A and a bunch of future Ivy League students were pissed off at the B+ that each of them had earned. Maybe this just proves that you can rationalize any bad idea if you try hard enough. I see a lot of people rationalizing a lot of really bad ideas.
This experience prepared me to be flexible in my professional life. For example, several of my bosses have recently adopted the meeting policy of “Five minutes early is on time, and on time is five minutes late.” At first, this policy seemed like a jerk move, especially when it was delivered in a smarmy tone of voice, but I know what these bosses mean. When you’ve sat through years’ worth of meetings like I have, you know how late people can slow everybody else down. Even if they’re on time, people need five minutes once they get to a meeting to prepare themselves.
While everybody else complained about the new policy, I just got to the meetings seven minutes early. When five minutes early is on time, seven minutes early is still early.
Maybe Mr. Randall didn’t mean to prepare me to be mentally flexible. Maybe he liked to torment students by giving pop quizzes over stuff that hadn’t been assigned yet. Being surrounded by kids all day can warp a person’s mind, I guess. Either way, when I look back, this idea doesn’t seem as bad as it did when I was in high school.
That’s easy to say now. I don’t have to take pop quizzes anymore.
*****
What do you think? What ideas that seemed stupid when you were a kid seem to make more sense now?
“Suck” is a crude word, but it’s appropriate sometimes. (image via Wikimedia)
Writing can be a frustrating experience. One imperfect word can mess up an entire sentence. Readers can interpret something you wrote literally when you thought your sarcasm was obvious (or vice-versa). Writers block seems to hit at the worst moments. As maddening as writing can be, it’s much easier today than it has ever been. Here are a few reasons why.
- Writing used to be physically difficult.
In the past, authors had to hold a pencil or a pen and physically write out each word on a sheet of paper. Even worse, back in the really old days, writers had to dip quills into ink, and then they’d get beaten by monks if they made a mistake.
Using a typewriter could be even more frustrating than holding a pen/quill. Before computers and word processing, if you weren’t a good typist, you spent more time making corrections than actually writing. The most frustrating weekend I ever had was during my senior year in high school when I had to type out my own term paper for English class. An entire Saturday was spent making corrections with white-out or retyping pages altogether. My mom, who typed 70 words a minute, said it taught me a valuable lesson, to always have a few spare bucks lying around to pay somebody to type my essays in college.
Writing with a computer/tablet is much easier than using a typewriter, pencil, or quill, and we don’t get beaten by monks when we make mistakes.
- Writers used to get ignored.
Without the internet, it was really tough for a writer to get readers. 20 years ago, if I wanted an audience, I had to join a writer’s group, and even then, I had to wait until the next meeting (which could have been a week, two weeks, or even a month away, depending on the group) before I received any feedback for my writing.
When I was sending manuscripts out to literary agents and publishing companies back then, I’d rarely get meaningful feedback. I usually received form rejection letters, and I wondered if anything I wrote actually got read. The only feedback I could get was from family or friends who told me I was great. I can’t blame them. If they offered any valid criticism, I’d fume. Looking back, I was probably too sensitive.
Things have changed. Today, writers can get instant feedback. With blogs, Twitters, Instagrams, ebooks, and much more, writers have a bunch of choices of how they want to write. As long as writers are patient, we can eventually get an audience.
With a blog, I get much more feedback more quickly than I used to. Even the negative feedback is positive. When I received my first “You suck!” comment a few years ago, I knew I was finally doing something right. I’d rather get a “You suck!” comment than a form rejection letter. Maybe literary agents and publishing companies should just send out “You suck!” notes. It might make everybody involved in the process feel better.
- Self-publishing used to be almost impossible.
Before the internet, if writers wanted to self-publish, we had to deal with shady companies that sent us cheap looking books that we had to sell in parking lots. Even if you sold your self-published book at a book store, you lost your credibility when you badgered customers in the parking lot and pulled the copies from the trunk of your car. When you reach for something in the trunk of your car, nobody knows what you’re reaching for.
It was frustrating to writers. Even if we thought we had something publishable, too much was out of the writer’s control. Unless we had connections or were willing to send money to a shady outfit to print our books for us, we were most likely never going to be published.
Now, instead of dealing with small unknown shady self-publishing companies, we can use Amazon. At least Amazon is not small or unknown. I published my own ebook on Amazon, and I didn’t have to deal with anybody else. I didn’t have to spend any money either. I mean, I know it shows that I didn’t spend any money, but that’s okay. If I had spent money without good results, my wife might have gotten ticked off at me. At least now I’m having fun. And my wife isn’t mad at me. That means a lot to me.
As long as my writing doesn’t cause my wife to get mad at me, then writing does not suck.
Dysfunctional Literacy 