Jacke Wilson's Blog, page 78

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #18 – The Monopoly Game Piece

When I was young, my class took a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. On the way back from Chicago we stopped at a McDonald’s, and along with the meal everyone received a Monopoly game piece. It was a small square piece of cardboard with the monocle man – Uncle Pennybags – on the front and two perforated tabs running down each side. On the back were rules and the red text in the Monopoly font. And the magic words:

WIN $1,000,000

Everyone else tore theirs open. A couple of kids won – a small fries, an apple pie. I put mine in my pocket and got busy with other things. I had a meal to eat, friends to hang out with – I don’t know why I didn’t open mine. I just didn’t.

I was astonished by the reaction. On the bus, everyone went crazy with the rumor – I hadn’t opened mine yet! What was in there? What was I waiting for?

For some reason this made me decide not to open it. I didn’t want to be on display. I figured I’d open it later. So I refused.

By the time we returned to the school parking lot I was surrounded by other kids.

“When you gonna open it?”

“Yeah, when? Come on.”

“I might not,” I said. “I might never open it.”

“Come on. S’amillion dollars.”

They could not fathom my refusal. People got angry. They did not forget about it. I waited. Days went by, then a week, then another, until I began to realize that it meant more unopened than opened. It was a one in 80 million chance of winning the big prize – infinitesimal odds I could live with defying – and who cared about the smaller prizes? Not opening it was worth more than a small Coke.

I kept it in my wallet. I never brought it up. Once in a while a rumor would spread that I’d opened it, and I would produce the piece to verify that I hadn’t.

I became a freak: the kid who turned down a million dollars. The rumor spread to other schools. At parties I’d be pointed at – yeah, that’s the guy. The guy with the Monopoly thing. Never opened it. He’ll show it to us if we bug him about it.

The toughest kid in school grabbed me one day and shoved me against a locker.

“Dude. I admire your willpower.”

“Thank you.”

“No I don’t, you idiot. You’re so stupid. You could be a millionaire right now and not even know it.”

I saw fury in his eyes and felt lucky when he decided to leave me alone.

I got wind of a plot: a group of seniors planned to demand inspection, then attack me, hold me down, pull my shirt over my head (why this was necessary I didn’t know, but it was an essential step), grab the piece out of my hand, and rip it open, exposing its contents to the world, once and for all. I thwarted this by leaking some counterintelligence. Soon the news spread: the piece was secured in my father’s safety deposit box at the impregnable Farmers & Merchants Bank. It was a fiction: the thing remained in my wallet the entire time. Once in a while I would show it to someone, though I was careful about how and when, demanding a five-foot buffer between me and the lucky onlookers.

I was starting to believe in the power of this thing, not as a talisman but as a phenomenon. It had to mean something that it – and I – had generated so much consternation. I represented something. To some I was a testament to discipline, to conviction, to inner strength. To others I was a fool who needed to be saved. To many I was both. And to a few I became a symbol of something horrible, something wrong with the world, or humanity; I needed to be exposed as a fraud. Whatever I represented, the principle on which I stood, needed to be expunged.

I started receiving threats. Violence seemed real. Would I die for this?

I stopped showing the thing to people altogether. This forced them to accept my word for it that it still existed. For all they knew, I had opened it long ago. The only thing they had to go on was what I told them was the truth.

The school divided into two groups. Believers and doubters.

The contest ended, and I would no longer be able to redeem the prize. It didn’t matter. People were just as agitated – now it was the fact that I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. They could not believe I wouldn’t open it now – before, I guess, they thought I didn’t want my life to change. Now I didn’t possess the requisite amount of curiosity. Except for those who didn’t believe me: who thought I had opened it, learned I didn’t win, and then pretended otherwise. A small sect claimed I had won the million dollars but had not informed anyone for fear of exposing myself to attacks.

I didn’t view this as anything other than a kind of anthropological experiment. I was alone in a sea of insanity. I began to wonder if maybe I should lock the thing up as I had said. I didn’t know where this was headed or what I was supposed to do, but it felt like I should exercise some control, take some precautionary measures. Take my responsibility to this phenomenon seriously. It was getting beyond me.

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Our Chemistry teacher, Ted Knipschild, was a friendly guy, very funny, and although he was a minister on the weekends he was not above making the occasional mildly dirty joke. Not anything mean-spirited or crass, just a double entendre, a winking reference to sex – edgy for my high school, where the teachers tended toward the parochial and reserved. He was popular, even beloved, and he performed many weddings for recent graduates.

I was not totally on board. I liked his personality, but I found the God side of him to be a little pious. Even then I had trouble with religion and the demands it made on me. I could not get out of my mind the smugness with which religion fought its way out of logical blind alleys with non-answers like “mysterious ways” or “not our place to question Him.”

One day in class Mr. Knipschild finished early. He sat down on his desk, his favorite place to give us a little life lesson. He swung his legs and pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and told us all that he’d been thinking a lot about me, and about the Monopoly game piece that I’d kept in my wallet for the past few months. He walked the class through the story of what had happened and what he thought it meant. It was like a sermon, and it probably was – he had probably drafted it for his Sunday congregation and was using our class as a dry run. It would not have been the first time.

Sitting there, listening, I was not comfortable. I didn’t think it was appropriate. In fact I’d objected before when he’d injected religion into our class. I had pointed out logical flaws and later told him that there were Constitutional prohibitions against what he was doing. Now he told the class that I had taught them all a lesson about the power of faith, that I had shown them the power of mystery, and that this was true in a broader sense of life as well.

I was offended that he would use me in this way.

Suddenly I believed I had my mission: this was the moment it had all been building to. I knew what needed to be done. I would walk to the front of the room, face him, pull out my wallet – oh, this would be perfect! I could show everyone the piece, the great source of belief and the power of mystery and miracle, and rip off the edges. Then I would announce what was there: One Quarter Pounder with Cheese! Or one McChicken Sandwich! Or best of all: Try again next time!

It flashed into my mind that the worst-case scenario would be if the piece were a winner: what if it was a million dollars? And I had turned it down! I would look like a total fool.

This actually crossed my mind – I had never before thought that it actually might be a winner. But now, with complete humiliation on the line, I thought it was not only possible but likely: if I chose that moment to open it, the ticket would be a winner. I don’t know where this view came from but it seemed to me to be a virtual certainty.

But no! In the end I sat still, made no face, did not sigh or roll my eyes. I let him deliver his sermon – who cared? Whatever I was doing with this thing was bigger than that. It was not worth sacrificing it for him or for anyone else. I had turned into a believer in some sense. I believed in it, though I would have struggled to explain what it was.

I know what he would have said: this was belief, and once you know you can possess belief, even in the face of rationality, then you are on God’s turf. If you are not yet knocking at his door, you have anyway started on the path that will lead you there.

His words streamed past me like wind in a tunnel, but my expression did not change. I sat there with my principles, saying nothing, wishing I had a better sense of what I should do, and why.

Why did I matter? I wished I knew.

- Adapted from The Race by Jacke Wilson

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High school, high school, high school. Source of everything. What a cheery thought! Ah well, sometimes the truth is best delivered in a minor key.

Those of you interested in dipping another bucket into the high school well can check out the posts about former coaches and teachers (music, science, and eighth-grade English). You can see my stab at teaching my kids, or at least sitting by while they learn, in #14 – The Bass Guitar. 

And as always, you can find links to all the 100 Objects on the main page.

My thanks to my reviewers! Small Press Reviews calls The Race “an incredibly astute novella about ego and politics.” My Little Book Blog calls The Promotion an “easy and sophisticated read.” You can find my books at Amazon.com and elsewhere. Very reasonably priced. A perfect gift for anyone interested in the human side of a political scandal or in recruiting season at a biglaw firm. Let me know if you’d like a free copy—I have plenty available and love giving them away!

 

Camus on Love

What a great idea! The always excellent Maria Popova has teamed up with the talented Wendy McNaughton to produce a print based on the notebooks of Camus. Now you can have Albert and his thoughts on love gracing your wall:

 

Could this get any better? It can! 50% of the proceeds will be going toward A Room of Her Own, a foundation supporting women artists and writers. Awesome.

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #17 – The Shirts and Skins

In the stories so far I’ve talked a lot about death and fear and failure, and that makes sense because we spend our lives immersed in those qualities (or at least I have). But other aspects of life drive us just as hard: love, for example. And pride and desire and friendship.

I grew up admiring high school athletes. College was remote, professionals were on television only. But high school athletes were up close, personal, live, exciting. You could see them around town, wearing their letter jackets and driving cars and generally being the coolest people I had ever seen in my life. That’s who I wanted to be. It looked like fun; they were the kings of the town. And unlike most of my dreams, which I learned I needed to give up as unrealistic, it was achievable.

It’s easy enough to succeed when your goals are set low. At my school you could get pretty far just by showing up for practice every day and remaining academically eligible. So I turned into that high school athlete myself – football, basketball, baseball. I was not the best player on any of the teams, but I was decent. I held my own, I guess you could say. And in those years I saw the hero worship from the other side. The young eyes of a town looking to me and my teammates. We weren’t always heroic. But we were what they had. We were theirs.

During basketball season the varsity coach ran a youth basketball program on Saturday mornings. Every Saturday, some teammates and I would stop by to help out. We demonstrated drills, helped to keep the kids organized, and talked with the kids (and their parents) about things that had happened at the game the night before or the one coming up next Tuesday. After a few practices we held a draft and divided the kids into teams that we would coach.

My first pick was a second-grader named Poffenberger who could steal the ball off the dribble from any other kid in the league. My friends all wanted him; I picked him first. He would be a holy terror and everyone knew it. My team was looking good already.

My second pick was a first-grader named Amy. I had to take Poffenberger with the first pick – you don’t turn down a chance like that – but Amy was my favorite kid of them all. Not just because she was a girl – the only girl out of a hundred kids who showed up each week – although that was part of it. I admired her for taking on the boys and wanted her to do well. She was good, too: she had good hands and could catch any kind of pass, and she was one of the few kids who could reliably make layups. And she was the most fun to coach: she was so excited to be there, she was the first one in every line, the first one to hold the ball when I started talking, and the only one who never interrupted me.

Coaches of young kids will know how important this last one is. A gym full of bouncing basketballs and squeaking shoes is very loud. If you’re trying to shout over them, and the kids are shouting too, you have no chance at all to be heard. Most of the time I had to give up on the four or five kids who were wandering around and talking to each other and just focus on the six or seven who were actually listening. Amy was always in that group, her eyes wide, nodding as she took in everything I said.

One day in the middle of our season I was telling them something basic I don’t remember now—probably that if they picked the ball up with both hands they had to pass or shoot, or that they had to move their feet on defense instead of wrapping up the offensive player in their arms. And a kid blurted out his comment:

“You’re a zitso.”

This was from Dougie, the last kid I had chosen. Dougie was a hyperactive kid whom all the coaches dreaded, as did all the teachers and administrators and every other adult in town except his parents. Nobody could control that kid except his older brothers, who would tackle him and pound on him when necessary, but they didn’t play sports and weren’t around. It was just me.

And of course, this being high school, I had a bright red pimple on my cheek, which had just appeared and was going to be there for a while no matter what I did. A zitso? How many people had this opinion? My face felt hot.

I should have ignored the comment; I would know how to do that now. But high school’s a rough time, with a lot of self-consciousness running through you, along with whatever evil chemical changes cause your face to break out. So I couldn’t ignore the comment or put it into perspective: acne was a part of life and nothing to be embarrassed about, and anyway I was talking to a bunch of six-year-olds, so who cared? No. I could feel myself turning red. I was embarrassed. I hated this kid all the more for doing it to me.

“A what?” I said.

I said this assuming he’d be too scared to repeat it. The night before I’d played in front of a few hundred screaming fans. We had won in overtime, a thrilling game, and an indelible moment for every kid who wanted to be me, just as I had once sat in those stands and wanted to be the guys who preceded me on the court. Those guys were not beautiful either, but they were rugged, and athletic, and charismatic, and above all teenagers: when I was Dougie’s age, I’d never have dreamed of disrespecting them, my heroes, with such a comment.

And now here I was, getting myself out of bed early the morning after this triumph to come and coach these little kids for free. No, I doubted he’d repeat it: he needed me and my approval a lot more than I needed him. I had ninety-nine other kids to worship me or at least show me a little respect. He had one me.

“A what, Dougie? What did you just call me?”

“A zitso!” he said, laughing now. Laughing right in my face.

His defiance made me too angry to speak. With my anger mounting I set up the cones and started a drill. Amy lined up first, of course. Dougie was upset about not being first so he shoved her, because that was the kind of kid he was. She whirled around and got ready to shove him back, then thought better of it. Instead, she looked at me, her coach, her hero, to do something.

“Dougie,” I said sharply. “We don’t push here.”

“I can push her. She’s just a girl.”

Now I was incensed. The zitso comment was not something I could punish him for. But this? This crossed the line. His brothers would have had him on the ground by now.

“She is your teammate,” I said. “Now give me five pushups.”

Dougie shook his head. His mouth was open, as always; his fat tongue hanging out. Even when he wasn’t laughing or insulting people he still looked mean. “No way.”

“Five pushups right now,” I said. “Or you don’t play today.”

He shook his head for a few more seconds, arms crossed across his chest. I waited. Finally he got down on the floor, laid there for a second, put his palms in place, and started trying to do the pushups.

Pushups had occurred to me as the easiest form of mild punishment; our coaches would have us do 25, or 50, without thinking much of it. It was the first time I had ever made any of these kids do pushups, and to be honest I did not know what a struggle it would be for a six-year-old. After one I knew he’d have a hard time making it; after two his arms were shaking.

With any other kid I’d have pulled him up and done something different – made him run a few laps around the court or something. But part of me wanted to see this through. He needed more than a mild punishment. He needed something that would humble him, so he would learn to respect others. Amy couldn’t make him do pushups, but I could on her behalf.

I, the zitso.

It took an impossibly long time. By the time he stood up, his face was bright red. He was breathing hard and there were tears in his eyes.

Now I felt terrible. It was not my intention to make a little kid cry, not even him. How was I supposed to know that five pushups would be beyond his limits? I looked around, worried that I was going to get in trouble.

And although I told myself that this had nothing to do with the zitso comment, maybe it did. Sure, he’d been mean to Amy, but wasn’t there some part of me that enjoyed the revenge I was able to enact? Wasn’t a little embarrassment fair play? I was practically a kid myself.

But that was untrue and I knew it. I was their coach; I needed to be better than that.

Dougie ran to the back of the line and wouldn’t look at anyone. He was not upset because his arms were sore from doing the pushups. It was because he had had to lie on the floor, face down, and he had to do what I said, and he had to do it in front of everyone else, and he had to show them all how physically weak he was. Even Dougie, the kid who had once spit in the principal’s coffee and stirred it with his finger, was still young enough to be humiliated.

Luckily the game was starting. My teammate, coaching the opposing team, came over to see what was happening.

“Pushups for Dougie,” I said nonchalantly. “He insulted Amy. Had to have him drop down and give me five.”

“Good, that kid needs it. Should have had him do fifty.”

“Yep.”

I did not mention the personal insult to me, or my suspicion that fifty pushups would possibly have killed him.

My teammate ran off: two of his players were climbing the pushed-in bleachers as if it were a rock climbing wall, and he had to chase them down before they fell from the top and broke their skulls. When he returned his kids started taking off their shirts and hurling them into the bleachers.

This was how we did things in those days. The girls used pinneys or coordinated their colors beforehand, but we boys never did. One team just stripped to the waist and we played shirts against skins. If we’d had two girls in our program, and if they had been on different teams, I suppose we’d have dug up some pinneys. With only one girl, it didn’t matter. It was assumed we would be shirts, and if anyone forgot, it was quickly remedied.

“Oh right,” the other coach would say. “You’ve got Amy. We’ll go skins.”

One girl in the program: we were shirts. Always. It was easy. I didn’t think anything of it.

The buzzer went off, causing gasps and squeals of astonishment. This was the first time we’d be using the real scoreboard and the real clock, and it felt like a big deal even to me. To the first and second graders it was as if they had made it to the NBA. Or at least the high school varsity team, which from their perspective was almost the same thing.

Their excitement was adorable; I forgot all about the earlier incidents with Dougie. Instead, I took pride in being the hero coach again. In the huddle I gave them some instructions—make sure you know who you’re guarding, stay between them and the basket, pass the ball to your teammates—and we were all set.

Hands in the middle. A power cheer. Even Dougie participated. His tears were gone now; his face looked different than it ever had. Maybe he wanted to blend in. Maybe I had touched him with the discipline, and from now on he would just play basketball. It seemed unlikely, but who knows how these things happen? Everything I did had a disproportionately large impact on these kids, just as everything the high school kids did had had a disproportionately large impact on me, ten years before.

I could learn to like Dougie, if he calmed down. He was not such a bad kid. He had a lot of energy. But he was young, and there was time for that to be redirected. Maybe I could help make that happen.

The huddle broke and the kids ran to the court and our bench. I was following them when I noticed that Amy had lingered behind.

I smiled at her. “Amy, get out there!” I said. “You’re starting!”

She didn’t smile back. Her forehead was grooved with concern. “Can I ask you something, Coach?”

“Of course,” I said. The buzzer sounded again; I bent over slightly so I could hear her better.

“Are we shirts or skins?”

And I had thought something was wrong! I smiled at how many times I had to tell these first graders the same thing. Yes, we take a bus when we go to away games. Yes, the Gatorade cooler has Gatorade in it. Yes, I can grab the rim. No, I am not going to do it right now…

“We’re shirts!” I said. “Come on, let’s go. We need your layups. And tough defense!”

She did not run to the court the way I had expected. Now I became concerned. She was my most enthusiastic player, the one most likely to be excited that she was starting and to take the opening tip-off seriously. Why was she still frowning? She looked troubled. Anxious. Scared.

She nodded slowly, staring at the court. Nine players were chasing each other around the circle, half of them trying to step on each other’s feet. It was the mix she should be in.

“Amy, is something wrong?” I asked.

She didn’t respond. She couldn’t take her eyes off the court. Five skins. Four shirts. The referee waiting for her. What was she seeing?

Finally something clicked. “You know what, Amy?” I said. “We’re always going to be shirts.”

As soon as I said this she exhaled. Her shoulders relaxed and she looked up at me, her eyes big and bright.

“Oh good,” she said seriously. “I figured it was just a matter of time.”

And she skipped off to join her teammates, who had finally calmed down enough to begin the chaos that sort of resembled basketball. I straightened up and watched them, wondering at how much there was about first graders that I didn’t know. Like how many pushups they could do. Or what worried them.

And that day as I drifted up and down the sideline, calling out encouragement and shaking my head at how young and terrible they were, I found myself wishing the morning would never end. I felt proud of them – all of them, even Dougie – as if they were my own children. And yet I couldn’t help but think that I could never give them everything they needed. They were under my care, and I could give them time and energy and whatever wisdom I had to impart, but the world was cruel, and my knowledge and ability to help would always be incomplete.

Poor Amy. How many Friday nights had she suffered in silence, terrified about what she might be asked to do the next morning? How long had she carried this burden?

In these stories I’ve written a lot about death and fear and failure. And of course there’s love and pride and desire and friendship. All worth writing about. All part of my history.

And then there’s shame. There’s something awful about shame, and yet it has a kind of redeeming quality. I felt it that morning – the shame that lived in myself, and in Dougie, and in Amy, for three different reasons and with three different results.

Shame is ugly and terrible and not something to be wished for, but there are times when it can produce something beautiful. I don’t mean beautiful in a conventional sense. I mean something deeper. Beauty is part of the world, belonging to everyone and everything. But shame? Shame is  all ours. Beauty is nice. But shame is human.

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Ah, Amy! Dougie! Poffenberger! Somewhere there’s a picture of this team, with me towering above those kids, and all of us smiling away. There may be a video too. In it they’re probably running around like water bugs, and I’m probably shaking my head. Now and then a basket will be made, and we’ll treat the phenomenon like a miracle, because it kind of was, every single time it happened.

Those of you interested in the high school side of this can check out the coaches and teachers (music, science, and eighth-grade English) I’ve written about before. You can see my stab at teaching my kids, or at least sitting by while they learn, in #14 – The Bass Guitar.

And as always, you can find links to all the 100 Objects on the main page.

My thanks to my reviewers! Small Press Reviews calls The Race “an incredibly astute novella about ego and politics.” My Little Book Blog calls The Promotion an “easy and sophisticated read.” You can find my books at Amazon.com and elsewhere. Very reasonably priced. A perfect gift for anyone interested in the human side of a political scandal or in recruiting season at a biglaw firm. Let me know if you’d like a free copy—I still have some review copies available and love giving them away!



Image Credit: Basketball Tips and Training

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #16 – The Laundry

In high school I worked for a man who had a business mind as sharp as any I encountered before or since, a brilliant schemer who had worked his way out of a factory job and now worked for no man but himself. When I started working for him and his wife he owned an industrial laundry, a concessions business, and a string of rental houses.

A veteran of the Korean War, Jerry had a large tattoo of an anchor on his arm, bright brown eyes, and dark curly hair he insisted was natural. (Photographs of him as a young man indicated otherwise.) He loved games and tricks and fun, and he teased everyone he encountered. He had married his wife Inga after knowing her for six weeks. Inga worked in the laundry too. Unlike Jerry, who carried on a constant, joking patter, she barely spoke. Although she communicated with quiet smiles far more often than words, I soon learned that Jerry deferred to her in everything important.

The contrast with my own parents was clear to me, even then. My mom and dad performed their parental duties with admirable, steady blandness. I could count on them being home by five-thirty and in bed by ten. I could also count on a full refrigerator, new clothes when I outgrew the old ones, and a parenting style full of unconditional love, firm guidelines, and reasonable expectations. Jerry and Inga pulled their kids out of school to take two-week trips to Mexico and laughed in the face of a principal who demanded they never do that again. The idea of my own parents doing anything like that seemed incredible to me.

I thought of Jerry and Inga as being much younger than my parents, and it surprised me to learn that my father and Jerry were exact contemporaries—they had even in fact briefly attended the same college. Here again the differences were striking. My father stayed in school, for one thing. He lived in the same dorm room for four years, because he was happy where he was and saw no reason to move. Jerry, restless and unwilling to submit to professors, only attended for “two weeks and a half a day” before dropping out and signing up for the army.

Their personalities carried through into their adult lives, giving me two distinct examples of grownup men: my father, the B-plus student with perfect attendance, who brought in a decent salary and did everything society could have wanted. His best skill was showing up on time and working hard. Jerry had an A-plus intellect but could not follow anyone else’s rules or instructions. Everything he did was marked by his grifter’s delight in working the system.

Their influence on me was enormous. My father doled out practical advice that no one could contradict: don’t break any rules, you’ll only make things harder on yourself. Jerry roped me into his cons, delighted by my shock at his willingness to take risks. My father gave me an example to live up to. Jerry’s example was more like a dare.

Those were glorious summers. Every day was different. I would turn up at the laundry as dawn broke. Steam would already be pouring out of the small brown building. Inside, Jerry would be stuffing shirts into one of the giant machines as Inga pulled pants out of the dryer, snapped them straight, and folded them over wire hangers. I would fill the back of the truck with hundreds of work uniforms, hanging on two long bars in five-pack bundles, the hangers tightened together with a twist tie. Then I would head out to the factories and small businesses on the route to deliver a week’s worth of clothes to the lockers or work stations of the men and women who welded machine parts and processed food and manufactured cardboard and assembled airplane governors in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Back in time for lunch, and the cool, quiet afternoons in the laundry before an early evening swim in the pool behind Jerry and Inga’s house, which was out in the country, or the pond they owned a mile away.

On one day I might be sent to a rental house to paint a living room before the new tenants moved in. Or I’d be sent on a special project: all the way to Chicago to pick up a set of bags covered with soot from a fire, which no other industrial laundry in all of Chicagoland was willing to touch. On Fridays I made a circuit of gas stations and banks, where I rolled up their rugs and unfurled clean ones.

But the best weeks of all were the ones when we hauled our popcorn wagons to carnivals and boat shows and softball tournaments and county fairs, selling high-margin products through a small glass window. (Even now, the numbers of cotton candy and popcorn and sno-cones astonish me. Cotton candy was two and a half cents of raw materials including the cone and the bag, sold for a dollar-fifty.) Those days had a lot of slow afternoons. Jerry and I sat on overturned buckets in the wagon, listening to baseball and waiting for the stray customer to pass by. At night we’d stand in the back pouring Cokes out of sixteen spigots, sending trays of Cokes into the grandstand, a team of twenty hustling kids filling those white pails with cash that Jerry and I counted and bundled until long after midnight.

Jerry loved cash, both for the success it measured and the freedom it bought. Fifties and hundreds were deemed “vacation money” and went into the bottom of the cash drawer, later to be transferred to a safe in his bedroom and used for winter trips to Mexico, where he traveled among ruins, dreaming of the past. When I ran the route I had to memorize a hundred different places to pick up cash—envelopes in lockers, ones and fives and quarters tucked into shirt pockets. As he was teaching me the route he swerved down a one-way street in reverse; a woman came running out of a house and handed him six dollars and twenty-five cents through the window, the cost of her husband’s weekly laundering.

I shook my head at the ritual. “Can’t you get them to mail you the money?” I asked. “Pay you once a month or something?”

“Let’s go get lunch,” he said, dropping the cash into a box he’d been filling all morning.

The cash came in handy for the lunch trips to Taco John’s, where he ordered the same thing five days a week (even now I know his order by heart), and the follow-up stop at the Burger King, where we bought a plain hamburger for his beloved and pampered dog.

And all day long I saw an entrepreneur’s mind at work. It was intoxicating, even though I was headed for other things. When college began I alternated school years of Great Books with summers filled with trucks and nachos and cash. And when graduation came, Jerry made me an offer.

“Ever think about being the ambassador to Mexico?” he asked.

I admitted I had not.

“Okay. Second best job: why don’t you buy the laundry?”

He had it worked out: I would keep working for him, gradually buying it from in increments, until finally I owned most or all of it and he could retire. He astonished me by telling me a young man with ambition could turn it into a million-dollar business, which I believed. (I’d seen him turn down more than one potential account by saying, “But if we do this, we won’t be able to go to Mexico!”) I remember looking around the laundry, a place I had come to love. It was early afternoon now, and the machines were quiet. It was a hot day but cool enough inside; soon I would be headed home, stopping for a swim and a trip to my girlfriend’s house on the way.

It was a good life. I too could live by my wits, subject to no man but myself, floating on a comfortable cloud of cash. And unlike Jerry, I could skip the twenty years in a factory. But factories were not part of my future. I was an English major, captivated by Shakespeare and Homer and Tolstoy and Austen, and something about the grit and grease of Jerry’s world seemed more fun than meaningful. It felt like I would be underachieving, somehow. I thought I might someday have regrets.

I fumbled out an answer—I think I said I was honored that he thought of me in this way. I don’t remember exactly what I said; all I remember is trailing off. He smiled sadly, as if I had missed the point, and knowing I was about to turn him down. Somehow I managed to continue without tearing up. He took the news the same way, joking to cover the pain of his rejection, and I teased him back, because this was how we expressed our affection for one another.

“So you don’t want to spend your life cleaning dirty clothes and scraping cotton candy off your arms! Come on, what could be more dignified than this life?”

“I don’t know, Jerry. Paying taxes?”

“I knew college was a bad idea. Do they give you drugs before they brainwash you?”

“Do Great Books count as drugs?”

“Books! Right there’s your problem!”

Inga had been watching the conversation with the interest one takes in a potential adoption. Over Jerry’s shoulder I saw her turn away, hiding her tears by busying herself with the dryer. My nose itched and it was all I could do to keep my own eyes dry until I got into my car.

But as soon as the door closed and I pulled away—waving at the two of them as they stood on the loading dock to watch me leave, something they had never done before—I wept freely.

I had not realized until that moment how much they loved me, or how much I loved them.

Adapted from The Blow (forthcoming).

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Another somber post. Well, what can I say? My history is not all moonbeams and rainbows. You can find other work-related posts in #3 – The Blood Cake and #6 – The Mugs. High school and college era stories are in #4 – The Sweater and #1 – the Padlock and #10 – The Spitwad. Oh, and #15 – The Coffepot, but don’t read that one, because I am ashamed. And of course, you can find all of the 100 Objects on the main page. All this free fiction! The Internets are awesome.

Or if you’ve found yourself in possession of five dollars and would like something to hold in your hands, you could just head over to Amazon and pick up The Promotion and The Race: for a few bucks you can own one of my short novels and see where all this history took me in the end. E-books (even cheaper!) also available for smartphoners and tableters and e-readerers.

Still too expensive? Tell me you’re a reviewer and I’ll ship you copies for free! And my thanks to all my reviewers and commenters and rebloggers and everyone else who has helped to get the word out. Onward and upward, everyone!

Image Credit: mgmelectricalsurplus.com

Blog Tour Update! Thoughts from Hibou

Here we go! First, a reminder of how this all worked. I received an invitation from Devon of The Starving Artist, who wrote an excellent post on her writing process. I posted a few thoughts (John Lennon and the Writing Process) and asked the supremely talented and energetic Lizzy at My Little Book Blog to follow. She did. And now, we hear from the estimable Hibou.

Why does Hibou earn the adjective estimable? Just go read his blog! Here’s a first sentence from one of his posts:

“Hard to rival the brilliant shifts of humor and abject horror on p. 367 to 375 of Infinite Jest, which I am back to reading (after taking a break by reading, among other works, Marias’ Vol. 1 of Your Face Tomorrow), inspired (again) in part by a budding friendship at work with MB, who happened to be reading, as it turned out, The Idiot at the same time I was (she finished that by the way).”

Reading his blog is like strolling through a Borgesian library, with a friendly tour guide (maybe Borges himself!) keeping you company.

I’m not going to reveal Hibou’s wisdom (for that you should check out his post), but to whet your appetite I will pass along the quotation-prompts he uses to frame his thoughts on the writing process:

1. “It just comes down to voice.”

2. “I really hated that book.”

3. “There’s too much literature in the world, so the last thing the world needs is another book.”

4. “I can’t write if there’s another person in the apartment.” or “I can only write in the morning” or “I can only write at night”.

5. “I never think about my writing when I’m not writing.”

6. “I only read poetry nowadays because I find fiction writing devoid of any rhythm or originality.”

7. “Yeah, I know that’s a great novel. Everyone tells me that. It’s almost as wonderful as that film everyone loves, and that play that people can’t stop talking about. That restaurant is supposed to be amazing…”

and

“You just keep writing. One of two things will eventually happen. You’ll either get published or you’ll die.”

His prompts (and responses) are gems.

My thanks to Devon, Lizzy, and Hibou for putting me in the thick of such a varied and vibrant community of voices. Onward and upward with some pure, raw fun:

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #15 – The Coffepot

This is the story of a young man who was an excellent speller. He won seven spelling bees in a row, dominating the competition year after year after year. And then, in the eighth grade, with a trip to regionals (and state! and nationals!) on the line, this champion lost for the first time in his life, shocking the town.

How could this happen? How did he stumble?

Readers, I have some tough news to deliver. A difficult set of truths.

The Eighth Grade Spelling Bee of Cadbridge, Wisconsin, in the Year of Our Lord 1984, was fixed. Completely rigged. The boy, the potential champion, lost on purpose. For reasons that remained murky for years, he threw the bee.

I know because I was that boy.

It was the worst thing I ever did. But not for the reasons you might expect.

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The worst? Really? What are you imagining – that I lost for money? Took a bribe? No, no: that would be bad, but not that bad. Believe me, I’ve done worse things.

Here’s what happened.

I was always a good speller. I liked to read and I was very careful, and frankly nobody else in my class cared all that much because they had better things to do. After I won a couple of bees it became my thing, and I became afraid to lose. Every year, I put another plaque on the wall above my closet door, spacing them out so there would eventually be room for eight. Not because I was arrogant and predicting my win, but because I was careful and cautious and redoing them would mean making extra holes in my wall.

After seventh grade there were seven. With one gap left for the eighth.

Our town’s eighth grade English teacher, Ms. Laporte, was excited about my chances. She had first contacted me when I was in the fifth grade, as if I were a star athlete being recruited early by a big-time college coach.

“You could go to State,” she said. “Even Nationals. I’ll help you.”

“Okay,” I said, honored by her interest. I had a kind of gift: why would I waste it? Winning was what I did because it was what teachers wanted me to do. And I wanted to do what the teachers wanted me to do. In fifth grade, it had always been like that: I wanted teachers to like me.

But three years later I had a different view of the world. In eighth grade, as the bee approached, I realized that I didn’t really want to win. I wanted not to lose, because I didn’t know what that would feel like. But I was not enjoying myself. I took nothing positive from the feeling. It just felt like a lot of pressure.

And it seemed very uncool! Nerds won spelling bees, because only nerds cared enough to bother.

And I didn’t care if teachers liked me anymore. Or I did care, but only remotely. Teachers came in third now. In second place were the other boys in my class, whose opinion mattered far more. And in first place, by miles and miles and miles, were girls.

Girls did not seem to be interested in kids who won spelling bees—which is kind of ironic, because as I mentioned I was the only such specimen available. Looking back, it’s possible that they just didn’t like me. But what eighth grader has the self-awareness not to grab whatever excuse is handy? I told myself that my problem was not anything about me per se, it was the stupid annual spelling bee, with which I was strongly associated.

It’s not something I’m proud of now, but there it was: winning spelling bees made it hard for me to be the person I thought I wanted to be.

As the spring rolled around I told Ms. Laporte I didn’t want to enter. She brushed it off. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going. I’ll help you. After you win the class bee, you can stay after school and we’ll practice for the regionals.”

It was an incredibly generous offer. And I wanted none of it. Hang around after school with a teacher? What about sports? What about friends? What about girls?

Her generosity felt oppressive, and I sensed—or imagined—that her own frustrations were finding an outlet through me. I had heard she wrote poetry and short stories in the summer, and from this rumor I developed a theory that she had identified her problems—miserable life, miserable job, creative energies frustrated by endless rejections—and believed that I was the solution to them all. Me and my spelling ability.

Why should I play that role? Why should I help her feel good about herself? Why give her all the glory? Why was that my obligation?

Twisted thinking, I realize now. But it’s not how I saw it then.

One of my classmates, a C plus student on his best days, had five older brothers and access to all kinds of coolness that I didn’t. He was tough and a little frightening, and teachers kept him under control when he was little, but by eighth grade he was big enough not to be intimidated by authority and close enough to dropping out not to care if he flunked. In the fall he was suspended from school for two weeks and returned sporting a full beard and mustache. I was astounded.

“Spelling bee?” I heard him say in the hallway. “Why should we even have one? We know who will win!” And everyone laughed. Girls laughed.

I should have been flattered. I should have nodded and smiled. I should have realized that there was nothing insulting about his words, and that while their laughter may have been related to me, it was certainly not directed at me. If anything it was directed at him.

But that was the problem: that was the difference between him and me. He could joke about losing because he was comfortable with who he was. I was insecure. I did not want to win spelling bees. I wanted to be like him. A guy on the sidelines, telling jokes, hooting at the winners, admired by girls for his I-don’t-care attitude. I wanted to be a comfortable loser.

Ms. Laporte wouldn’t let me withdraw? Well, I didn’t need her permission.

I decided I would misspell a word on purpose. I decided I would throw the bee.

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It wasn’t until I got in front of the classroom, lined up with my fellow classmates, that it dawned on me that this was going to be hard to do. I wanted to lose quietly. If I blew it in some big, obvious way, there might be trouble.

The first-round words were pretty easy. Pencil. Telephone. Squirrel.

I had not realized how much courage this was going to require. Ms. Laporte, who was sitting in a student desk at the center of the room, reading words one at a time out of a notebook she kept locked in her desk, was an imposing figure in normal times. When running a bee, she took her intensity to a new level. Her straight black hair was pulled off her forehead and secured in a tight bun, exposing her forehead, which was lined with the permanent anger she kept just below the surface at all times.

I had often seen this anger emerge, most recently when she had come to class with a rectangle of fabric softener stuck to her pants. Everyone was afraid to point it out to her, so we just laughed as she wrote on the chalkboard, exposing the faux pas on her fanny to the world. When she finally figured out what happened she delivered a five-minute lecture about how to politely handle a situation like that, in a voice so loud the assistant principal eventually arrived in the doorway, alarmed by the noise but too intimidated by her to interrupt. He stood waiting in the doorway, waiting for her to finish, then meekly walked away.

Ms. Laporte was fierce. Unlike most other teachers, she expected a lot of us. She expected us to be mature, to be grownups.

She did not expect us to throw spelling bees based on a hallway comment from a C-plus student.

“Children,” she said to me now.

Children? My first word was children—the very word on which I had won in first grade? How could I blow that one? Who would believe it?

I lost my nerve. “Children,” I said. “C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N. Children.”

“Correct.”

She smiled at me. I smiled back, feigning confidence. And my anger grew. Why did I have to be afraid of her? Outside this classroom was a whole social world that meant everything to me. And this stupid spelling bee had nothing to do with it. If anything, it impaired my ability to succeed in the world I cared about. I stared at Ms. Laporte, telling myself I hated her.

Meanwhile, my classmates were dropping like flies. They just did not care about spelling words. Hardly anyone even bothered to do the most basic strategy of repeating the word before spelling it.

Carelessness reigned free. I could almost tell myself that I had been a hindrance to them. They figured they’d lose anyway, so why bother? Why not lose in the first round rather than the tenth? They all knew who the winner would be.

I could tell myself that, but the truth was I just did not want to stand out. I wanted to be careless. I wanted to be casual. It looked like so much more fun!

My second word was almost comically easy. Standing. Is there a more phonetic word in the English language? No repeated letters, no silent e, no g or j mixups possible. How the hell do you spell standing wrong when you’ve won seven bees in a row?

It suddenly occurred to me that I might just have to win. Maybe I was constitutionally incapable of misspelling words! Maybe it was my fate to spell words correctly, and go to regionals, and probably State, where I would finally lose to someone who cared.

This is how confused I was as an eighth grader. Cursing my fate as a good speller. Railing against the gods for afflicting me with the ability to spell standing correctly a million out of a million times.

I would have to win. And as I thought about winning I got more and more angry.

Because then what? I’d get another stupid plaque? And weeks of practicing with Ms. Laporte, when I’d rather be headed to Donna’s Gas and Grocery to play one of their newly installed video games? I was a Gorf freak; some cute girls loved playing Burger Time and Mappy, which stood on either side of Gorf.

That could be my afternoon for the rest of the month! I could buy Ho-Hos and drop quarters into Gorf and pray that one of the girls would ask me to share my snack, which would lead to a conversation with an actual girl. Pathetic? Of course! BUT IT WAS A MUCH BETTER PLAN THAN SPENDING MY SPRING STUDYING FOR A SPELLING BEE WITH MS. LAPORTE. COURAGE, JACKE, COURAGE!

The competition barely advanced past the second round, stuffed as it was with those lucky ducks who could misspell words. A kid spelled field with two e’s. How could I compete with that?

I was getting almost desperate. It should be so easy to spell a word wrong. Just mix up a couple letters. Just throw in an s instead of a c.

My word came up. Jacket. I ask you. How in the world do you spell that wrong? Two k’s? Start with a g? End with an i-t? I did not think I could keep a straight face. AND IT WAS PRACTICALLY MY NAME. No, I was far too afraid of Ms. Laporte to try such a stunt.

The kid next to me spelled people as P-O-E-P-L-E and calmly took his seat, joining the blessed world of carefree kids who were free to roll their eyes at each other and pass notes making plans for incredibly fun things they were going to do all spring while I stayed indoors with Ms. Laporte, going through lines of words to hone my skills. And all because I could not misspell an easy word because I was too afraid.

I had not counted on this. I had not counted on this at all.

My turn came up again. There were four people left in the contest.

“Coffeepot,” said Ms. Laporte, smiling at the simplicity of the word. A compound word. What was next? Snowman?

But I saw something she didn’t. Coffeepot? Coffeepot? I could hardly believe my good luck! There was opportunity here! I could plausibly misspell this word!

My heart was pounding in a way it had not since the first grade spelling bee, when I heard the last competitor misspell children and I knew it was my ticket to glory. Now I had glory ahead of me once again, but glory of a different kind, the kind that can only belong to the ignominious.

Oh, the future looked so bright! A whole new vista stretched out before me: one with friends, and fun, and (maybe, maybe!) a kiss! On the lips! From an actual girl! Behind the junior high school gym, just like all my heroes in tenth grade. Or if not that—had to stay realistic, mustn’t get too excited, it would probably take a while for the stigma of seven straight spelling bees to fully wear off—at least I might one day be holding hands at The Skatin’ Place during the moonlight couple skate. A very good first step! My impossible dreams had a chance of being filled! Yes, they did! Yes! Yes! Yes!

I took a deep breath. Glory awaited me if I did not blow it. I needed to summon forth all my strength. It was my last chance; the others might not even make it to the next round. I prepared to intentionally misspell the word. One f maybe? I was so nervous I thought I might actually spell it correctly, blowing everything.

Coffeepot, I began, repeating the word with a serious expression as if I were not about to hatch a scheme. It seemed important to keep up appearances if I had any chance of pulling this off.

I was sweating. Armpits. I knew without looking that this would show through my shirt. Another strike against me, if anyone noticed. Another reason to want to take my seat early. Standing up there with stains was not going to lead to any kissing behind the junior high school gym.

“Coffeepot,” I said again. I cleared my throat and steeled my courage. “C-O-F-F-E-P-O-T. Coffeepot.”

I rushed a little from the e to the p, as if I were just being a little too overconfident, just this once. An expert performance. A perfect bit of acting.

I had not been able to face Ms. Laporte during the actual moment of leaving out the e. But now the deed was done. I looked up in triumph.

There she sat, in the student desk in the center of the room. All around her, my classmates looked bored and tired. Nobody had noticed I spelled the word wrong.

Except her, of course. She stared at me, her gaze long and searching. Don’t do this, her eyes said. You really don’t want to do this.

It was too late! It was already done! I raised my eyebrows. Accept it, you frustrated old lady! I will not be your ticket to glory! Now give me the acknowledgment of my defeat that is my rightful prize!

Her eyes scared me. Nobody had ever looked through me the way she did (or ever has since, for that matter).

I waited to hear, for the first time in my life, that I had misspelled a word. I waited for the chance to return to my seat, pretending to be disappointed but winking at whoever cared enough to look at me.

Don’t do this, her glare was saying.

I, um, already did it, my eyes said back.

Her lips were pressed tightly together. I awaited the worst of her anger. Finally, still staring, she opened her mouth.

“That is correct,” she said.

My mouth fell open. I stared in disbelief. My face was burning. She knew. She knew everything. She knew everything I was doing.

One last look of warning. Do. Not. Do. This.

Then she moved onto the next word, asking the girl next to me to spell antiseptic. My head began to spin, and I felt so weak and confused I could barely stand.

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Was that the worst thing I ever did? No. But we’re getting there.

I should have been grateful, of course, but now I was even angrier. She hadn’t let me quit! She wouldn’t let me lose! Why? Because she wanted to be the teacher of a champion speller? Because I was her shot at glory?

As the others took their turn I stood in place, confused, embarrassed, and angry. Nobody in the class noticed my inner turmoil, just as nobody had noticed the missing e in the coffeepot. They all had good lives that did not hinge on spelling bees. Only I was thus afflicted.

My turn came around again. I expected an easy word this time: she was obviously setting me up for a victory, planning to ride me all the way to regionals, then state, then nationals. She was fixing the bee too.

She smiled at me and consulted her list.

“Ms. Laporte!” I cried. “I think I spelled coffeepot wrong!”

She looked up—shocked at first, then her eyes narrowed as she calmly assessed me, her new enemy. Her eyes, her forehead, her shoulders, even her hair looked furious. Anger and bitterness and spite focused on a single point: me and my stupid face.

That look is etched in my mind. It’s so frightening I can barely stand to conjure it up and view it. She was furious. And she hated me. I had just humiliated her. And she could not believe it.

I waited. She made me wait. She made me wait until my victory felt cold. Only then did she say anything.

“You may sit down,” she said.

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There we go. That was the worst. But not for the reasons you’d expect.

Was it the worst because I spelled the word wrong? Not really. I’m not proud about tainting the integrity of the bee, but really, who cares? It was just a spelling bee. An hour or two of killed time on a spring afternoon. An alternative to reading  at our desks or watching a filmstrip.

How about embarrassing Ms. Laporte? God, that was awful. Humiliating a teacher who was only trying to help me? I had no business treating her like that. I showed how ungrateful and insensitive I can be. But that’s not the worst either.

Was it the worst because for years I told that story with her as the villain? I exaggerated her frustration, her desire to use me to justify her failed and miserable teaching career. She was unhappy and unsuccessful, which should have evoked my sympathy. Instead I blew it out of proportion and turned her into some kind of conniving witch desperate to use me and my spelling abilities. It was not fair and (probably) not true. I used it to justify my disgraceful behavior. A horrible thing to do.

But still not the worst.

The truth, which I only recently have come to realize, is that she almost certainly did not care about being the teacher of a great speller. She was not using me. She was trying to show me how to use my talent. How to move up in the world. How to succeed.

I had a little spark of something, just like many others in my class. Some had great business minds. Some could fix any kind of machine. Some were born to be caregivers. One kid was a genius at metalworking. Another had memorized the batting average of every major league player in the Hall of Fame.

And I was a good speller—and a little more. I was good at most academic subjects. I tested well. It was a little spark, a little breath of a flame, but it was there and she recognized it. And she knew that little flames need protection. A careful hand around them to let in just the right amount of air and keep the strong drafts out.

Don’t do this. It was not don’t do this to me, as I thought at the time and spent years telling others. It was don’t do this to yourself. That’s the truth that I sort of knew but pushed aside, because it was too painful.

It’s not a lesson we often hear in the Midwest, especially in towns like mine, Cadbridge, with its one stoplight that only flashes red and is basically a stop sign, and its sign at the gas station that said “Guns and Cold Beer” for years, and which even McDonald’s in its heyday had not chosen to invade, which the kids in the neighboring town lorded over us because we did not even have a McDonald’s what a stupid hick town.

What we hear in places like that is don’t get ahead of yourself.  And don’t brag. And don’t put yourself forward. Ivy-league schools? Distinguished jobs? That’s for other people. Not you.

Don’t get me wrong. The people in Cadbridge are great—they are the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Beautiful, friendly losers: that’s us! I’m proud to be among them.

But Ms. Laporte knew something else, because she had seen the same thing happen, over and over. Fourteen-year-olds living for Saturday night. High school kids with genuine promise who could not see a future beyond the next car payment.

All these kids who would fall into the Great Dark Pool of Mediocrity and Lives That Are Tough. And for once, just one time, she stuck out a net and tried to rescue an eighth grader who could be a champion at something, if only he tried a little.

No, it wasn’t losing the bee that bothered her. It was the attitude of wanting to lose.

Don’t do this. Don’t snuff out your own candle.

Because she knew what it meant. Don’t sink your chances for stupid reasons: you’ll fail for the rest of your life with that attitude.

And she was right. It’s exactly what happened, and it all started that day.

Don’t do this.

She warned me with every ounce of energy she had left. She put everything she had into that first stare, which told me not to do it, and which still makes me shiver when I recall it. Like a witch putting a hex on me. Not because she was evil, but because she was frustrated with me, and with those who had come before me, and with all those she knew would come after, and maybe herself, at least a little, because we all did the same thing.

For years I stupidly thought it was a sign of my strength to resist that frustration. Now I see it was a sign of my weakness.

Now I understand that of all the bad things I’ve done, nothing has ever been worse, because that was the day it all started.

That was the day I gave up.

Don’t do this. I looked straight into her burning eyes. I knew exactly what she wanted me not to do.

And then I did it.

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Brutal! I could hardly write that one without choking up. Oh, Ms. Laporte, how I failed you. (Where are the bouncy tunes when you need them?) 

So we’re putting together a good collection of educators: music teachers in agony (and surprise update), divinely touched science teachers, desperate football coaches, and now this one from the beloved old junior high, connected to the high school and all its dangerous energy by a single sloping hallway. Is it any wonder I became an educator (of sorts) myself? Or, given my inauspicious beginnings, that Jerry Seinfeld declared me a failure? You can find all of the 100 Objects on the main page.

Or just head over to Amazon and pick up The Promotion and The Race: for a few bucks you can own one of my short novels and see where all this history took me in the end. E-books (even cheaper!) also available for smartphoners and tableters and e-readerers.

Still too expensive? Tell me you’re a reviewer and I’ll ship you copies for free! And my thanks to all my reviewers and commenters and rebloggers and everyone else who has helped to get the word out. Onward and upward, everyone!

Image Credit: Sweet Clip Art

Today’s Comment of the Week

From Wonderful Reader nilochahtims, commenting on A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #3 – The Blood Cake:

I started reading, and I could not stop. I had my daughter read the first two sentences, and she could not stop. Same with my wife. My favorite was the ear: icing on the cake. An ID-photo goodbye cake is just the tacky thing to expect in retrospect. It reminds me of all the people one would never know if work were not necessary to pay the rent.

It’s hard to imagine a nicer compliment. Thank you!

You can read about the unstoppable struggle I had with my officemate Jerry Seinfeld, or visit the 100 Objects page for links to all the stories.

Blog Tour Update: My Little Book Blog Takes the Baton!

Reminder of where we are on the Writing Process blog tour:

Devon Trevarrow of The Starving Artist wrote an excellent post about setting goals, as well as some interesting details about her genres and her forthcoming works. A great read.
Yours truly wrote a little bit about his own process. Unfortunately I kind of blew past the guidelines, instead writing a few thousand words about John Lennon and Stu Sutcliffe, John’s best friend and the Beatles’ first bassist. (I meant well! It really was about writing process!)
And now…old friend of the Jacke Blog (see here and here) Lizzy Baldwin of the irrepressible My Little Book Blog tells how she turned from university magazine book reviewer to blogger extraordinaire. As always, Lizzy’s enthusiasm and practical wisdom shine through in every sentence. She also has a good roster of fellow bloggers on tap for next week, so the writing process tour is in good hands.

My thanks to Devon for inviting me, and for Lizzy for taking up the baton with such a thoughtful and compelling post (and my other guest, Hibou, whom I will be featuring in another post). It’s great to see the community of indie authors, writers, reviewers, and commentators all joining in together. Onward and upward with a classic from the Queen of Love herself:

 

 

“An Easy and Sophisticated Read”: A Review of The Promotion by My Little Book Blog

“An incredibly quick read…this is a book that makes the reader think…” – My Little Book Blog  

Wow, another great day here on the Jacke blog. I’ve been very fortunate with positive reviews, and the latest review of The Promotion (from Lizzy of My Little Book Blog, who also reviewed The Race a while ago) is another one to print out and hang on the refrigerator.

I love everything about this review; it’s hard to clip passages. But I’ll start with this:

One of the things that I loved most about the book was Wilson’s ability to create so much content in such a short amount of space. We see the main protagonist build, and build to a peak, before seemingly spiraling out of control, unable to deal with the facts he has been told. The mix of trouble and depression contrasted with anticipation and promise is built up astonishingly well.

Great! And what about the humor? I promised “intrigue and deadpan comedy” on the cover…

The dialogue is sarcastic and funny, but has a deep sense of a struggle, and of anxiety which gives the book a deeper meaning which kept me turning the pages till the very last sentence had been read.

I think that counts! And then the review has this, which has had me smiling all day:

As in all of Wilson’s work the writing is beautiful balanced between dialogue and description and is smooth in the telling which makes for a very easy but sophisticated read.

Man. This is about as flattering as I could imagine. It’s hard to top this as a description of what I’m trying to do. Providing an “easy but sophisticated read” could basically serve as my mission statement. To hear that it struck a reviewer that way—particularly one with as much enthusiasm for books as My Little Book Blog—is truly gratifying.

My thanks to Lizzy at My Little Book Blog for the excellent review.  Onward and upward, people!

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You can check out my response to reviews of The Race by My Little Book Blog (“warm and full of life”),  Small Press Reviews (“an incredibly astute novella about ego and politics”), and Radical Science Fiction (“Self-Deception Is Human”). Or you can read my thoughts on a previous review of The Promotion by My Author Within (“humor, depression, and hope, all together in one”). I’m terribly grateful for all of the fine reviewing I’ve received by these indie reviewers.

And of course, you can find The Promotion and The Race at Amazon.com (in Kindle and paperback versions). The Race is also available in other formats and locations.

Are you a reviewer? Leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll ship you a free review copy of either The Race (ex-governor of Wisconsin recovering from a scandal) or The Promotion (D.C. lawyer becomes obsessed with a woman he’s never met). Or you can enjoy the 100 Objects series, which is still going strong, which are all available for free here on the website.

Today’s Comment of the Week

From Wonderful Reader lilolimon, commenting on A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #13 – The Monster:

Your story made me laugh. Since I am a mexican I can relate completely to this guy jajaja

Is it something in our blood that prevents us from “behaving properly”?

I have no idea, but I can tell you every time I go to Europe I shock everyone with my reactions to things.

And yes, I also screamed and jumped up and down when I saw snow for the first time and I can´t help laughing when all the rest (Europeans and North Americans) tell me as if they were talking to a little kid: “but you see, snow is a problem, specially in the mornings when you have left your car outside the whole night. Snow is not fun”

But the truth is that I love to scrap the frozen ice of the car’s window, and I love to leave my footprints on the snow, and I love the way it stays in the tree’s branches, and the way it piles on the windows but I’m sure that if I had to deal with snow everyday I would hate it as well, just as I hate Acapulco and Tequila! :)

Anyway, I like your writing, you are funny and I like sarcasm a lot.

Thanks for sharing this! :)

You’re welcome!

My thanks to WR lilolimon for reminding me of the great day I had with my exuberant Mexican friend, searching for Nessie.

You can find all the Objects stories at the 100 Objects home page.