Raging Revision

So, today I’m substitute teaching for a health teacher at Canby High. We’re watching a video entitled “Teen Dreams,” which tells the story of Natalie and Darren as they make their anguished ways through puberty, all those hormones raging. Remember? During the viewing, I’m sitting at the back of the classroom revising my second novel, Trout Run; it’s this tricky scene involving Eddy’s cover-up of a murder [tentative!]. I’m tuning out the video, focused on the scene. Then narrator of the video says, “Darren’s penis has swollen to five times its normal size” and the whole class titters with nervous laughter. Then: “In the past weeks, Natalie’s body has grown sixty feet of arm and pubic hair.” The class groans. It’s hopeless. I’ll save my revisions for later, when fewer hormones rage.