She Was Right

Morning light in the barn

Every couple of weeks, Penny peruses this site. The woman is a stickler for accuracy, and furthermore has precisely zero tolerance for exaggeration. As I’ve told her a million times, I flat out do not exaggerate (That’s a joke, right? Because a “million times” is so obviously… oh, never mind. You got it).

In any event, her most recent perusing came just a couple days after my “Write, Post, Forget” post, in which I made some claims that, with the benefit of my wife’s benevolent guidance, for which I am eternally grateful and remain forever indebted, I now understand to be not entirely correct.

To wit, the absurd notion that most [of what I write here] is based on passing thoughts, and is not premeditated. “What the hell is that,” asked Penny, wagging her finger in the way she does when I’ve been bad. “Not premeditated?!? We talk about the things you write about all the time. We live them. That’s about as friggin’ premeditated as it gets.” By gum, the girl is right. As she was when she continued: “And what do you mean when you say you ‘forget’ about what you write? That sounds like you just don’t care about what you’ve written, and I know that’s not true.”

Per our pre-nuptial agreement, I passed two hours (one for each error) sitting in a straight back chair facing the dankest corner of the basement, wearing the special cap Penny makes me wear whenever she proves me wrong and scribbling “she was right” over and over and over on a piece of slate. Doing so helped me realize that of course I don’t forget about what I write here or anywhere else. Rather, my comment about forgetting was intended to convey my intention for this to not become a space where I become paralyzed by self-consciousness. Should I have said that? Should I have said it differently?  Is Eumaeus going to heckle me for posting yet another cow photo? Is Penny going to read this and make me sit in my ‘bad’ corner? That sort of stuff.

I’m not blind to the contradictive irony that one of the few posts I feel compelled to clarify is the very post in which I made the claim that I rarely view my work on this page through the lens of hindsight. What can I say? Oh yeah, of course: She was right.