Thursday, August 22, 2013

You Can Lead a Hick to Literature But You Can't Make Him Read

Hey! My books are coming out in a few weeks! Yeah. MY books. Actually, they're not completely my books. More like they're about one-sixty-third my books. That's 1/63 in fraction form. I always like to promote math literacy. I have a calling, I think.

So I have a story in each of these two books. What's that? You want to know the name of these books? Sure. I'll be glad to tell you. Since you asked, and all. Not Your Mother's Book...on Being a Parent, and Not Your Mother's Book...on Home Improvement. They're listed for pre-order on Amazon now. But I saw the most interesting sight when I consulted my BFF Google for a link. WALMART dot com has them, too! Don't that just beat all! I wonder if Walmart will have them in the store. I guess time will tell.

Anyhoo...I'm not here to promote myself and strong-arm you into coughing up cash for a book. Not like the text I sent my best ex-teaching buddy, Mabel, this morning. NOT on school time, of course. I asked her how many hundred copies I should put her down for. Can you imagine, she did not give me a straight answer? I'm not doggin' on Mabel. She's my bestie. I hold her in higher regard, even, than Google. She stepped up to bat for me more than once. (Private note just for Mabel: No need for that special text. I know what you did last winter.) Hey, now! Don't go peeping into private correspondence.

Anyhoo 2...I'm not here to communicate privately in plain sight with Mabel. I'm here to let you into the inner sanctum that is my life with Hick. Last night, I called to him from the kitchen, "Hey! My books are coming out in a few weeks!"

And he said, "Good. I'll finally get to read what you wrote about me." Let the record show that only one story is about him. Egomaniac. And that at the time I strong-armed him into signing a release asked if he would sign a release, I handed him a printout of the story. He said, "Naw. I'll sign." That copy languished on the end table by Hick's La-Z-Boy until I feared that it would spontaneously combust. So I threw it away after three weeks, whether most people would consider it trash by then or not. We bandied words over this scenario for a while.

Then I said, "I was just telling you to see if you wanted to buy a copy." Now we all know that Hick is not going to waste precious money on a book. Not even if he could get a metric ton of them for two dollars at the auction. Money is for auction meat, and bug catchers, and cake plates, and Falstaff and Coca Cola memorabilia. Not plain old junk like new books.

"I'm not buyin' no book. I can read yours. You'll get it for free. Why don't you tell your teachers at school about it. Maybe those kind of people will buy one."

I have a feeling that if our house was on the prairie, my boys would be working in the fields, not sitting in the Walnut Grove school house listening to Miss Beadle.

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations on having your work accepted by these publications. You'll understand how sincere my congratulations are when I admit to you that they rejected the stories I submitted to them. Take care.

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  2. However, if you put a book in the bathroom, you CAN make them drop a deuce while they read a book you didn't have to drop a dime on.

    Of course, the book will be flagged after that...

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  3. Hey now! you tell Hick there's nothing wrong with "those people." Congratulations!

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  4. joeh,
    Thanks. All I have to do is keep people at work from reading them, then acting all nice, thus leaving me bereft of future material.

    ******
    Stephen,
    WHAT! All I can say is...there are so many fish in that sea that you should round up a boat operated by a guy named Frank, and head out to deep water, where you can drop a plethora of lines until you snag a keeper.

    Okay, I can say more than that...I've had several rejects from single titles. One story that was accepted is in my dreck file, yet some of my darlings were given the cold shoulder. They packed their little anthology bags and moved back to my basement, where I will give them a pep talk and send them out again to seek my fortune.

    Keep on casting your lines. Don't cost nothin'. You never know when some leviathan will bite. Says the wise woman who has only earned three acceptances, and could not paint a two-windowed, curly-smoke chimney house under the rays of a corner sun if her life depended on it. ;)

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    Sioux,
    Especially if they take off their shirt in the bathroom to feel "free." It's never a good idea to rip off Rebecca DeMornay, whether with soiled toilet books, or muffin stumps.

    *****
    Linda,
    Hick sees my workplace as one big highbrow party, where teachers lay about on chaise lounges, reading scrolls and spouting Shakespeare, while students fan them with palm fronds and ostrich feathers. He really needs to get his own blog.

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  5. Congratulations! I'll be looking forward to reading your stories.

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  6. Lynn,
    Thanks. One is about fake farting. The other is a classic example of truth being stranger than fiction, and how some people in this house find it perfectly acceptable to to keep a lamp that can only be turned on by using pliers.

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