Here's a little story about one of my early efforts to break into print. I had forgotten all about this failed attempt until I read of blog buddy Tammy's recent success.
I submitted a little tale to Reader's Digest to enlighten folks about MY day's work. Since I was teaching at the time, and we didn't have cool uniforms or any uniforms or barely even a dress code...I couldn't submit to Humor in Uniform. So All in a Day's Work it was. Actually, I sent two (failed) tales, but the other one will have to get in line.
I don't remember how I told it then. I'm sure it was bare-bones, and conformed to the proper word count, and was dry as not-heaven. But below is how I'm telling it now.
Along about my eighth year of teaching, I worked at a little smidgen of a school nestled in the foothills of float trip country. Most of the faculty was from the local area, with many spouses employed at various grade levels. Every now and then, a teacher would move on, and a new one would join our ranks. At the back-to-school inservice day one August, our middle school principal looked around the library at his current crop of educators. We were all women, except the principal himself, and the husband of one of our our sixth grade teachers.
"Well, Bob, it looks like you'll be in hog heaven this year."
Bob put his palms on the edge of the brown laminated table, and tilted his library chair back. He turned his head to the left, drank in the human scenery, swiveled his gaze slowly around the room to his right, and said, "Ya got THAT right."
Ahem. I don't think Bob was making a statement about our beauty. Or the "heaven" part.
Lucky for them we were not ones to cry sexual harassment in the workplace.
I work with a male teacher who proclaims--every year during the never-ending string of inservices (when the sexual harrassment video is shown)--"It's not harassment if they like it."
ReplyDeleteI always dreamed of getting into the Reader's Digest...but alas, I never submitted.
Once upon a time we thought that was a compliment. Oops!
ReplyDeleteI recently read some of my earliest writings and I know exactly what you mean. Poor Bob ....... all that estrogen.
ReplyDeleteLike you I've thought of submitting to Reader's Digest but I never got around to it. I once submitted a cartoon to The New Yorker and I framed my rejection slip and hung it on the wall.
ReplyDeleteYou're a great writer!
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteOh, dear. Is he nearing retirement? Because that sounds like things I heard every day back in the day.
Funny how that works. How you can't get in if you don't submit. I'm surprised we all don't have submission fairies to do the heavy lifting for us.
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joeh,
You guys and your compliments to women...I don't know how you walk around with those things.
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Kathy,
"Poor" Bob my butt! He was cock o' the walk. Even if the walk was not desirable to other cocks.
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Stephen,
I hope your cartoon was not of a pig at the complaint department, bemoaning, "I wish I was taller."
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Lynn,
You're so kind. So unlike me.