Here’s one of the great unrequited loves of my life Frank Rich’s column in Truthout so it’s not a Select piece. i know The Times is losing subscribers, but many of us pay $500 a year. We should really be able to link the articles. I guess I can copy them and put them in the sidebar.

Sometimes commenting can really change a mood. Acton Bell’s posts always make me laugh. Oh sorry, didn’t know you meant them seriously. It was also the first time I commented on a comment. My knight in shining dawg, Doug, has sharpened his commenting claws…
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

My best friend tells me that writing is solitary by definition. Yes, I know that.

It was fun to focus on blogging because it’s interactive. I could tell myself that my writing was improving. I could tell myself a lot of things.

I’m trying to finish a complete first draft of Electric Haired Chic: A Memoir in the form of Fiction by Memorial Day, and I have rediscovered something about myself. I need face-to-face interaction, often, with friends and family.

I don’t even mind talking on the phone anymore and I considered it to be a great intrusion. I still do if it’s a telemarketer, any political or issue group, etc. If a real person calls, they will a get half hour, at least.

It’s another day where the sun keep tries trying to make an appearance. I need sun and warm weather.

I tried forcing myself to write the ungodly number of words I make myself write every day, for my book, and just couldn’t. I’m in need of intense socialization.

Unfortunately people do make plans in advance, or I haven’t been in touch, or….

This book is something that I have been working on for four years but couldn’t figure out the structure until recently. I have other books pretty much written, but this is the one that’s meaningful to me. Fiction is freeing in anything but this book.

I keep telling myself to change my high school boyfriend to somebody more interesting, and who isn’t a Mack truck driver. He wasn’t very interesting.

But I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the history of my Long Island suburb whoever had a date pick her up in a large truck or any, probably, many times.

There’s nothing wrong with big truck; it was the world I came from that had the false values. And yes I rubbed it in.

I don’t regret it but am not as enamored with myself as I was for far too long.

I have never felt like giving up. I do today.

If I give up I will spend the rest of my life wondering and feeling incomplete because this was such an important part of my life.

The sun actually did come out just now, as in a blue sky, so I’m out of here. Unfortunately the sun itself didn’t serve as a mood elevater. I’m hoping a walk will do it.

Feel like my whole life is a battle for sun, and we’re in the midst of global warming so it’s selfish and unfair of me.

I went to B&N and bought books. Books that you devour in one sitting, and kind of wish you had read in the store.

It’s gorgeous out. Incredibly beautiful. I now know what 62 degrees feels like 62 degrees feels like. It feels good

I wrote this entire post because I wasn’t going to let a title like that go to waste

I guess I have to mention in every second post that no spam has ever been sent out by Courting Destiny. I’m still getting returned mass emails.

I forgot to mention in this post that lying begins at the top. Bush lied about WMD’s. Has there been an impeachment hearing? Isn’t that a bit more important than lying about sex? We condone lying when it’s convenient or expedient and condemn it when it offends our morals. Therefore I can’t condone lying at all.

Dari, a new blog friend, has a son in Iraq. She’s one hot momma. See her in her IMPEACH BUSH tee shirt. I did used to throw in IMPEACH BUSH into every post, but then the IMPEACH BUSH coalition was formed

Here’s a link to
Liz’s article. It’s very beautiful.
Bone wrote a wonderful 3WW

“Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners,” it says. “But just remember that ‘what goes around comes around,’ meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out.”

It damn well better.

The Dean of Admissions at MIT admitted to fabricating her credentials when she first had a low level job at the MIT admissions office in 1979, and whenever promoted to the next job then the next was too ashamed to say anything.

She has a book out on not stressing about being admitted to college. She should know.

Marilee Jone’s deception has made me spend the past five hours wondering about “worth” and am I really worthy or not.

It brought back the “I am a fraud” feelings.

I hope that MIT prosecutes Jones to the full extent the law allows. I hope Oprah doesn’t invite her into her show. She lived a lie for 28 years. I don’t care if she claims to have felt guilt.

Real guilt would have stopped her from writing her book. It would have alerted her to the fact that people probably knew she was perpetuating a fraud.

It would have kept her awake nights. It might even have caused her to confess, at a time in her career, when she wasn’t the Director. If MIT liked her so much they might have sent her to school to get a degree. There are always truthful options.

It doesn’t matter how good she was at her job, how many people she helped or what she achieved. Her entire career is based on lying.

She committed a true crime. She also took jobs from people who earned them because they spent many years studying and doing the prep work.

She couldn’t even keep the schools she was supposed to have gone to straight. If she felt true guilt she would have remembered which one she was supposed to have gone to. She had so much faith in her ability not to be discovered as a real fraud, she didn’t even try to remember.

Jones claimed to have been a scientist by training. I find that mind boggling. She invented an entire back story.

I know what it feels like to feel guilty and to have done absolutely nothing wrong. It can be paralyzing, and was for too many years in my case. Read more…

“Hey you,” they both said at once. Your odds of meeting somebody you know in Manhattan are supposed to be lower than elsewhere, but they had met in the park on Sunday and at the newsstand on Wednesday.
“It’s the third time in one week,” she said.
“What are the odds of that?”
“Hell if I know.”
He looked at her:
“The third time’s the charm.”
“And what does that mean?” She asked.
“Hell if I know.”

It wasn’t really funny. They laughed anyway.

TonyL asked Corrina if she wanted to see his newest acquisitions. Tony owned a brownstone on West End. Most evenings there were crowds of people, some quite well known, sitting in the almost over furnished living room, with a dizzying amount of things on the wall. Somebody, usually a professional musician, would be playing the grand piano.

Of course she did. Tony bought new couches the way other people bought seasonal clothes. There were always new things to see, even if you had been there a week ago.

Tony had to spend much of the cash he made. He had amazing taste for a straight man, and seemed to keep MDC the Upper West Side furniture store in business with custom orders for the brownstone or the house in Amagansett.

He liked deep roses, sea greens and other colors she associated more with women and gay men. Yet nobody would ever doubt his sexuality. He had a Jack Nicholson thing going, but always kept in shape and had work done before it was needed.

She had never felt strange going to his house, never felt that she was going somewhere sleazy.

Corrina wished he made his money some other way, but visiting Tony was the surest way to meet interesting people.

She wasn’t a customer anymore, hadn’t been for years, but knew many people who were. Tony knew who was safe to invite over, and who should only get deliveries.

Corrina didn’t understand why people did most of the drugs they did, but wasn’t going to moralize about it. She knew many middle aged mommies who were customers of Tony’s.

Tony had been in the background of Corrina’s life for so long she was always shocked when people would introduce her at parties as a “good friend of TonyL’s” They would kiss up to her to try to get an invite to one of his “salons.”

It amused her that so many parents would give rabid anti-drug lectures, yet indulge themselves. That did go against her morals. Don’t do it, but tell them you used to, or tell them you do, and be risked being killed by your own kid.

Young kids were always checking their parents for signs of alcohol intoxication by making them open their mouths and smelling. later they would more subtly check for other things.

Trying to fool teenagers was almost impossible and Corinna thought stupid. It’s hypocritical and swings against her belief that kids shouldn’t be lied to. She had seen too many families wrecked by lies and lies of omission.

Running into Tony so often this week brought up so many feelings. She knew he liked her, and she really could have liked him, if it weren’t for his line of work.

He was a studio musician in the 60′s and 70′s, who had begun this endeavor by connecting people. Now there wasn’t anybody bigger. if only he had remained a musician. One of her boyfriends had played with him. They did couple’s dinner a few times and she found herself drawn to his kindness, and inherent sexiness.

Her “relationship” with Tony had out lasted three subsequent, real, long lasting ones.

“It’s still sunny out,” he said jolting her out of her thoughts. Want to go to the park?”
“I’m never one to refuse an invitation to the park.”

A children’s playground was almost empty. They sat on the swings, and talked politics. Corrina thought why not? Maybe? No. Not a good idea.
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This is the link to Liz’s article. I use Firefox and it works for me. Liz is in the friends/family category of my real life. I never knew her mother. I do know her father and when I read the article was laughing and crying at once. Somehow the link messes up for other people. Lizzy lost her Mom way way too young, and well, read the article.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976967591

The much loved and missed Shayna had a beautiful baby boy, Carter. Congrats Shayna!!

if you have been wondering why costs in New York have spiraled this might be one part of the answer. more importantly Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD are committing gross acts against individuals who peacefully protested the 04 RNC.

Never took either Bloomberg or the NYPD for being McCarthylike. It’s a Select article. I will put it in a page in a few day as I feel very strongly about this.

As costs are spiraling out of control, there was a record budget surplus. This is continued in the rant.

I think whoever has been sending out spam in the name of Courting has stopped. I had no idea that with an “alias account” anybody can set up an account using any dot com address. Nobody had to hack into my cpanel or blog or anything.

This is legal. It shouldn’t be. The only recourses are to use the ultimate filter program and not allow any email with your URL to be sent to you, and to contact your ISP as technically they’re not supposed to let spam come through. We all know how that works….

I am totally hung up on how this is legally allowed. i understand the Internet is realtively new. Al Gore didn’t invent it until 1974 I adore Al Gore so I say that with both great fondness and sadness that he never had the chance to lead our country.

I understand that blogging began in 1997, the same year I bought my first PC. i hated the Internet then. Lucia and i went into chatrooms that were supposed to be about literature but were meeting places. We just weren’t interested.

I have watched the Internet change in the past decade. It is a much easier place to navigate. Thanks Google. Between your search engine and Gmail I’m a much more relaxed and happy person.

If I hadn’t switched to an Imac I know that my computer would have been very slow yesterday, probably have been corrupted and died a sudden and violent death.

I was actually going to send out apologizes to the people who sent me emails telling me to stop harassing them. Then I thought how stupid can I be?

People who go to the trouble of sending those emails wouldn’t believe me, could cause trouble and really i wasn’t going to dig through the email shard to see.

There has to be some kind of Internet regulations. I know that a solicitation directly asking for money in a Ponzi type scheme is considered to be fraud. Pretending to be Paypal is because again it’s a direct way to get money

Why isn’t there regulation so that if a person owns a dot com, or any other dot address, people can’t use the dot com address for spam purposes?

If the spam hadn’t stopped, i would have canned my blog. I don’t love it that much.

Yes we have filters now, and other safeguards to our computers.

But somebody was legally allowed to send out spam using my address. I consider that harassment and a crime as it’s my blog’s name that is being disparaged.

It was the most beautiful Sunday since sometime last year or maybe the year before. In New York when the weather’s amazing, people run into the parks.

Lucia and I were going to a photography opening at Rafe’s salon. All the photos are of flowers. None look like flowers.

I have always used Central Park as a crossway. It is I admit the most breathtakingly beautiful crossway, and my backyard

Riverside Park is my front yard, and I love the water. Not that I have a river view apartment, and the building’s entrance is on a side street, because my street is not lovingly referred to as “wind chamber.”

If you’re going to the East 60′s from the Upper West Side, the fastest way, is to walk down the 72nd Street cross walk, proceed the east park pedestrian way through the zoo and then to my old street. There are more beautiful be one with nature ways, but I like this one when in a hurry.

I especially love it because the exit from the zoo leads directly to my youth on East 63rd Street off Fifth.

We could hear people clapping at the Greek parade on Fifth Avenue. Lucia told me that she arranged the people and applause for me, for my birthday.

My birthday is in July. The same day as Central Park’s birthday. One year over a million people sang “Happy Birthday” just to me about four times. Lucia arranged it, you know.

It was impossible to be in a hurry today but for some reason the crowds didn’t bother me. We ran into my good in the hood friend Joey and Lucia practically threw herself at him.

Then she remembered he’s single, straight, rich, intelligent, nice, and not boyfriend material. I can’t and won’t say why. He isn’t funny is as far as I will go with that one.

We arrived at the opening where Anastasia, Rafe’s wife was by herself, in a corner of the salon. Rafe is one of my two best friends and I love him with all my heart, but he is a one-man TV show. He will spend money on anything but parking. It’s sad really. Rafe will do anything to help anybody. He has a generous heart and cheap veneer.

He used to spend his one free day in traffic court fighting the tickets. Fortunately the city cracked down on meters and made the tickets too expensive.

Unfortunately for Anastasia he made her sit in the car in various locations for two to three hours. I tend to believe Anastasia’s three hour version. He went to the salon to do last minute prep work. Just explaining the car situation.

By the time Lucia and I arrived it was going on five and Anastasia had been sitting in cars or in the salon the whole day. Nobody should have to on a day like today. Rafe was chatting up prospective clients.

We walked back to the park and sat near the fountain. It was about as crowded as I have ever seen it. We made fun of, talked about old friends,some other things and Rafe and Anastasia’s daughter who is finishing law school next month. She has guardianship of the family dog which makes Anastasia a grandmother.

A man on a bike said something. We ignored him. Anastasia is a size two-four and looks like a Russian stacking doll that isn’t cloyingly cute. She’s always been hot and gets hotter with age. She met Rafe when they were teenagers in hairstyling school and have been together ever since.

We met when we were young and events like this happened all day every day. Even to Rafe, actually. T He looks like a Latin Elvis without the bloat and with much class.

One of the big reasons I’m so close to Rafe is that he loves Anastasia passionately and it shows, even when he makes her sit in a car for three hours. I’m kind of an expert on friendship with Hispanic men, and while he plays the macho stud bit, he is a hair stylist and feels he has to overcompensate through speech not action. he’s a wuss, really

This incident was a bit or a lot weirder than most. You decide.

The guy said all the standard pick up lines. He just wouldn’t go away.

He said to Anastasia:
“Don’t listen to your girlfriends. Think for yourself. Don’t you like me? I like you.”

We were trying even harder to ignore him as he repeated this about seven times. Each time he swooped around us on his bike. Finally he said to Anastasia:
“Are you a virgin? Tell me if you’re a virgin. You’re a virgin right. I really like you. You’re a virgin right? You are a virgin. I know that you’re a virgin.”

Then he fell off his bike.

We made our escape but we could hear in the background:
“You’re a virgin. I know you’re a virgin. You’re a virgin….”

There are nine million stories in the naked city and this is a bit more creepy than most. There are boundaries normal people don’t cross. Even normal semi-perverts.

The park was crowded. There was no real possibility of danger but we didn’t want to respond, You just never know who is dangerous or not.

This wasn’t really a voyeur story, but

I wasn’t the only person who wrote a virgin story this week. I do have a subscription but wrote this story yesterday and didn’t see a copy until i got my mail at four PM

The opening was lovely though only about a hundred people came. Something to do with a beautiful day and a Greek parade.

Here’s a link to Bill Moyers
examining the free passes the media gave to Bush & Company. There will be a Moyer’s special on PBS. When Moyers was editor of Newsday it was the first daily paper to come out against Viet Nam.

That was a big risk as Long Island was thought to be redneck country. I grew up on the Island. The sole adult I knew who was for the war was my father who didn’t believe that people should actually serve in the war. Hence his love of “Alice’s Restaurant.” This does go far in understanding me.

I was going to name this post “If i did Twitter.” It seems like the most absurd waste of time to me. Wait. That’s what people say about blogging. Still….

I wish Rafe’s salon was in my hood or downtown so I could feel more cutting edge but I have to settle for Madison Avenue. In it’s own way that’s nice as I lived there for so many years. When I’m in the East 60′s west of Park I feel at home. Read more…

I never knew that I could write fiction until I began doing Bone’s 3WW. It’s one of the things I enjoy doing most as it’s purely for pleasure

It’s thrilling to get into peoples head that aren’t mine. I love the directions stories can take. They almost feel as though they write themselves.

I’m using these characters for a boy. I love finding things out about them when I write a 3WW. I love putting them in situations I have never been in. Or exploring something real from a fictitious angle.

This story was based a bit on a boy I lived with. He was from New Orleans, and was a talented, I think, singer/songwriter.

Unfortunately he was an undiagnosed bipolar. He killed himself in Nashville several months before his 38th birthday. He was New Orleans to the core and didn’t believe in gun control. He did believe in owning guns, though never when we lived together.

I’m not sure that his suicide was spur of the moment. He probably would have found a way without a gun. But he used a gun. This is the first time I have ever visualized that.

I loved him once madly. People loved us together. For awhile we were the perfect couple. But you can’t help a person who won’t help himself. He probably couldn’t help it. He needed help beyond any that I could find for him then. Not that I tried.

I honestly didn’t know what was wrong with him. For a long time I thought I wasn’t perfect enough. My “nickname” at work was Princess Perfect. Never found that flattering.

He couldn’t help me with my problems though he tried. I couldn’t help him with his problems. They were far worse. We were 28 and he thought that we were too old to accomplish anything. I thought life was just beginning.

We fought over that. We did fight over music though never to the extent in the story.. He did introduce me to the music of Tom Waits so I forgave him. Actually his friend, who lived in Park Slope when I first heard of it, introduced me to Wait’s music.

I spent much of my life hating Zachary. I didn’t know he had killed himself until Google began. His real name isn’t Zachary. Each year I find more references to him.

I honestly believe that he would have made it. He had many connections, though nobody could stand him later, and a great sound. I’m biased I know, but….A wonder of life is that persistence and honing talent can pay off.

He didn’t practice often. The way he practiced persistence was a turn off to everybody including me.

I have many Zachary stories throughout Courting, and many I haven’t told. Our relationship is the focal point of my memoir. I take my share of the blame. I excel at that.

“Stairway to Heaven” really is an exceptional song. I missed it when it came out as we were a household that listened to other music. I did insist on Clapton because I couldn’t live without him. But I have caught “Stairway…” in every re-run since.

“The whole search is for the unknown,…We’re always looking…”

“Are you coming?” Alex asked. He was tapping his knee as he waited while half humming/half singing “gonna give you my love….” that must have been playing on his Ipod. Impatience: the top of the con list. Incessant Zeppelin listening . Leanna wasn’t sure if that was pro, negative or neutral.

She remembered 1979 as the year of Three Mile island, Candies cork sandals, “Stairway to Heaven” and her late husband who would have crossed the street if he saw Jimmy Page or Robert Plant.

Jason, her husband was a protest singer/songwriter without a cause to protest. They had their biggest fights over music. He liked Pete Seeger. She idolized Clapton.

Once she almost threw a milk glass vase at him. She aimed low, too because his musical taste was blasphemous.

People would say they were really fighting over his inability or want to find employment. It really didn’t bother her. Her job writing training manuals and training the trainers was lucrative. Their tenement fifth floor walk up on East 6th Street was cheap and actually nice. They were probably the only people on the block with a cleaning woman.

As Jason only got out of bed during the day to pee, replenish his beer and eat, she couldn’t figure out how he could mess up the apartment so badly. She had a tendency to throw her clothes wherever. Her only household skill was cooking.

Every Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon they had an open house. A Polish girl from the neighborhood came three times a week. Leanna was called a JAP and uptown girl slumming for her use of household help. Jason couldn’t say anything as he benefited, barely worked, and thought cleaning was her job.

The night would end like every other night at Kenny’s Castaways, Folk City or Max’s. Jason didn’t usually like the music at Max’s but he liked free drinks.

Jason’s albums were reissued on CD eighteen years after his death. Leanna had met Alex when he emailed her to pitch a movie based on Jason’s life.

There was an instantaneous attraction. Alex didn’t dream. He acted. He written and directed some of her favorite movies. Of all the people who pitched a movie based on Leanna’s memoir, he wanted to remain closest to her truth.

Somebody finally understood that she really had loved Jason despite his complete inability to do anything people considered productive. And he had written songs that lived on after his death. Good songs that talked about more than protest but tragedy and love. Their love.

Leanna came with a loft in Tribeca she had moved to in 82 after Jason’s death. At 30 she was too young to call herself a widow. But she was. She had been married twice since Jason’s death. Neither marriage lasted more than three years.

She gut renovated before moving in, after the marriages, and once just because she wanted to. The only things she had from her marriage to Jason were books, albums and Fiestaware in all colors.

Leanna wasn’t sentimental. Twice a year she emptied her closets with the precision of the ultra-obsessed. Some time ago she had stopped throwing clothes around. It just sort of happened

During both marriages she kept the loft as she needed an easy exit.

Alex lived in a new building just south of hers. She thought she would hate mostly glass walls but was entranced by them. She liked listening to him play the grand piano while she wrote. They bounced ideas back and forth. Sometimes they would think the same thing at the same time.

This wasn’t like any love she had experienced before. It was pure fun. She was as impatient as he was. Their impatience almost melded. When she thought of them as two high energy people who connected, it seemed like a good thing.

Leanna didn’t need to make a list once she realized that if she married Alex she could sell the loft.

On April 30th there will be one day of blog silence. He just walked into a store, paid $571 and with that money bought a pistol and bullets. People want to get rid of the wrong amendment. I can’t be quiet about that. Guns directly kill. Only the search for religious freedom kills.

Will have 3WW later today or tomorrow. It’s always Wednesday here

Wrote this for a competition to Jazzfest in New Orleans. Must have lost It’s 147 words.

New Orleans, city of marching band funerals, voodoo, amazing food, jazz, Cajun and Creole music. New Orleans, city of people who dare put fun high up on life’s agenda.

New Orleans where Jazzfest means standing ten feet from Aaron Neville, suddenly you find him so sexy, you slow dance with your best friend. No other festival has you buying fried green tomatoes and crayfish.

In New Orleans, you make a special trip to the Camellia Grill for chocolate pecan pie. A Cajun friend takes you to a native restaurant, Suddenly you’re transported back in time.

You follow horn players blindly while marching to the beat. You pass shotgun houses, enter a bar, and hear a piano player/singer who makes you weep.

Once you fell in love with a man because he was from New Orleans. New Orleans casts its spell onto its natives. It’s a powerful mojo.

Only an impeachment hearing will bring out the truth. I hope the prosecutors hearing can bring out some semblance of what’s been going on. On April 25th people will be at the capitol asking for a hearing.

I have reached that stage in life where I pray that every student at Virgina Tech has a cell and could easily reach their parents
This is beyond belief. I used to believe in The Second Amendment for various reasons. I can’t anymore. IF GUNS AREN’T GOING TO BE OUTLAWED MAKE BULLETS VERY VERY EXPENSIVE
¢¢¢
Darianna nominated me for two bloggers choice awards

I don’t really believe in blogs competing against one another. I can’t even find my blog. And there’s a totally snarky category for “worst blog of all time.” Personally I find that offensive.

I do believe in bloggers solidarity. That all said, if you’re going to vote for me, when you get to the site put in courtingdestiny.com and it leads straight to my blog

But it’s a gray and dismal day. We had 6.5 inches of rain. What does that have to do with a blogging award? I always wanted to write “it’s a gray and dismal day.”

Thanks Darianna who is promoting one million blogs for peace a very worthy cause. They hope to have a million blogs by the fifth anniversary. I hope we’re out by then, but we do have an administration that believes in escalating the war.

G sent me Crate & Barrel’s Pia Vase page.

Yesterday I got particularly virulent spam from piatanidotcom. My middle name is Tani. It’s in the blog somewhere.
••••••••••

This isn’t a day to be at the computer or so I tell myself. It’s been pouring since the middle of the night. It took me a long time to wake up and realize that the sounds I heard were rain drops, and longer too remember to get up and close a window that left open surely would have caused a major flood.

A Barnes & Noble, at Astor Place, is closing because their rent is too high. If it’s too high for B&N?

A small bookstore owner mentioned how B&N forced Shakespeare & Co in my hood to close. I would have loved Shakespeare’s if not for the people who worked there, and maybe that played a part in its closing.

They let you know if they didn’t approve of a book you were buying. Why sell it if they deemed it not worthy? The reason is obvious. The editorializing not necessary.

They had a good mystery section but the workers didn’t seem to think mysteries were worthy. I tend to buy books from different sections, some considered “intellectually worthy,” and some not.

Were they trying to sell books or manage a small club of underemployed MFA’s and other literary types?

I mentioned this once at a small party and two out of the other five people had the same experience.

Perhaps we began to shop at B&N because nobody types you. Perhaps we began to shop at B&N because we felt more comfortable.

Perhaps Shakespeare’s went under because it didn’t treat all customers with respect

I wonder how the workers at Shakespeare’s would have greeted the proliferation of chick lit? I especially wonder that today because the second book that had its beginnings in my writing class, three years ago, just came out.

I read an interview with my writing teacher. He talked about the types of mistakes wanna be writers make; telling not showing and the like. Then he talked about organization, and how people who can’t organize a thought can’t organize a page let alone a book.

It’s not as if I feel so important that I think it was directed at me. But if he thought that about my work, I wish he would have told me rather than telling me how he saved my submission for last because he knew would always enjoy it.

I wish that when I contacted him for individual help last summer, he told me that I just wasn’t organized enough, rather than telling me that he was too busy and inviting me in to his next class.

There’s honesty and there’s honesty. Denigrating a person’s choice in books they’re buying is stupid when it comes from the people representing the book store. Telling a person that this or that problem hinders their marketability is hurtful but ultimately could be helpful.

Most of this book is written, yet I don’t dare shop it around because I haven’t come up with a good beginning. Each time I think I do, I come up with too many stories in one, and have to go further back into my life.

Honestly, I’m just not that interested in coming of age in high school stories. While I had a more than slightly interesting Senior Year, and probably some unique yet universal experiences, I was a kid with a completely different mentality than I had at 25. I feel the same way about college and I know I had fascinating experiences.

I’m much more interested in slow blooming coming of age while technically an adult stories. Maybe I do need to tell the high school and college stories. I have written most of them for one workshop or another.

My sister decided that my niece is old enough to hear some of my stories. I went to the school Jacquelin is going to now. I told her the real reason I was kicked out of Driver’s Ed. It’s not a pretty story. Maybe i do need to write it.

Thing is I have written, and rewritten, edited, revised, rewrote these stories so many times, I feel like a robot when I write them. Maybe that dispassion is needed. Being kicked out of Driver’s Ed led the way to many things.

Only I wasn’t ready to see that until now. I placed the blame on me. I’m prone to that.

I told the real story to my parents 20 years after the fact. They were the only people in town who didn’t know. I’m not going to say the reason I was kicked out, but it wasn’t true.

I shouldn’t have been too ashamed to tell my parents. They would have advocated for me, as they knew I had hidden disabilities that very possibly made it hard or impossible for me to learn to drive. I assume that was the reason they were given. Maybe I had to tell them. I don’t remember.

This is the school district that let me at twelve decide whether or not I wanted to be in the Honor’s Program. I’m really not willing to take this memoir back to Seventh Grade.

It’s so easy for me to write a synopsis when it comes to other writings and keep to it. When I come to my own life, the one thing I should be most expert at, I’m lost.

I know the story too well. There are no surprises, nothing to keep me fascinated. But then I come to certain realizations and realize that if I hadn’t replayed the story from so many different frames I would have never truly understood why things happened.

Maybe that’s the key to a good memoir, it allows the author to understand.