Tag Archives: Culture

I did a bad, bad thing

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Pray for me

Pray for me. I need all the help I can get.

When I was a kid, my mom had a very strong opinion of RIGHT and WRONG.  I write those words in caps because, that’s the way I heard them.

“Teresa, this is RIGHT.”

“Teresa, that was WRONG.”

I remember a couple of really harsh lessons she taught.

One of them was after discovering my coat pockets stuffed to overflowing with stolen candy.  (“That is WRONG!”)  Taking a half-dozen kids to the dime store was no treat for my Mom, so when we arrived home and she came across my misappropriated sweets, I’m sure the last thing she wanted to do was The Right Thing.  But, she loaded us all back up in the station wagon, drove us into town and made me go in and apologize profusely to the manager of the store.

Another time my little brother, J. and I were riding in the back seat of our old brown station wagon.  When we were a half mile from home, he decided, against all previous indications of my mother’s hatred for people who litter (“That is WRONG!”) to toss his soda can out of the open window.  Mom yanked the car to the shoulder of the highway and screeched to a halt.  She demanded that he get out of the car and go pick it up.  While he was searching through the tall grass in the ditch, she drove away.  When he made it home, he apologized profusely.

These lessons made a strong impression on me, so, last week, when my neon-green hi-lighter flew out of my hand and hit the sleeping woman next to me on the plane, I knew my mother would have wanted me to apologize profusely.

Was it my fault that the woman didn’t realize what had happened?  Or, that she was unable to hear me apologize over the music blasting through her ear buds?  Or, that she ignored me and went back to sleep?  No, Mom, it wasn’t.

And yet, the words from my childhood continued to ring in my ears.  “Teresa, that is WRONG.”

Okay, so I…sorta didn’t give you the whole story.  The marker that flew through the air didn’t, uh…exactly, uh… have a cap on it and…when it hit the woman’s forehead, it sorta… left a neon-green bindi dot. And I let her walk off the plane without telling her.

Now I’m waiting for my mother to pull up in our old brown station wagon and drive me to the woman’s house so I can apologize profusely.

What Have They Got That I Ain’t Got…Courage!

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Besides my small wonderful WTF Critique Group, I also belong to a larger group of professional writers.  We meet once a week to talk about writing and then the moderator reads someone’s work and the entire group has an opportunity to critique it.

Last semester the moderator read a heart-wrenching story about a young boy who was raped by his father.  It was graphic and uncomfortable and I squirmed in my chair, at the same time, admiring the beauty of the work.  At the end of the story, the moderator asked for critiques.  The subject matter wasn’t anything I felt comfortable with critiquing, so I kept quiet.  The oldest woman in the room raised her hand and said in her thin wavering voice, “I think it would be more realistic if the box of condoms was in the dresser drawer instead of being on top of the dresser.”  She was right and I admired her for being able to distance herself from the emotion of the story and focus on the mechanics of writing.

A few weeks ago, a soft-porn piece was read.  Again, I was too embarrassed by the story to even imagine critiquing it.  The young woman in our WTF Group raised her hand.  “Oh, no,” I thought.  “Please don’t encourage this guy.”  Like the writer in the previous story, she commented on the mechanics of the story, all the while talking about jiggling bottoms and erections.  It was the right way to critique the story.

Another time a story was read that was peppered with the “N” word.  I sat uncomfortably through the first few times it was used, but then got up and walked out.  I returned after the story was finished and sat down next to another member of WTF.  He raised his hand and courageously stated his feeling about the use of the word and then went on to suggest ways to make the story better without it.

I admire these people greatly, for having the strength and fortitude to disengage their emotions from the story and Be A Professional Writer.  It is something I’m aspiring to be, but it seems, right now, I ain’t got the courage.