Fun, Funny, Fantastic: Imperfection

Fun, Funny, Fantastic: Imperfection

Imperfection

If you were on the honor roll or heavens, valedictorian, if you won every championship on every team you played on when you were young, this may be for you.

For a writer, there are few cringy-er acts than finding old writing, something you wrote from your youth or your angry days or your addicted days or way back when, when you thought you knew everything.

You cringe for your naivete, for your not-fully-developed “voice,” for your affectation, which just looks stupid decades later because using southern dialogue in a story, which you felt you knew so well, leaves readers reading pages of “ya’ll” and “critters” and other ridiculous, on-the-nose effects.

You just cringe because you cannot believe you wrote that.

But part of the cringe feeling is that we believe our output must not just be perfect, it must be exceptional and when we review almost anything we did way back when, that time period is reflected in what we did not yet know. Because that’s called growth and the luxury (not everyone gets it) of lots of time.

Here’s the first paragraph of the first short story I published for which I was paid. I got paid $300, which seemed then (and now) like magic to me. Not a comma was edited. Not a word was changed. These wonderful publishers published “Español” in its entirety. Then they sent me money and a thank you card.

GLIMMER TRAIN STORIES

Español, by Cathie Beck

He was our only source of income. We walked at least a block behind him. Always. That was our safety range. Most afternoons he stood on Eastern Avenue behind Our Lady of Blessed Redemption Grade School, though Mary Theresa said she saw him on Michigan Street near the kickball diamond sometimes. Mary Theresa was my best friend and the third oldest of twelve children. We were both nine years old that fall.

Click here to read the rest of “Espanol.”

Go ahead and laugh. I did. By the way, this is a true story.

And I hope there are no little girls earning their Ding Dong money the way Mary Terry and I once did.

Yikes.

Things I Find Cool

Miss Rachel gave this baker a shout-out. (The next 24 hours earned Ashley her next month’s rent.)

Try to Be Nice

A lovely, retired pal of mine is a superb cook and now cake baker/decorator.

In addition to baking cakes for friends and family, he makes exquisite, one-of-a-kind homemade cakes, crafted specifically for a foster child for their birthday or other milestone event.

It is all a pure donation of time and effort.

The organization he is with is called, “Cake4Kids.” (cake4kids.org)

He gets no applause. The parties involved do not meet (but he often gets wild letters of thanks + photos from recipients).

If you’d like to shoot him some cash or connect with Freddy, he can be reached at freddypage20@gmail.com.