Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/ladychatterleysrash.mp3

or read his story below:

LADY CHATTERLEY’S RASH AND OTHER UNWRITTEN SEQUELS

The small girl student walks up to me and hands me her very first personally-authored book.

“Will you sign this for me?” she asks.

I pause for a tick and try to process this, before replying.

You see, I am sitting at a portable table in the hallway of a grammar school somewhere in North Alabama some years ago, a hallway crowded with milling students and teachers and…authors. I am one of five authors being spotlighted today, some famous, some somewhat known to a few readers (my category). We are all guest speakers and honored personalities invited to the school to encourage kids to produce literary works.

For some reason, each child has been assigned the task of writing and illustrating and binding an original book. The informal session going on right now provides the beginning authors a chance to mingle with accomplished authors. As proof of their participation, the students have to get the guest authors to sign their freshly produced works–a reversal of the usual author-signings common in the book hawking world.

“Will you sign my book?”

I look at this expectant child and blurt out, “I’ll be happy to sign the book–but will you allow me to read it first?” She looks startled that any stranger would want to read her work, especially a stranger accustomed to signing his own books for fans. She nods enthusiastically.

I examine the slender volume and begin to read her story, a tale of dragons and princesses and adventures, colorfully illustrated and meticulously designed. I finish, look up at its nervous author, and say, “I enjoyed this very much.” She beams.

I wonder what I can say to her that she can carry with her and perhaps remember years later.

“Have you started writing the sequel?”

Her brow furrows. “What’s a sequel?”

“What happens the next day?” I point at the dragon and princess.

A light switches on inside her eyes. I can actually see it. Her face beams. She almost hops up and down but controls her excitement. “Oh, I know what happens the next day! Can I write about that, too?”

“Yes, you can.”

I sign her book and she skips away, anxious to begin her neverending tale.

I think about all the sequels and sequels of sequels that have been written, are being written, may never be written. And I am happy that I have just met a fellow traveller, one who, like me, knows that no story ever ends.

Which is why I never place a period when I cease my narrative. It always goes forth to the next day and the next and the next, you know

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: 

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/germmanmanifesto.mp3

or read his story below:

THE GERM MAN MANIFESTO

Thanks to a nurturing upbringing, I have always been aware of germs and their place in my life. This awareness can be troubling. Or a bit silly.

At a local restaurant, I take a men’s room break. At the same time, an aproned server hastily enters a stall, performs his necessary bodily function and rushes out the door. He doesn’t flush. He doesn’t wash.

Now, as I prepare to re-enter the diner, I have to touch the same door knob he has just touched. And me without my surgical gloves. I return to the table, wiping right hand on  jacket in some kind of leap-of-faith hope that the germs will leave my skin, grow bored of the jacket, and magically disappear.

I’m ready to order a meal and look up to find the very same server politely awaiting instructions, pencil and pad in hand. This is the person who will serve my food, the same one who earlier brought in the place settings and coasters and napkins and handed my granddaughter crayons and coloring book. My wife wonders why I’m just sitting here, staring at the waiter’s hands, temporarily unable to speak.

I finally do what I usually do. Rather than cause an unpleasantness that would be the only thing my family remembers about the evening, I take a deep breath, pretend I’ve seen nothing, and place my order. Everybody has a good time, but I can’t help recalling those glory days way back when our favorite restaurant is El Gringo’s on Crestwood Boulevard. El Gringo’s sells a lot of iced tea each day, so a large tray table of pre-filled glasses sits against a wall. When we arrive to dine, a busboy quickly directs the five of us to a table. While we are being seated, I gaze over Liz’s head at the busboy, watching him go to the iced tea cart, stick all four fingers and thumb a couple of inches into each glass, pick the five of them up, and bring them to our table. He does remember to dry his fingers on a filthy cloth hanging from his belt. Ah, another local meal at another local restaurant. Family bliss comes in small doses.

My life with germs is not an easy one, but I do remember some things I’ve been taught, some of which might actually be true.

Germs are everywhere all the time.

Some germs are germier than others.

You can’t get rid of germs.

Germs are inconvenient.

You can see germs. At least in your worst imaginings.

You can get on with daily life by ignoring germs.

You can lower the germ population in certain instances.

Germs can be moved out of one place and chased to another place. The Leaf Blower process.

Germs R Us.

Aside from these thoughts, I find that avoidance is a wonderful coping tool, so my attacks on germs are only spasmodic. I fight the good fight by quickly retrieving a dropped chip from the floor, hoping that a three-second rule applies. When a friend sneezes into his hands and then reaches out to shake mine, I try to smile through it and then head for the Purell. When an uncovered dish lolls about overnight after a party, I quietly dispose of its contents before anybody comes to claim it. And, when in the dental chair, I just close my eyes at the infractions all about me.

Germ warfare is important but largely ineffective unless you pay very, very close attention.

But if you constantly do that, you  won’t have any fun at all

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/searsroebuckdoubledipped.mp3

or read his story below:

THE SEARS ROEBUCK DOUBLE DIPPED

CHOCOLATE COVERED PEANUT CLUSTER RUSH

Very busy day at the bookstore. Arrive home afterward. Grab snack and peruse newspapers. Avoid any article or media blast about disturbing news of the day, which pretty well encompasses any and all news. Succeed at this. Liz arrives home and we discuss her just-completed enjoyable presentation at the Alabama Writers’ Conclave. We decide to skip the Conclave dinner because she is tired and I am agoraphobic. A great match.

After dining and cleaning up, she slips off to her social media and I slip upstairs to don jammies and discard shoes. After staring glumly at part of a streamed melodrama I sneak downstairs to see what’s what in the refrigerator. What’s this? Half of a six-ounce bag of chocolate covered peanuts! I ascend the stairs and begin munching on this delicacy, a pale representation of what chocolate covered peanuts once were.

I’m teleported back to early-teenage time in Tuscaloosa, riding my second-hand thin-tired bicycle over curbs and along railroad tracks on the way home from the old Victorian home housing the public library. I head for Sears, Roebuck and Company down on 15th Street, park the unchained bike (who’s going to bother stealing it?) and head indoors for the Sears candy counter.

You don’t remember how the Sears candy counter is structured because you aren’t around when I am a teen. It is a free-standing island in the middle of the store, a blocked-off area surrounded on four sides by glass display cases filled with every dentist’s dream–tons of sweet confections. The ritual is simple. I slowly encircle the rows of candy displays, gazing carefully at each and every item, imagining the taste and texture and heft of all these wonders, until I return to the spot where I began. Then, invariably, I do the exact thing I’ve done a hundred times before. I approach the counter wherein the double-dipped chocolate covered peanut clusters beckon. 

I wait patiently for the candy counter clerk to notice me, never once removing my eyes from the peanuts, afraid someone will buy them up before I get my shot. The clerk comes over, stares down at me over the scales, and asks, “May I help you?” I try to contain my excitement and say in a steady if sometimes cracking voice, “Yes, I’d like some double dipped chocolate covered peanut clusters, please.” “How much do you want?” she asks. I look at the per-ounce price and quickly count the change in my pockets. “Uh, two dollars’ worth, please.” The clerk opens her  side of the case to access the candy, fills an aluminum scoop with just under the correct amount ordered, and places the peanuts in a white paper bag. Then, she does a most remarkable thing, a thing few clerks know how to do these days. She weighs the bag, notes that it needs just a few more peanuts to rise to the two-dollar mark, scoops those up and bags them, folds the top of the sack, collects my money and hands over the goods.

The  other clerk, who is absent today, is the one no-one wants to deal with. She is the clerk who scoops up too many peanuts at once, bags them, then tilts the bag to empty the correct number down to the two-dollar mark. The first clerk makes me feel I’m getting something extra, the second clerk appears to be taking something back from me.

A life’s lesson I carry with me to this day.

I love going to Fife’s Cafeteria these day in downtown Birmingham for precisely the same reason I used to go to Sears. The servers in the line always add a little something to each serving, as if they’re slipping me an extra treat.

Back in the shop this week, I attempt to treat each customer as if there’s something extra in the book bag. I throw in a bookmark, give a modest discount, add a smile and a “hope you have a great day,” hoping that here and there, a customer will “get it” and appreciate the small attentions I try to pay.

Even if the customer doesn’t notice, I do…and I go home feeling just a wee bit better about the world.

And, now and then, I search in vain for some great double dipped chocolate covered peanut clusters served in a sparkling white paper bag

 © 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook