Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary: https://youtu.be/KENRqo7glmk

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Life, actually…

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HOW TO MURDER AN AUTHOR

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During my Down South lifetime, I’ve met many unofficial members of the Deceased Authors Society.

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These are people who long ago abandoned their hopes of becoming writers. People whose earliest bursts of inspiration were tamped down by well-meaning tutors.

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Here’s an example:

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Remember how great the feeling was in grammar school, when your teacher gave you your first writing assignment? 

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“Write an essay called ‘What I Did During My Summer Vacation.’”

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Remember how you were first a little scared about having to write a whole page all by yourself? This takes courage.

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Then, one night before the assignment is due, you begin to write the first sentence about how much fun you had last summer.

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As you labor with each word, Number Two pencil in hand, you begin to actually FEEL the story. You re-experience joy and pain as you write,

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“My dog Brownie fell in the lake and we saved him. I got bitten by three wasps. We got to eat ice cream three times on vacation.” And so on.

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 Then, because you can feel the emotions behind each word you laboriously block-letter on lined notebook paper, you are certain the reader will feel just as strongly as you.

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You just know that lucky reader will feel the pain of the sting, smell the wet dog Brownie, experience Brownie’s rapid heart beat as you hug him close and dry him off, re-live that ice cream headache.

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You at last finish the assignment, neatly re-copied, hoping that you spelled everything correctly, though you can’t figure out how to spell Kaopectate.

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Next morning you beam as you hand in your paper, knowing that this is going to be a great year, a year in which your thoughts and adventures will be recognized and appreciated.

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What actually happens is, you get the paper back next day with RED MARKS all over it. You misspelled Kaopectate. You forgot to put a period at the end of the second sentence. You failed to indent at the first paragraph. One sentence was missing a verb. And so on.

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After you read the red marks six or seven times, you go back over everything to see if your teacher wrote anything on the front or back of the paper about your experience.

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Did the teacher feel the wasp? Did the teacher laugh and sympathize with poor, wet Brownie? Did those wasp stings make teacher recall childhood?

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No sign of anything but RED MARKS.

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It takes years to sort your feelings out, to realize you’ll never be a real author.

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And back then, the next time your teacher is about to hand out an assignment, you get a funny feeling in your stomach, vertical lines appear between your eyebrows, and you began to dread opening yourself up by writing down your joys and sorrows, just to have them ignored and, instead, RED MARKED.

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You might have wound up like other adults I meet: “Well, I don’t keep a diary or write stories. I’m just not good at writing. I could never do that!”

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As members of the Deceased Authors Society, they will never share their stories, never view their own experiences as being worthwhile.

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This story, these stories, often have happier endings. Once grown and seasoned, many of us would-be writers develop a get-out-of-writers-block-FREE attitude. We awaken to the idea that there are no longer any teachers or RED MARK advocates hovering about.

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As members of the Deceased Authors Society cast away their shackles, some of them blossom into full-speed-ahead writers who, each day, work hard to make up for lost time.

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Next time you meet an author, ask about those RED MARK memories. See what hoops they had to jump through in order to get on with it.

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In my case, I can’t stop writing. When I look back at those perceived barriers, I think, “What barriers? I don’t have time for barriers.”

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Watch out—next story starts as soon as I sharpen my Number Two pencil

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Hear Jim tell his story: https://youtu.be/EgK0LFk-xvk

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Life, actually…

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MELMAC THE MAGICIAN ARISES!

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I am still a kid, just a kid, back here in the 1950s.

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During bumper car travels into the past, I can still peek at things that once were, things that once happened.

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This creates smiles and grimaces. Mainly smiles.

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I am holding in my hand a magician’s magic wand, freshly retrieved from a Christmas-gift illustrated cardboard suitcase of tricks and illusions, the Mandrake the Magician Kit.

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My first lesson as a magician is the sudden realization that merely waving this white-tipped black rod will not accomplish anything. In movies, the correct incantation and wand swoosh are all it takes to make something unscientific but wonderful happen.

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Not so in real life.

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First, I must spend hours reading the magic trick manual, then more hours practicing sleight-of-hand procedures, then–ghastly thought!–gathering bystanders to see whether I can fool them.

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In the long run these efforts diminish and I go on to other hobbies.

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But for this moment, I need to try a visual caper that will wow an audience.

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Melmac! That’s the answer! Melmac!

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Let me explain.

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One of the funniest tricks I’ve ever seen is the one in which a skillful prestidigitator manages to remove a tablecloth from a fancily-set dinner table without upsetting anything. In one fell swoop, he snatches the cloth so fast that the dishes and cutlery and glassery are not aware of the change from cotton to polished wood.

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That would be, like, crazy, man! (I obtain my enthusiastic lingo from show biz.)

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For years, one of my after-dinner chores at home is to clear the table and neatly deliver everything to the kitchen sink, where sister Barbara will do the washing.

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One night, when no-one is looking, I rehearse my act. I carefully stack every possible item up and down my outstretched arms and attempt to make just one trip from dining to washing. This requires a finely-tuned sense of balance, a lot of luck, and a lot of wobbling.

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When everything crashes to the floor in one embarrassing tumble, I get a lot of attention from the family. My only defense is that fact that I only try this caper when everything is unbreakable.

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I am saved by Melmac dishes, thick peanut-butter drinking glasses, detergent box premium stainless steel, and plastic containers.

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Everything survives but my self-esteem. This is something I won’t try again till I’m alone in the house.

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But I still dream of the tablecloth swoosh. Maybe one more attempt…

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You know the rest of the story.

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Once alone, I set the table and prepare to expertly and rapidly remove the cloth.

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I wave the wand. I flail my hands about like any good magician.

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I close my eyes, make a wish, and yank real hard

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/wherehaveallthewarmhandsgone.mp3

or read Jim’s column below:

WHERE HAVE ALL THE WARM HANDS GONE?

I am officially out of popcorn, right in the middle of the movie. I have also slurped enough Coca Cola from a wax-coated paper cup that the public restroom at the Bama Theatre is beckoning to me.

Right here, right now, it’s about 1950 A.D. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I have just held hands on purpose with an actual girl for the first time in my decade-long life. Up till now, holding hands with girls has only been a forced-march event. When being required to square dance in grammar school, I clasp all kinds of hands, some of which feel kind of nice, but the fact that I have to do it always kills the moment.

I don’t know how it happens, but Patricia White and I are sitting elbow to elbow in the dark, avidly watching a full-length movie, and suddenly we are holding hands. Holy cow! It feels funny, funny because I don’t know what to do next. Neither of us acknowledges the fact that we are holding hands. We stare straight ahead. I don’t know what she is thinking. I don’t know what she is feeling, mainly because I am too busy wondering what I am thinking and feeling.

Patricia’s hand is smaller than mine, warmer than mine, and sweat does occur. Can’t tell whether it’s my sweat or hers, but hand-holding definitely seems to involve temperature, softness and humidity.

Now I have to break the magic spell, let go of her hand, and dash to the men’s room upstairs. This is an excellent time to escape the movie, too, since there is smooching on the screen and I’d just as soon avoid watching that.

Oops! What if I am supposed to smooch with Patricia? Is this part of the hand-holding deal? I hesitate returning from the restroom, because I don’t know what is going to happen next. Up till today, I’ve spent my life attending Saturday movies with my buddy Elmo Riley or brother Ronny. Movies have almost always been about Guy Time. I’m already missing that.

Eventually, I return to my seat next to Patricia, but the magic spell has evaporated. There is no more hand-holding, but we do watch the remainder of the film and giggle unnaturally now and then. We head for the bus stop and go our separate ways, but we both know that a First-Time thing has happened in our lives. We just don’t know what to think of it.

It will be years before I learn how to smooch. I’ll get to smooching eventually, but right now, all I can do is reminisce about the Good Old Days when Bo Riley or Ronny and I would hop a bus, head for the Ritz Theatre, watch a double feature complete with two cartoons, a serial installment, and lots of action-filled previews, and eat all the popcorn and glug all the carbonated fluid we can hold.

And, now and then, I also reminisce about Patricia White’s left hand and how wonderfully perplexing it was to hold hands with a girl on purpose for the first time ever

© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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