THERE GOES WHO I WAS | redclaydiary.com

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/1l6CNGVp66w

or read his story below…

Life, actually…

THERE GOES WHO I WAS

Roy Rogers is chasing down those Gopher Creek gunmen. Shiny pistol drawn, vertical-lined frown of intensity showing focus and determination, golden steed Trigger pounding the trail. The stalking is about to bear fruit…

I turn the page of my Whitman pictorial cover book, ready to read the fate of Roy and the pursued bandits.

Oops! The brittle pulpy paper has broken loose. The next two pages are missing. Arrggh! Will I ever learn what comes next? I wonder.

I’m sitting on the floor of the bedroom I share with brother Ronny. The tattered book on my lap awaits the next suspenseful moment. What will I do now? Will I angrily discard the rest of the volume?

The book cannot speak aloud, nor can it defend itself. Only words on thick pages can forward the plot.

I scour the room for the absentee book parts. I retrieve a walking stick and scrape beneath the bottom of the bunk bed. I riffle through old comic books and paperbacks, peek beneath socks and shirts. Nothing.

I sigh deeply. My compulsion to read each and every word in every book dominates the moment. My to-do list now includes going to the county library in search of the Gopher Creek caper. I am philosophical. I weigh other options.

Wait—what if I write down what I imagine happens next in Roy’s adventure? I could become co-author! This is an original thought. It excites me. It provides a peek into my imagination. In a split second, I become a writer-to-be.

Distractions suddenly take me away from these fleeting thoughts. Playmates call out, refrigerated snacks beckon, tangled shoelaces dominate. I don’t return to these authorship yearnings for some time. But the idea endures.

Eons later, while I compose these thoughts, I wonder whether the Gopher Creek Roy Rogers Trigger episode planted some kind of seed. I am now a writer, so this is possible, isn’t it?

Or maybe I just needed something to occupy my mind while spending yet another day being a human