This is something I wrote when I was eleven or twelve, for a sixth grade English assignment. I’ve posted it before, but since it relates to my previous post in a number of ways — accidents, middle school, and women’s lib — I figured I’d brush it off and post it again. Considering this is the kind of thing I was writing in middle school, it’s surprising that my old school friend was so stunned by my book’s voice.
Jamie
6-Y
English
Me, Myself and I
One dark, cold night while my mother just finished dinner of knockwurst and sourcraut and beer she felt me hitting inside her. She knew I was coming soon. At about 12:30 my mother went to the hospital where the most fantastic, curious, spectacular child was born at 1:20 am. I was chubby and full of hair on my head. I weighed in at about 7 pounds 8 ouces. After staying for a while at the hospital I went to my apartment in Summit where they just recently added onto.
When I was young, about 6 or less months old, my mother nicknamed me thud because I would always fall off of things such as bookcases, beds, etc. I was always moving and getting into things and messing things up.
By the age of three, I was drawing pictures on everything with anything I could get my hands on. In the middle of kindergarten I moved to where I live now. About a month later, I fell on my lip and I can still remember the blood that splattered all over the bathtub. I needed stitches and when they took them out it was messed up and now I have a big lip.
My first interest in becoming a surgeon came in fourth grade and now I have books and rat brains and kits. I have other hobbies too besides falling off things. They are dissecting, writing and making movies with my friend Jerry. By fifth grade we made seven films and wrote a bunch of humor magazines and dissected 2 bull frogs, one grasshopper, one crayfish, and four tree frogs. I would never kill an animal, especially a wild one, but the same for domestic. I am also a male chauvenist and am against women’s lib definitly!
After complaining about our heat for several weeks, using space heaters to keep warm, our building management finally sent over a couple of guys to fix our drafty windows. We have three bays with four windows each — a total of twelve panes. The guys took them out, one by one, and replaced each window’s worn out insulation. It was roughly 20F outside and I put on a coat and a hat while they worked.
Neither of the guys spoke English very well, I think they were Polish, and it was hard for me to understand much of what they said so I wasn’t sure I heard right when, as they were about to put in the final window, the boss told me that I wouldn’t be able to open them anymore.
“Huh?”
“You can’t open,” he said, and mimed trying to open one.
“For how long?”
“For always.”
“What do you mean? I can’t open the windows ever? That’s ridiculous.”
Both of the workers shrugged.
“What if we burn something on the stove? What if we just want some fresh air, what happens come summertime and the blazing sun turns the place into a greenhouse?”
“I understand,” said the boss, “but the building don’t wanna pay.”
“Pay for what?”
He pointed the window frame and showed me that the mechanics for opening the window had completely rusted. “The windows are ten years old, this part needs to be replaced in all the windows,” he said. “But they don’t wanna pay.” He fished out his original estimate, which included replacing the parts, and showed me how the building manager had crossed the items off the list. “He say, just fix the draft, that’s it. I tell him the windows won’t open, he says just fix the draft.”
“That’s unacceptable. And I’m sure it’s a code violation.”
The guy shrugged. “You tell them and then we come back to fix it. I try to tell him, I tell him it cheaper to do this all at once, but he say no, just fix the draft.”
It’s par for the course with our building management. I expect it will be another several weeks, if not months, before we get it sorted out. In the meantime, the windows are still drafty.
I went to see the orthopedist again. After I had new X-Rays taken, I was led to an examination room and told to wait. A few minutes later, the orthopedist’s assistant came in and called up my X-Rays on a computer screen.
“Oh, nice. Good. Excellent. Looks great.”
“The pow-pow-power of positive thinking,” I said, but when she tilted the screen in my direction, and I saw the X-Ray for myself, the bone still looked pretty smashed up to me.
When the doctor came in, she said the same thing as her assistant had said: “Very good. Excellent.” She pointed to what looked like a sloppy weld surrounding the break and said it was all new bone. “It’s looking really good.”
“If you say so.”
“With new bone like this, not everything shows up on the X-Ray. There’s more here than we see. I know, we usually say six to eight weeks for the bone to heal, but it’s generally more like ten to twelve. The first six weeks are a protective phase, where the goal is to keep the bone immobilized while it begins to heal.”
“How about the sling?”
“You’re done with the sling. You don’t need to wear it anymore. We’ll get you set up with physical therapy, and see you back in another six weeks. Judging from what I see here, you should be done by then.”
Physical therapy. Let the fun begin.
Several months ago, a girl I was friends with in middle school came across my website and contacted me out of the blue. We traded a few small-talk emails before she got around to asking me about the novel I wrote. I’m not sure how she knew I even wrote one, but if you google my name, a few links still come up. I suppose that’s what happened. She asked if she could get a copy.
“I have several copies laying around,” I told her, “but I’m a little hesitant to send you one. When I first finished it I was really proud about it and gave them away like party favors, but I have mixed feelings about it these days. If you really want one I can send you one, but you have to promise not to send me any critiques.”
Not that I was expecting her to be too critical. For the most part, people who read it seem to like it, but I know it’s not a masterpiece. That’s not to say I’m not proud to have written a book — proud to have finished it — but I know it has faults. I’m not really interested in hearing about them anymore.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “My lips are zipped.”
The other day she wrote to tell me she was having trouble getting through the book. “I’m on page 97,” she said. “Does Drew ever get to a point when he likes anything about women?”
Apparently she felt the main character was a misogynist:
“”The inner angry voice is pretty loud. The anger is palpable on every page. In the language, in the flashbacks, the memories. Does Drew give any woman any credit for their role in life? Does he value anything they offer? You said you handed these books out like party favors. Seems a little diabolical to celebrate. Understandable given the influences of our time, but I guess I expected you would hold a higher regard for women given your own background. Are you married? Did you give this book to your mother-in-law to read? I’m curious to know what she thought about it.”
Asking if I let my mother-in-law read it is like saying, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
I told her, “Yes I am married, and yes I love my wife, and yes I treat her with kindness and respect. But no, I have not let my mother-in-law read it. Deborah’s parent’s are born again Pentecostal fundamentalists who live in rural western Pennsylvania and rarely leave the house except to go shopping and attend church. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the only thing they read is the bible. I see no reason to even tell them I wrote a book, much less offer to let them read it. My wife, on the other hand, did read it, and she married me anyway. And, by the way, would it surprise you to know that the book’s editor awas a woman, and that she, in fact, appears in the book?”
Bravo.
No need to be defensive, Jamie. It’s all yours and I never said you you should be ashamed of yourself.
Just because a female editor is in the book doesn’t mean it’s not anti-women. But that’s mine. And I’m not ashamed to say it.
So much for keeping her lips zipped.
