This week I’m posting “Saved” to the Stories menu of this blog. It’s a story I wrote in the late 90s and was never quite happy with. I wrote it in first-person and sent it out, it got rejected, that’s okay, I rewrote it in third-person. I sent it out in third-person, it got rejected, but I didn’t mind, I wasn’t happy with it, I rewrote it in second-person. I sent it out, I still wasn’t happy with it, I hadn’t heard back yet, but that’s all right, I rewrote it again, in fourth-person for all I know.
Then I heard back. Gulf Coast had it and wanted to publish it, would I be so kind as to send a copy on 3.5″ floppy? Shit! Where was the version I sent them? Was I even sure which version it was? Could I ask them? Shit-shit-shit…. I dug deep into my backups, into the backups of my backups, cross-matched the file date-stamp with the database entry tracking my submissions, and sent them what I was pretty sure was the correct version. It was, and they published it in early 2002.
When I was a little girl, I had a couple of Breyer horses and a rat-haired Barbie doll. And dirt. Lots and lots of blistering, rock-hard dirt. I’d dig around in it and make lakes for my horses, decorated with twigs and rocks and the occasional horned toad, which I liked to pretend was a dog.
My dad was an atheist, though, and I remember how worried I was. Your soul, daddy, your everlasting soul! I was sure he’d fall into the fire before I could bring him around.
Too late now, for both of us. I wonder where he’s gone.
My son thought I was an atheist. I was surprised to find this out, just as he was surprised to discover I’m not.
I was going to say something else, but I’ll say this instead: my blog has been bombarded by spam these past thirty hours; it’s good to know real people are still out there (the mosquitoes certainly think so).