#scintilla13: Good.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with my friends Onyi and Dominique, two whip-smart and artfully snarky women with beautiful hair. This is my response to one of the Day 7 prompts, Write about someone who was a mentor for you. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Sign up at scintillaproject.com and follow us at @ScintillaHQ.

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I had plenty of teachers and adults I looked up to, and lots that were encouraging to me, but I can think of few who truly attempted to mentor me or push me farther than I was already going. The one I’m writing about today is the one I feel made the most difference.

Behind his back, I called him Nich (rhymes with hitch and stitch but never never bitch). Not as an insult; I admired him with every creative urge I had. I wish you could have met him, because that would have meant that we were together back in the 90s on the third floor, trading drafts with each other and trying to predict what he would say when he read them. He said very little, for a professor, someone whose job it was to hold our attention and make us see what we’d been missing. He was not one of those who loved to hear himself speak so much as he loved the writing he assigned, works by the best novelists and story writers in the business. I learned to read the way he wanted me to, which was more carefully and critically than I’d ever been asked to read before. I took every course the man taught, worked my schedule around his, added an extra sixty-mile roundtrip to my week just to take his fiction workshop. I would not have read the Beats or post-Beats so rigorously, seeking order and meaning out of chaos, without him. I would never have read “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” three times or Revenge of the Lawn at all. 

Nich was short, for a guy, but he usually wore shitkickers. There was something about his stature and the heels of those shoes that was less Cowboy Gone Yankee and more Prince, somehow, genteel and precise and a little highfalutin. Unlike so many of our instructors, he learned our names, all of them, and always called us Mr. and Miss, possibly in an effort to civilize us. And right when he’d civilized us, just enough, he showed us how to break rules, swiftly and cleanly as breaking a chicken’s neck.

I worked harder for him than I had for any other teacher, ever, possibly because he was so stinting with his praise. A tiny penciled “Good.” in the margin of a paper would carry me for weeks; I still have some of these “Good.”s saved fifteen years later. A question mark, also tiny, also penciled, could wreck me. What had I been thinking? Had I rushed? Had I thought that was right? What would Raymond Carver do?

The answer, almost always, was to throw away the sentence.

Fiction Workshop was the best, most concentrated dose of Nich, and worth every inconvenience. I took it three times: 264, 364, 464. I would have found a way to do it a fourth time if they would have let me. We read weekly, wrote weekly. Stray marks in the margins were there to be agonized over, but the weekly workshop packet was the sweet prize of the course. Every week Nich chose a few of our assignments to put into a photocopied packet for discussion. When he chose mine I felt unstoppable and talented and terrified, and I learned to sit quietly without defending my words even when people didn’t get what I had clearly put down on paper. CLEARLY, Y’ALL. I visited him for office hours after one workshop that didn’t go well, when a story I thought had real potential had been met with indifference by most and hostility by others. “You’re going to have to get used to people discussing your work. It’s going to happen every time you put it out there, and you’re going to be read by a lot of people. That’s a lot of people, some of whom aren’t going to see what I see.” What a difference it was to hear this specific view of my capabilities, instead of the wembley sorts of encouragement I’d gotten from others. And with built-in failure ramifications, the kind you can learn to survive! You’re smart; you can do anything you want in life is not the comfort some people think it is.

At the end of senior year, he recommended me for a prize and assigned me a long final project. He mailed it back to me before I left for Georgia, with a long typewritten letter filled with encouragement and incisive analysis—brusque with my shortcomings and yet approving of my strengths. He recommended a few little magazines that he thought would be a good fit for my work, and wished me, as you do, all the best.

Writing about him today was difficult, and not just because there was so much to him that I could never do him any justice. Mostly, it’s because I feel like I let him down in some way by not having a short story collection and a couple of novels by now, that the curt but bolstering check-ins during his office hours did not result in the kind of work that would have made him proud of me. I have no string of publications, no fellowship, no grants, no MFA. I am not read by a lot of people (although you have Nich’s permission to not enjoy what you read here, and I’m to shut up and take it). At the same time, I wouldn’t say I’ve given up on this particular plan, either. Sometimes when I reread my work, I hear it in his voice, whiskey-dark and southern accented, and sometimes I can picture the spot in the margin where that tiny penciled “Good.” would go.

#scintilla13: snotbubble girl

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with my friends Onyi and Dominique, two whip-smart and artfully snarky women with beautiful hair. This is my response to one of the Day 6 prompts, Write about a chance meeting that has stayed with you ever since. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Sign up at scintillaproject.com and follow us at @ScintillaHQ.

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I have been trying to write this post, thinking about times when the content of my character was tested. I fail these tests just about as often as I pass them, and even when I pass I generally squeak through with one of those 72 percents that would have earned me side-eye from my mother. And maybe because they’re murky sorts of things, I don’t feel like writing one of them today, when I’m chilled to the bone from shoveling in a whipping wind. So I chose the chance meeting prompt instead, even though I have very few of those experiences. I do have this one, though. Consider the title a trigger warning.

Last summer, I complained a lot when I showed up at this blog, because I was busy and generally unhappy and sweaty and lonely. I was unfit company in person, too, so that lonely stuff was not just due to Myron already being here in Winnipeg having started his new and scrumptious job. I was envious and resentful of the person who would end up buying my house because it was so lovely, and all sorts of things I’d always wanted to upgrade were only now being done for someone else. (Not Throw Cushions.) I was incensed by the workmen and contractors who blew my schedules. If screaming in frustration would have done any good, I would have screamed, daily, for a good hour or so. Instead, the only results would have been upset neighbors and a sore throat for me.

I carried my black cloud with me one day when I walked to the end of the block, a few feet away from our road’s mailbox. A young woman was about twenty feet away, walking toward me and wiping her eyes. She was carrying a bag of some kind, head aimed at the sidewalk. She got closer. Her tears were obvious, and she looked distraught.

Me, I was braless. I had only left the house to check the damn mail. My hair was a state and my brains were worse. At that moment I told myself that she would probably be embarrassed if I said something to her. Who wants to explain herself to a stranger when she’s in an obvious state of distress? I retrieved my mail and walked quickly back toward home. She had caught up somewhat and was walking behind me, still sobbing audibly.

Well, if she wanted me to ignore her she would have sniffled and shut up.

I turned around and asked if she was all right. “Yeah,” she said, in a desperate, warbly kind of way. Up close I could see that she was probably only around sixteen. “I ran out of gas up on the highway.” There were two highways she could have meant, but both of them meant that she’d been walking a long time. Either way, I had no car to give her a ride anywhere. “I’ve been walking since noon.”

“Oh, sweetie. It’s after two.”

“I know.” She burst into tears again. “And my boyfriend was just being a dick and I drove away and I knew I should have stopped but I didn’t and now I have to get my mom to take me back there.” Her nose started to run. “And it’s my BIRTHDAY.”

Everything in me was telling me to run away. I do not like this kind of stuff from people I do not know well. I can handle reading your blog, no matter if you’re a stranger or a friend, and even you telling me that your nose is running, but this kind of raw emotion from someone barely holding it together is too much for me. I like emotions recollected afterward and placed in orderly sentences, not bleeding fresh and wafting off of strangers. I panicked. And she was standing there, in the intersection with me, in the middle of a very hot day. I looked at her half-dozen ear studs and the buttons pinned to her backpack. One said SMIZE. I could feel time pass.

“Do you want my phone, to call your mom?” I gestured to my house. “I’m not creepy and you can wait outside for her.”

“No,” she said. “I already called her, and she’s waiting for me at home.”

“Is home far?”

She shook her head. “Just on Abbott Street.” She still had another 20 minutes to walk, at least. I wondered for a second about the woman who would let her daughter walk home along the highway in this heat, who wasn’t driving through the neighborhood to look for her.

I gave her a hug. (I am not a hugger; anyone who’s hugged me and felt me stiffen knows this. I try, but I’m not good at it unless I kind of know you. I was also very conscious about that no-bra thing.) But I hugged this girl and she clung to me, and I smelled her sweat and her hair products and traces of cigarette smoke. I said, “One of these days you are going to laugh about him and this whole thing and you are going to be past it. I promise. It doesn’t feel like it now.” She laughed and a snot-bubble burst in her nostril. Oh God. “But you will, and you’ll remember it, and shit birthdays always make good stories.”

I let her go and she laughed and thanked me, and she walked away.

I came home into a blast of air conditioning, picking my shirt off my sweaty skin, and wondered how to tell anyone about this without making myself sound like I’d swooped in with wisdom and hugs at just the right time like the perfect blend of superhero and grandma. When I read things like this written by other people, especially if those other people make a habit of always casting themselves as the smartest/kindest/bestest, I roll my eyes and figure they’re lying. (In addition to being afraid of raw emotion, I’m also just a misanthropic meanie.) So I never did say anything; I didn’t tweet it or blog it like I kind of wanted to. I think I may have told my friends in gChat. But I am not the kind of person who puts herself in the way of chance meetings, and I don’t know what it was that made me ask that girl what was going on instead of walking home. Even today, I think it could have gone so wrong. But I hope she remembers me warmly, that it was a good thing I did, and that I was right about shit birthdays.

#scintilla13: distance is a long-range filter

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with my friends Onyi and Dominique, two whip-smart and artfully snarky women with beautiful hair. This is my response to one of the Day 3 prompts, Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road? We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Sign up at scintillaproject.com and follow us at @ScintillaHQ. 

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(First, and importantly: When I thought of this prompt I almost rejected it or smoothed it out, took out the song request, took out the “all alone.” Maybe I should have. I didn’t want to be too prescriptive. But then I thought that if you had one of these memories, or something close enough—maybe with someone else in the car, maybe without remembering what was coming out of the speakers—you would know why I wanted to write it, and more importantly why I wanted to read your story of being on your way somewhere, simmering in dread or happy anticipation or simple enjoyment of the moment. We don’t usually talk about why we chose the prompts or where they came from, but since it’s so specific, I wanted to give it some background. Now, on with it.)

I was a hesitant driver at first, and frightened of accidents. My family had been in one when I was a kid and it had lasting repercussions. So I panicked through learning to drive, panicked through the day I got my license, and then eventually worked through the panic by driving. A lot. I had an old used Escort that I drove all over the valley and to work and into Pittsburgh, with friends and on my own. Gas was so unspeakably cheap back then. I remembered a day when my aunt Ramona picked me up and drove me across the state to stay with her family for a week in the summer (when this happened) and she told me how she just got sick of driving, that it wasn’t fun for her anymore. Instead of feeling guilt that she was in fact doing just that for hours in order to bring me to her house, I was astonished. How did anyone get sick of driving? It was the time when I felt most in control of anything.

I traded up, to a 1992 Geo Storm in Bennington Blue and put more miles on it, more and more. I commuted to college through snowstorms and sunshine, half an hour each way, and then the last year I moved to my college town and commuted to my retail job, selling shoes on commission. I loved the people I worked with even when they worked my last nerve; we were family in a way that I never found at any other job I held. I didn’t mind the drive either way. Through those years, that daily hour of solitude centered me, rebuilding any parts of me that had been rubbed raw by the day. Even today, when I stream NPR from the United States, I stream it from WPSU. That last year, the one where I wrapped up stray GenEd credits and sold nine pairs of the most expensive sneakers in the store to an entire basketball team in one record-breaking transaction, I haltingly put together my plans to leave Pennsylvania after graduation and head south. Winter was for suckers.

Problems: I had no job. English lit degrees do not prepare you for the most lucrative or in-demand careers.  I knew no one there. “Heading south” encompassed an enormous swath of the US and I wasn’t particular about where I landed. I wasn’t afraid of having to meet new people, but I was afraid that this new start would take more imagination, money, or determination than I actually possessed. I had never been tested, not yet. And I had read enough contemporary fiction to teach me that freedom and control were meant to be seized half an hour at a time behind the wheel of a car, but in the rest of life they were often illusions.

Those of you who have held retail jobs know there were certain times of year that you just can’t take days off. In the shoe business, Easter is one of them. Hundreds of white patent squeaky t-straps come in the store, destined to be scuffed as soon as they’re put on children Easter morning. A Saturday shift during the lead-up to Easter is commission gold; the shoes haven’t hung around the store long enough to be marked down and commissions are epic. If the child is old enough to wear adult sized shoes, all the better. It’s insane to ask for time off around Easter—you’re putting pressure on your coworkers, you’re missing out on the best money you’ll see until back-to-school, and you put the manager, a 28-year-old moppet of a Deadhead named Todd, in the position of having to tell you no. But I needed to spend spring break driving south and getting lost in new cities and figuring out where I wanted to spend the next part of my life. My apartment lease would be ending a week after graduation. I didn’t have time to waste. So I turned in my two weeks, selling as many tiny wingtips as I could before I left. And then there was nothing else to do but head out for the road and find a place that spoke to me.

I was petrified. Somehow—and you see this buildup, these years of traveling between places, these years where my cars brought me to places of my own choosing—I was always driving distance from a home of some kind. My jobs. My apartments. My family. My friends. Even if I felt the need to get lost until I was driving on fumes, I had a place to go when I turned off the car. I felt spoiled, coddled. Even though I knew I was hardly taking a huge risk, I had never done anything like this before.

I took that Geo to the highway and put in a mix tape. It was one that my then-mostly-ex boyfriend had made. Side B, first song. Rush, of course, always Rush.

I knew all these songs, his songs. That’s the pleasure of a mix tape, that someone else has made choice after choice for you.. Sometimes in the midst of a dizzying blast of freedom, you need someone to make a choice for you, even a small one. And there is no better song to start a roadtrip with than “Dreamline,” and there never fucking will be. 220 South to 80 East, faster, faster. We’re only at home when we’re on the run. I sang it and was no longer doing this alone.

#scintilla13: near-death by chocolate

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with my friends Onyi and Dominique, two whip-smart and artfully snarky women with beautiful hair. This is my response to one of the Day 2 prompts, Tell the story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3….) We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Sign up at scintillaproject.com and follow us at @ScintillaHQ.

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Step 1. Engage in heated argument with boyfriend, the kind you have been having often enough lately to make you think this is going to have to end soon. Repeat as needed until boyfriend leaves house in petulant, unmasculine huff.

Step 2. Upon boyfriend’s return, he presents you with a large tray of Brownies. He has procured them from a fellow musician, and they are, by all accounts, Exceptional Brownies of the First Water. Argument is considered resolved by boyfriend; feel free to accept Brownie gift and simultaneously retain lingering rage.

Step 3. Engage in trial run of Brownie: Consume one serving (serving size: 1.5 inch, square) in university parking lot while listening to NPR, attend one class in Romantic Poets and another in Chaucer, consume one five-pack deep-fried pierogies, acknowledge streaky orange sunset on drive back to apartment, again while listening to NPR. If Brownie meets with approval (status: gnarly or better), proceed to Step 4.

Step 4. Generously give one serving of Brownie to friend A on empty stomach. Win lifelong loyalty of friend A, and also one pack Salem Slim Lights when she leaves them behind in Brownie-induced haze.

Step 5. Stare out window at trees/feral cats while contemplating Relative Potency Quotient per square inch of Brownie. Abandon said mathematics.

Step 6. Announce to friend B (also known as Friend from Home) that you will be visiting your parents that very weekend and that she should leave room for dessert.

Step 7. Remove four servings of Brownie from pan. Make that six servings. Determine that generosity is the soul of life and that sharing of Brownie will surely ensconce you in God’s good graces.

Step 8. Wrap servings in plastic wrap.

Step 9. Wrap plastic-wrapped servings in aluminum foil.

Step 10. Wrap foil-wrapped plastic-wrapped servings in more plastic wrap.

Step 11. Wrap plastic-wrapped foil-wrapped plastic-wrapped servings in sweatshirt. In the interest of brevity, this package will now be referred to as Bundle.

Step 12. Pack overnight bag, centering Bundle in the geometric center, surrounded by sweatshirt, atop shoes and toiletry kit, and below pajamas.

Step 13. Drive 3.75 hours toward childhood home, paying close attention to speed limits, speed traps, and every parking lot whereby a suspicious policeman might be lurking. Try to think “Peace Frog”; succeed only in thinking “Smuggler’s Blues”.

Step 14. Arrive at childhood home. Bring overnight bag into house and hide it near pool table in basement. Walk upstairs, pay attention to family, and attempt to stop thinking about Bundle.

Step 15. After approximately two hours have elapsed, leave family togetherness time and escape to basement. Examine overnight bag. Discover that it has been opened, that Bundle has been dismantled, and that shreds of plastic wrap, foil, and Brownie are scattered around and throughout overnight bag.

Step 16. Look at rafters, plan own funeral. Wonder which of the two family dogs has eaten six servings of Brownie.

Step 17. Shriek, startled, as youngest brother races down the cellar stairs, shouting “Dolly’s sick!”, and then races away again. This answers lingering question from Step 16.

Step 18. Walk upstairs to see small wire-haired terrier (the aforementioned Dolly) walk into a wall and bounce back onto tush. Remain silent as your mother takes the dog to after-hours emergency clinic forty miles away.

Step 19. Berate self. Repeat. Also bewail the large dollar value of Brownie wasted on animal who cannot possibly appreciate its gnarly-or-better status. Prewrite eulogy as you would like it to be delivered by Friend B.

Step 20. (Elapsed time: 3+ hours) Race to door when family car pulls into driveway. Dolly will remain at vet for observation. Doctors seem mystified by her condition, which they cannot explain; the only untoward result in blood test is high quantity of cholesterol. Youngest brother remains distraught.

Step 21. Ask mother if she will accompany you to basement. Show her remains of Bundle. “I know dogs aren’t supposed to have chocolate,” you finish lamely. “NO,” your mother replies. “Dogs are not supposed to have ANYTHING that is in Brownie.” She assigns you two chores: Clean up Bundle detritus and Think About What You Have Done.

Step 22. Solution! In case veterinarians realize that dog has eaten six servings of Brownie, mother will tell them that you had left dog with Family Friend of Loose Morals, apologize, and beg not to inform police (animal cruelty, Brownie possession).

Step 23. Interlude: Night of panic. Will high cholesterol kill small wire-haired terrier? Internet still basically consists of AOL and wild, unnavigable Usenet; answer eludes you. Try to think “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”; succeed only in thinking “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Step 24. Emergency vet calls in morning; small wire-haired terrier is cleared to come home. No explanation for her illness; stroke, possibly, or heart disease? Mother agrees to take dog for a check-up with her regular vet.

Step 25. Spend rest of visit with family despondent due to lack of Brownie, looking deeply into eyes of small wire-haired terrier, wondering what Brownie(s) must have been like for her. Avoid mother’s patented Death-Ray Stare where possible.

#scintilla13: swampwater

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with my friends Onyi and Dominique, two whip-smart and artfully snarky women with beautiful hair. This is my response to one of the Day 1 prompts, “Tell a story about a time you got drunk before you were legally able to do so.“ We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Sign up at scintillaproject.com and follow us at @ScintillaHQ.

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I feel like babysitting by teens is not the institution that it used to be. The eighties were a glory decade for the teen babysitter. I used to go with my friend Michelle a lot if she got a babysitting job that went late into the night. She was a pro at it and in high demand by parents, because everyone knew she had pulled a lot of childcare duty with her siblings, who were triplets. Kids liked having her as a babysitter because she let them eat whatever they wanted and stay up late. This is really all I know about relating to children.

We went a few times to a particular house that was in a kind of isolated area. It was surrounded by trees and darkness and not very near the main road, the kind of place where it was completely understandable that Michelle would want company late at night. There were two boys in Michelle’s care that night, two blond energetic dynamos who were thrilled to be on their own with the babysitter. Here is what little boys like to do when their parents aren’t home.

1. run around and bash themselves into hard objects (bedframes, hallway corners, toys, each other)
2. eat everything in the house, even things their parents have told you RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM that they aren’t allowed to have
3. threaten you with the trouble you’re going to be in if you don’t do what they say
4. ask for money
5. lie(see 2, 3)
6. show you everything they own, one thing at a time, so that you can approve of it (my father-in-law still does this so it is possibly something they never outgrow)
7. intend to stay up very late but fall asleep cutely with tousled hair around 9 or 10 pm

By the time these two were tucked into their beds (more like fallen asleep on top of their covers with their feet on their pillows after crashing from junk food), Michelle and I were on our own. Target one, and there is only ever one target: the parents’ liquor cabinet.

Yes. I know. I even asked Michelle if I should tell you about this, because OMG THE CHILDREN WHAT IF THERE WAS AN EMERGENCY. This is maybe why babysitting by teens is not the institution that it used to be. I just recently rewatched the episode of “Freaks & Geeks” when Lindsay got baked before babysitting and she had to take Upright Millie of the Mathlete Brigade to handle childcare duties. Maybe I was supposed to be the sober one. And also, let me tell you that an eighties’ parents’ liquor cabinet was a thing of beauty. You would not find the prim array of typographically interesting artisanal gins and a token high-end vodka on a glass cart. There was no fucking craftbrew in the fridge. This was a time when the Fuzzy Navel held sway and, to my naïve eyes, an array of Blue Curaçao and brightly labeled artificially colored schnapps was the onramp to Legitimate Adult Drinking. To hell with the wine served at my grandmother’s house (and an occasional sneaky sip of Bailey’s). To hell with the Seagram’s 7 my mother favored. This liquor cabinet had enough bottles to be the booze equivalent of the Wonka Chocolate Factory.

My memory of the night is understandably blurred, but here’s what I remember: We poured a glug from each of a few bottles into a glass, topping it off with some variety of pop. I recalled hearing someone else at school mentioning that parents marked liquor labels with lines showing how much had been used, but these labels were pristine—we had carte blanche. I was thrilled that such a thing as root beer schnapps even existed. You had root beer. You had alcohol. Someone had taken them and smashed them together in a Reese’s cup-style Better Together that I promptly destroyed by mixing it with who knows what. We poured second glasses and laughed hysterically while we tried to watch the antics on the somewhat-still-scrambled Spice channel courtesy of the parents’ satellite dish. Surely penises did not really look like that, nothing like the penises I saw when I changed diapers. It was basically a kielbasa with a mushroom on the end. Nor could sex be such a droning, repetitive, embarrassing-looking enterprise. Why would people do everything they could to have more sex when it looked about as interesting as a Joanie Greggains workout? So much flapping and slapping and arbitrary position changes and lip gloss and bad synthesizer music.

(That is probably, hopefully, maybe the last time you will see the word “penises” in this blog. I mean, some things do not need to be discussed in the plural.)

I don’t know how we managed not to wake up the little boys with our noise and laughter. Surely we did not want to drunkenly explain to them what we were watching or the kids would actually get us in trouble. In the end, we ate enough cheese curls to absorb our Fancy Adult Mixed Drinks and did not throw up. We cleaned up everything and when the parents came home, we truly believed that we did not reveal our altered states in the least. The father drove us home and we sat in the backseat, tired and giggling and probably reeking of alcohol. How we did not get in trouble is a mystery to this day. The last thing I remember is the car pulling into Michelle’s driveway, me opening the door, and collapsing into her driveway, and hearing my laughter echo in the night.

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You guys, hopefully Michelle will come by later on today and clear up the stuff I haven’t remembered properly… specifically the degree of scrambling on the Spice channel. This is important fact verification. In the meantime, I have mentioned her a couple of other times on the blog and you can read those here.