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writers group
Oct. 24th, 2003 12:46 amThis morning, I came downstairs to eat breakfast (and by "came downstairs to eat breakfast" I mean "ran into the kitchen with my hair half-dried and shoved an english muffin in my face as quickly as possible while speed-reading the comics") and saw my father had put a piece of paper with an address on the table where I usually sit.
"Wuv dis?" I asked around the five bites of english muffin in my mouth.
"The address for the writing group meeting tonight," my father answered.
The writing group. Ah yes, the writing group, one of those many things that sounds great in theory, but once they come around, usually cause me to be annoyed about having to interrupt my nightly routine of doing nothing very important or meaningful. And this was not just any writing group -- no no no, it was a Mensan writing group. My father has decided he wants to get as much bang for his $36 a year license fee and has started going on this huge Mensa kick, attending as many events as possible with me in tow.
So I spend all day debating whether or not to cancel with him, ultimately decide not to and pick up dinner for him on the way to his office where we're meeting pre-group, only to get stuck in traffic on my way so that when I arrived, we had approx. 2.3 minutes to eat the soup and ended up playing that fun old game every perpetually late person plays: It's Your Fault. He blamed me for picking up soup ("We don't NEED soup, you shouldn't have stopped, you should have gotten here SOONER, blah blah"); I blamed him for the inaccurate meeting time ("The soup is irrelevant! I got her a FULL SEVEN MINUTES before you told me too! Your meeting time was wrong! Blah blah!"). It was fun.
Finally we hopped in our respective cars and took off for the writing group, which was being held at this random guy's house. Right before we left my father's office, he turned to me and said, "We should bring something."
"We could bring him soup," I said, holding up the Panera bag with two quarter-consumed cups of soup. "Or half a chunk of bread."
My father actually looked like he was considering it before shaking his head and saying, "Nah, we'll just stop at Cumberland Farms [aside: classy, I know]. Follow me."
Which sounds like simple instructions. "Follow me." Okay, easy enough. Except my father didn't drive so much like he was leading me somewhere as much as he did like he was making a getaway in a hot car. I had to cut across lanes of traffic, pass people, make unsafe darts out of parking lots -- it's so fitting, though, because as I've told my mother, one of the most vivid memories of my father from when I was really little is the sight of his retreating back in the supermarket parking lot. He's always been one of those parents who has faith in their children's ability to keep up or catch up, whether they're six or twenty-three.
At one point he did get so far ahead that he pulled over to wait for me, only I assumed he'd gone way further ahead and ended up passing him, so that he ended up following me through the unfamiliar city streets, beeping. I kind of worried it was a carjacking or something before I recognized the car.
Anyway, finally we got there! Almost twenty minutes late, nervous we would be interrupting some big critiquing session, we arrived, walked through the doors to discover -- no one else was there. No one. Just us, the host, and his freakishly large Mancoon (sp?) cat.
SO. AWKWARD.
Especially because I brought nothing for people to read/critique. But it was okay for a while, just chatting, and then my father brought out his story and read it, and I was appropriately complimentary and Host Dude was relatively silent. And then Host Dude read his story, and turned to us expectantly.
"I liked it a lot," I said, and meant it.
"Yeah," my father said. "Yeah...." Now, there's no way to fully capture my father's impressive way of holding the floor in a conversation without really saying anything, mainly because he talks so incredibly slow that it's hard to tell when he's done talking, and a lot of the time he just ends up going on and on because no one's sure when they're able to speak without interrupting him.
After a few seconds of awkward pause, my father cleared his throat, said, "I liked it," and then launched into this long, detailed, somewhat harsh but not inaccurate critique of the story.
At the end? Host Dude's face? Scarily non-responsive. Like, offended and pissed. And there we are, sitting in his kitchen, sitting across from his freakishly large cat who he's already introduced as a "Helper" kitty, striking fear into my heart that should Host Dude say "Kill, kitty" I'd be toast in seconds.
I jumped in and tried to salvage it but being all "I liked it! Really! It was good! Ignore my father's wacky statements about actually having conflict in your story! It's okay! Please don't hate us."
We sat around awkwardly for another twenty minutes or so, which was about as fun as it sounds.
It was funny, though! My father has written, like, multiple novellas! I had NO IDEA. The excerpt he read was kind of funny -- he'd lifted it from his real life and fictionalized it a bit. I only knew because it's an old family story about my mom and dad. It was kind of sweet to hear how he characterized their evening together, and his description of "Maize"/Peg.
I have a feeling there was something else that happened there tonight that was rather funny, but I can't think of it now, and it's way past my bedtime. So snooze time for me!
"Wuv dis?" I asked around the five bites of english muffin in my mouth.
"The address for the writing group meeting tonight," my father answered.
The writing group. Ah yes, the writing group, one of those many things that sounds great in theory, but once they come around, usually cause me to be annoyed about having to interrupt my nightly routine of doing nothing very important or meaningful. And this was not just any writing group -- no no no, it was a Mensan writing group. My father has decided he wants to get as much bang for his $36 a year license fee and has started going on this huge Mensa kick, attending as many events as possible with me in tow.
So I spend all day debating whether or not to cancel with him, ultimately decide not to and pick up dinner for him on the way to his office where we're meeting pre-group, only to get stuck in traffic on my way so that when I arrived, we had approx. 2.3 minutes to eat the soup and ended up playing that fun old game every perpetually late person plays: It's Your Fault. He blamed me for picking up soup ("We don't NEED soup, you shouldn't have stopped, you should have gotten here SOONER, blah blah"); I blamed him for the inaccurate meeting time ("The soup is irrelevant! I got her a FULL SEVEN MINUTES before you told me too! Your meeting time was wrong! Blah blah!"). It was fun.
Finally we hopped in our respective cars and took off for the writing group, which was being held at this random guy's house. Right before we left my father's office, he turned to me and said, "We should bring something."
"We could bring him soup," I said, holding up the Panera bag with two quarter-consumed cups of soup. "Or half a chunk of bread."
My father actually looked like he was considering it before shaking his head and saying, "Nah, we'll just stop at Cumberland Farms [aside: classy, I know]. Follow me."
Which sounds like simple instructions. "Follow me." Okay, easy enough. Except my father didn't drive so much like he was leading me somewhere as much as he did like he was making a getaway in a hot car. I had to cut across lanes of traffic, pass people, make unsafe darts out of parking lots -- it's so fitting, though, because as I've told my mother, one of the most vivid memories of my father from when I was really little is the sight of his retreating back in the supermarket parking lot. He's always been one of those parents who has faith in their children's ability to keep up or catch up, whether they're six or twenty-three.
At one point he did get so far ahead that he pulled over to wait for me, only I assumed he'd gone way further ahead and ended up passing him, so that he ended up following me through the unfamiliar city streets, beeping. I kind of worried it was a carjacking or something before I recognized the car.
Anyway, finally we got there! Almost twenty minutes late, nervous we would be interrupting some big critiquing session, we arrived, walked through the doors to discover -- no one else was there. No one. Just us, the host, and his freakishly large Mancoon (sp?) cat.
SO. AWKWARD.
Especially because I brought nothing for people to read/critique. But it was okay for a while, just chatting, and then my father brought out his story and read it, and I was appropriately complimentary and Host Dude was relatively silent. And then Host Dude read his story, and turned to us expectantly.
"I liked it a lot," I said, and meant it.
"Yeah," my father said. "Yeah...." Now, there's no way to fully capture my father's impressive way of holding the floor in a conversation without really saying anything, mainly because he talks so incredibly slow that it's hard to tell when he's done talking, and a lot of the time he just ends up going on and on because no one's sure when they're able to speak without interrupting him.
After a few seconds of awkward pause, my father cleared his throat, said, "I liked it," and then launched into this long, detailed, somewhat harsh but not inaccurate critique of the story.
At the end? Host Dude's face? Scarily non-responsive. Like, offended and pissed. And there we are, sitting in his kitchen, sitting across from his freakishly large cat who he's already introduced as a "Helper" kitty, striking fear into my heart that should Host Dude say "Kill, kitty" I'd be toast in seconds.
I jumped in and tried to salvage it but being all "I liked it! Really! It was good! Ignore my father's wacky statements about actually having conflict in your story! It's okay! Please don't hate us."
We sat around awkwardly for another twenty minutes or so, which was about as fun as it sounds.
It was funny, though! My father has written, like, multiple novellas! I had NO IDEA. The excerpt he read was kind of funny -- he'd lifted it from his real life and fictionalized it a bit. I only knew because it's an old family story about my mom and dad. It was kind of sweet to hear how he characterized their evening together, and his description of "Maize"/Peg.
I have a feeling there was something else that happened there tonight that was rather funny, but I can't think of it now, and it's way past my bedtime. So snooze time for me!
