Interrupting my walk to the white light, this voice said, “And just because the other children laughed, you thought I wasn’t real.”
“Who the hell are you?” I thought once I died I didn’t have to put up with crap like that anymore.
“I’m your wish to write a book.”
“It’s too late now so let’s not talk about it.”
Back in 1958 on a dusty playground outside a two-story brick schoolhouse in a small Texas town, all the boys gathered under a particularly large oak tree and laughed at me. Not a “tee hee hee, someone just told a dirty joke” laugh, not a “I can’t believe you farted in front of the teacher” laugh. They laughed because I said I wanted to write a book when I grew up. A mean, harsh, belittling laugh.
“Oh sure, I’m gonna be president when I grow up,” Billy said with a sneer. He was very good at sneering. His father worked at the bank, and he always sneered when a farmer came in for a loan to build a new barn. “I’ll have you arrested, burn your book and then shoot you!”
JimBob, the best baseball player in the fourth grade, twirled around until he got dizzy and almost fell over. “And I’m going to be a ballet dancer!”
The laughter continued, and I thought I was going to cry. I hated it when I cried in front of the other boys. It made me feel weak. Hoyt, the biggest boy in school, stepped in between the others and me. He already had some hair on his lip and callouses on his knuckles where he knocked the crap out of any boy who dared call him fat.
“Aw, lay off him.”
Whenever the other guys laughed at me—which was often– Hoyt softened his voice like he was up in front of the entire church congregation talking about how kids should never fight. I didn’t know if Hoyt meant that to be good or bad until I was in high school. The English teacher described that tone of voice as condescending, so it wasn’t a good thing.
“He can’t help it if he’s an idiot.”
When I came home that afternoon, I couldn’t hold the tears back as I told my mother and brother what had happened.
“You got what you deserved. That’s what you got.” My brother leaned down into my face. “Whoever heard of anyone from this one-horse town writing a book? You are an idiot!”
“Now if he thinks he’s going to write a book, he ought to have the right to think that,” my mother intervened in her best Sunday School teacher voice. (Now that I think about it, Hoyt was her favorite student.) After a slight pause she added, “And I think that boy should be a ballet dancer if that’s what he really wants to be.”
I never mentioned writing a book again. Writing always seemed fun to me–and Mother had her heart set on at least one of her boys graduating from college–so I got a degree in journalism. I came home, got a job with the local newspaper writing obituaries and the police blotter. By the time my heart gave out and was about to tick for the last time, I had retired after becoming editor. I still had to write the obituaries and the police blotter but the title “editor” made it sound better.
Frankly, I was relieved to die, so when this voice slowed me down on my journey I was annoyed when this voice out of nowhere brought up that damn book idea again.
“Aw, it would have never been published anyway,” I groused.
“You didn’t wish to make money writing a book. You just wanted to write a book. That part was genuine.”
“If you don’t get paid then it’s not really writing.”
“Hoyt was right. You are an idiot.”