Matters of Life and Death
As some of you know, I’m a writer. (Evidence of this comes from the fact that what you are reading was written.) As some of you further know, I’ve written a novel. People ask me when they’ll get to read the novel. When it’s published, I tell them. Then I tell them that this seems likely to occur around the time the sun burns down to a small glowing space rock — when monkeys rule the dark Earth and raid our refrigerators because we’re in no position to stop them.
People nod sympathetically and say that rejection must be terrible. I tell them that it’s not terrible; it’s really no big deal. It’s not like flesh-eating bacteria, I tell them, or like watching The English Patient. I’ll add that we writers have more pressing problems, even in our own mundane lives. Take eyestrain, I say. Take papercuts. Or take the fate of an elderly gentleman I saw at a writer’s conference, who interrupted the instructor repeatedly to announce that he was an opera singer. “I have a computer,” he declared, “and I have a mouse. And I can’t stay on top of that icon. What do you have to say about that?”
“It’s a problem,” the instructor agreed.
The trials of writers — from rejection to uncooperative computers — are many, but we take them all in stride. Rejection is something you get used to, as is using a mouse properly. It’s not a problem. It’s not a matter of life and death. Matters of life and death include drought, famine, and olive loaf. And death, of course.
Consider Mr. P, the curmudgeony owner of a previous place of my employment: The Frostee Barn. I didn’t used to like Mr. P, back when he was my slave-driving boss. I’ve come to appreciate him in recent years — mostly due to his bad jokes, his love of MTV’s show Jackass, and his stylish ‘do rag which makes him look like an aging member of the Crips street gang. So, when I learned last weekend that he had died of a heart attack, I was saddened.
I called Stacy, who is Mr. P’s right-hand woman. “I heard about Mr. P,” I told her, my voice low and sedate.
“What about him?” she asked. Apparently the lines of communication surrounding Mr. P were less than perfect.
“I heard he died.”
“Really?” she said.
But Mr. P was not dead. Mr. P had just gotten back from Florida, where he had been enjoying all sorts of off-season antics. He was probably, at that moment, wearing his ‘do rag and watching Jackass, brewing up another side-splitter about a hooker with a wooden leg. Stacy told me as much after calling Bill Hendrix, who was the sort of person privy to such inside information.
“It must have been another Mr. P,” she told me. “There was an obituary about a week ago: ‘Business owner “Mr. P” dies of heart attack.’ Mr. P’s real name is Larry, and this guy’s wasn’t, but nobody knows Mr. P’s real name. Someone must have assumed that it was him in the paper.”
And what an unfounded notion! What were they thinking? Just because this other guy was a business owner in Toledo who went primarily by “Mr. P”? Because he died of a heart attack, for which our own chronically-angry Mr. P is candidate #1? How many Mr. Ps could there be?
“There are a lot of them,” answered my friend Chet’s grandmother, who everyone simply called “Granny.” She was speaking of the Mr. P abundance in the same way a hunter might talk about deer overpopulation while dishing out piles of waffles. The “Sweathearts” waffle iron chirped ridiculously in the background to announce that more waffles were ready. “You can borrow that anytime,” Granny added of the chirping iron, gesturing into the kitchen. “I have two waffle irons.”
“There are a lot of Mr. Ps?”
Chet nodded. “They’re everywhere.” He then shoveled a wad of bacon into his mouth and declared it to be “vebby gooft. Mmmp.”
This was a relief. Not only was our Mr. P safe and sound, but there were apparently plenty of spares should anything bad happen.
When Stacy told me of Mr. P’s well-being, I paid only enough attention to be relieved. I decided that it would now be ill-advised for me to pay final respects to Mr. P in my next newsletter. I noted this, then got off the phone and back to the work that had been distracting me: digging trenches through our barn to drain three inches of standing water from its center. Our horses whinnied their approval. They were all standing in the backs of their stalls, avoiding the encroaching puddles as if they were poison.
“Relax,” I told them. “It’s not a matter of life and death.” Surprisingly, they took me at my word.
The barn eventually drained — somewhat — and I let the horses outside so that they could begin attempting to kill and/or maim themselves. This happened when the five hundred pound baby, Oscar, ran into the fence at full gallop and annihilated it. He shook the collision off matter-of-factly and began making his way into the front yard. If the fence didn’t kill him, he wanted to see if the road could.
“Stay,” I told the other two, who were staring at the destroyed fence. Zoe, who embodies the lethal combination of big and dumb, chose to disobey me and followed Oscar to the road. Leroy, who is slightly less big and slightly less dumb, resumed eating. This was either obedience or apathy, but I never did ask him which.
Two cans of oats and a half hour later, I had successfully played the shepherd and rounded up my flock. Life and death status: Temporarily averted.
My father-in-law and I spent a fair amount of time repairing the fence the following weekend. With yet another day lost to repairing big dumb animal damage, I quelled my frustration because this, like the flooding, was not a matter of life and death.
But for real: one week, two close calls. First Mr. P escapes the reaper’s blade, and then Oscar plays real-life Frogger and lives to tell the tale. I decided to watch my back because learned people say that these things happen in threes.
I wondered: if Mr. P came over to our horse pasture and broke through our fence, would he be as unscathed as Oscar was? Would he have wandered out to the road? Would he have come to me when I shook a coffee can of oats at him? It was an interesting quandary. And while I was imagining Mr. P — ‘do rag flapping in the wind — crashing through the sixteen-foot 2×6 like a runner breaking a ribbon at the finish line, I forgot about my latest rejection letter. When I discovered it later, I smiled and chuckled. The agent had liked the concept of my novel but couldn’t work with its execution. I didn’t know what this meant and didn’t care. I looked up a few more agents and sent out a few more letters. I hung the latest response on the Wall o’ Rejection, where all my denials go. I’m looking at the Wall now. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not a heart attack. It’s not a sturdy wooden fence. It’s not a matter of life and death, and at least I didn’t have to return from the grave — from, if Granny is to be believed, an inexhaustible wellspring of spare Mr. Ps — in order to receive those letters.
And life is grand. Whenever I want the chirping waffle iron, all I have to do is ask. Granny told me so.
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The Economy Isn’t Happening » Blog Archive » Trouble in the Great White North on
Tue, 30th Dec 2008 3:12 pm
[...] to Mr. P. for a reason I’ve never been able to uncover, which is probably why they knew that he wasn’t dead. Chet’s mother Stacy used to pretty much run the Barn. I think there might be a fractured [...]
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