I saw my neighbor, Harriet again the other day…
While I took my trash to the apartment garbage bin
And she was watering her English flower garden…
In front of her apartment with a crock pitcher.
I stopped to talk with her.
“You sure use a lot of plastic,” she said…
Obviously seeing my four two-gallon empty water jugs.
“Yeah, guess I–”
“Why don’t you recycle?"
“Well, I uh…you see um…
Five minutes later after a lecture on the environment…
(I swear! I used to recycle all the time. And I will again. Promise!)
I told her that I wrote about her in one of my blog posts.
“Oh yeah, What did you write about?”
“About your mother’s decoupag–”
“It was my mother-in-law, Mrs. Goldberg’s decoupage waste paper basket.”
“Oh, sorry. But I–”
“So?” she asked. “Can I read your book?”
Oh, no! Quandry!
She’s eighty-two!
Is she too old to read the steamy scenes in my book?
But then, she has two children…
So obviously—yeah, ah huh.
But then again…
What if she’s beyond reading steamy?
And one day I see the paramedics outside her apartment…
And one of them asks…
“Who gave her the trashy manuscript? She went into shock reading it.”
So?
Do I…
Duck Harriet forever?
Tell her I don't know what she's talking about…
And let her think she's got Alzheimer's?
Or let Harriet read my manuscript?
Always, Em-Musing
4 comments:
Yikes. You're braver than me if you do! Isn't that ironic? I want the world to read my novels when they're in print, but no one to read my MS's??? Too funny.
Yes, I'm dying to know what she thinks, but don't want to kill either our friendship, or her.:(
Well, let her read it. My mother read romance novels at 78, she stopped only because she was too sick to read. I remember she used to read a book a day, she couldn't get enough!!
That's always the question, isn't it? It's so hard to put out unpolished work out there! Keep us posted!
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