A Stalling Tactic

I don't have anything new finished yet, but I'm feeling the need to post something on this lazy Sunday afternoon. So, here's a piece I wrote at the end of January - one of you in particular will recognize it from a time that already seems to be lifetimes ago. I'm not completely satisfied with it (the ending especially bothers me... I guess that's because there isn't an end yet!), but it may also end up being necessary as a reference for one of the poems I'm working on/avoiding - we'll see if that pans out soon. (Keep bothering me about it/them!) Also worth noting: it was done as an imitation exercise (see A.R. Ammons' piece, "Autobiographical Note," which I tried to find online but failed) - hence, the extremely choppy tone. Although it actually suits my voice just fine, it would feel a bit different if the idea had been mine originally.

(I'm blanking out some of the more specific identifying details since this is going out on the wild, wild interwebz, but I didn't want to eliminate them entirely and ruin the rhythm of the piece.)



Autobiographical Note

I was born in the sweltering Kansas heat of August --, 19--. I was a heavyweight champion among newborns. A week late in coming, I had tested my mother’s strength as the visiting relatives-in-law tested her patience. Shortly thereafter, her own sister videotaped me for hours as I slept; I can’t recall if my patience was tested. Nearly five years and a pioneer’s journey to the Great White North later, my sister Emily was born in August of 19--. For weeks, I had been telling people around town that I was to have a little sister and her name would be Emily. None of this had been confirmed or decided. What if I’d insisted she would be an extraterrestrial named Walter? I tolerated eight years of the realtor’s fake smiling and my mother’s hem-hawing and my father’s eyes rolling as we looked for a house. Just after we found 2-- S. C------- St, a tornado came within a mile of knocking it down as I cowered in the apartment’s bathtub, praying to never see the realtor again. That fall, my father walked me from the new house to fourth grade with Emily in tow each day – they walked on to the donut shop unbeknownst to me or my mother. A few years later, the school was knocked down and replaced by an Arby’s restaurant. I refuse to eat at any Arby’s to this day, despite my love of curly fries, because I loved my school more. When my best friend and I “graduated” from junior high in 2001, I told him that in four years, I would give our high school valedictorian speech and he would be salutatorian. He held up his end of the bargain. In August of 2005, I returned to the sweltering Kansas heat, this time in pursuit of higher knowledge and most importantly, a teaching license.

(Grr... such a cop-out ending, but I don't have the energy to fix it. It's too hot. Time for some iced tea.)