A STARTING POINT

An epiphany in the bathtub led me to begin a collection of anecdotal tales that have been living comfortably on "a stick" -- you know that hard drive you carry around with a bunch of shit on it that maybe you must might need. Yeah, right.

Anyway, a longtime friend and former co-worker used to say to me “how is it that you can just talk to anyone – even when we’re riding in an elevator?”

And Shay, you had no clue did you? It seems that the shy little girl who could barely stand up in front of class and give a presentation morphed into the loquacious, energetic and somewhat bipolar creative writer who amidst a tub of bubbles thought she should “get it in writing” – so there you have it!

Of course this meant that I needed to “put it” into a digestible sequence. I had a boss once who wanted everything in bullet points – no long dissertation on a crisis – and that was a huge challenge. My creative writing instructors had always encouraged the use of language to be demonstrative and descriptive. To reduce the story of, for example, the drunk off duty bartender who fell over the rail into “bullet points” was akin to summarizing the Iraq war into a brief 5 page powerpoint presentation.

And then there is my knight in shining armor -- who loved to torture me in front of strangers by fielding a question from me and then sweetly saying, "is there a question coming, soon, anytime would be good."

yeah...there is...well...eventually...ah crap, what was I saying?