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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 06/25/2020
2020Statues (Approx. 600 wds.)
Writing Amid the Writing
The phone rang and woke me up from my afternoon nap.. I saw that it was my friend and fellow retirement community resident Paul Lerner. “Uh, oh,” I thought to myself. “What now?” A few months into our lockdown because of COVID-19 Paul had somehow conned me into keeping a journal. Paul himself was by way of being a writer (he did a column for our senior paper) and was keeping a journal of what he called “the plague year” and he said he wanted the views of a really old guy, I was 90, coping, or trying to cope, with the virus and everything else that was going on. The latest everything else was of course the mayhem that had gripped the country after the killing of a black man named George Floyd by a white cop in Minneapolis.
I picked up the phone. “How’s it going?” Paul asked. “I’m stuck in my writing so thought I’d give you a call and see if you’re keeping up that journal like I asked?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, which wasn’t strictly true because I didn’t feel as if I had anything of great interest to put in it. Usually, I just jotted down the day’s weather and any big news developments like the latest COVID-19 statistics and of late the riots going on all over the country.. “But it’s not very exciting. We’ve barely left the house in the last four months. It’s pretty much the same thing every day. How about you?”
“I’m still doing my journal but, as I said, I’m stuck on my other writing. You know I like to make fun of things and the coronavirus really cramped my style. There’s nothing funny about a pandemic that’s killing thousands of people.”
“You can still make fun of Trump though; he’s always good for a laugh.”
“Yeah, he’s as bad as ever but the other side might be even worse. I thought I had a good subject when these riots started. I had a story idea, two bored college kids, frat guys, decide for kicks they’ll tear down the statue of their college founder. They do it and become national heroes and statues are pulled down all over colleges in the country so they figure, hey, why not go after the Washington Monument. I thought this was so far-fetched it would seem ridiculous but now that might actually happen.”
“You do have a problem. What about that no-cop zone in Seattle? Maybe your two college kids can start their own zone, college kids from all over join in and pretty soon they have their own country where everything is like a big frat party.”
“Hmm, I’ll have to think about that; maybe it has possibilities. They’re getting along great, are on national television, Trump is tweeting about them and anything goes, lots of free love, drugs, demands for one thing or another, and then someone gets infected with the virus, it spreads like wildfire and the whole thing collapses. Thanks for the idea. I’ll get to work on it. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do with all those statues being pulled down. Maybe I can bring in Mount Rushmore. And all those name changes. Any city or town named Columbus has to be re-named and what does that do to the postal system and people don’t know where they live any more and ….”
I could see that my friend Paul was all fired up so I quickly said Good-bye, hung up and went back to my nap.
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Writing Amid the Rioting(Martin Green)
2020Statues (Approx. 600 wds.)
Writing Amid the Writing
The phone rang and woke me up from my afternoon nap.. I saw that it was my friend and fellow retirement community resident Paul Lerner. “Uh, oh,” I thought to myself. “What now?” A few months into our lockdown because of COVID-19 Paul had somehow conned me into keeping a journal. Paul himself was by way of being a writer (he did a column for our senior paper) and was keeping a journal of what he called “the plague year” and he said he wanted the views of a really old guy, I was 90, coping, or trying to cope, with the virus and everything else that was going on. The latest everything else was of course the mayhem that had gripped the country after the killing of a black man named George Floyd by a white cop in Minneapolis.
I picked up the phone. “How’s it going?” Paul asked. “I’m stuck in my writing so thought I’d give you a call and see if you’re keeping up that journal like I asked?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, which wasn’t strictly true because I didn’t feel as if I had anything of great interest to put in it. Usually, I just jotted down the day’s weather and any big news developments like the latest COVID-19 statistics and of late the riots going on all over the country.. “But it’s not very exciting. We’ve barely left the house in the last four months. It’s pretty much the same thing every day. How about you?”
“I’m still doing my journal but, as I said, I’m stuck on my other writing. You know I like to make fun of things and the coronavirus really cramped my style. There’s nothing funny about a pandemic that’s killing thousands of people.”
“You can still make fun of Trump though; he’s always good for a laugh.”
“Yeah, he’s as bad as ever but the other side might be even worse. I thought I had a good subject when these riots started. I had a story idea, two bored college kids, frat guys, decide for kicks they’ll tear down the statue of their college founder. They do it and become national heroes and statues are pulled down all over colleges in the country so they figure, hey, why not go after the Washington Monument. I thought this was so far-fetched it would seem ridiculous but now that might actually happen.”
“You do have a problem. What about that no-cop zone in Seattle? Maybe your two college kids can start their own zone, college kids from all over join in and pretty soon they have their own country where everything is like a big frat party.”
“Hmm, I’ll have to think about that; maybe it has possibilities. They’re getting along great, are on national television, Trump is tweeting about them and anything goes, lots of free love, drugs, demands for one thing or another, and then someone gets infected with the virus, it spreads like wildfire and the whole thing collapses. Thanks for the idea. I’ll get to work on it. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do with all those statues being pulled down. Maybe I can bring in Mount Rushmore. And all those name changes. Any city or town named Columbus has to be re-named and what does that do to the postal system and people don’t know where they live any more and ….”
I could see that my friend Paul was all fired up so I quickly said Good-bye, hung up and went back to my nap.
###
Lillian Kazmierczak
03/25/2022Martin, as always your story makes me laugh and is amusing. I had no idea you could cure writers block with a phone consultation!
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