{"id":564,"date":"2010-05-12T07:53:43","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T12:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=564"},"modified":"2010-05-12T17:44:14","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T22:44:14","slug":"fulcrum-mini-golf-john-iverson-thank-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/05\/fulcrum-mini-golf-john-iverson-thank-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Fulcrum, Mini-golf, John, Thank You"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 May 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today I was invited to read my short story “Big Trees” at Hamline’s Fulcrum<\/em> Showcase. The Fulcrum<\/em> is a book of student works that the university publishes yearly. They had an indie-folk band playing before the event began, there was artwork on display, and five people got up and read their work.<\/p>\n

The entire book, as far as I can tell, features only two short stories, the rest is all visual art and poetry. I was invited to read my work first and then, after I sat down, the next four people each got up in turn and read their poems. My story, thought not that long, was longer than any of the poems. I swear I was up at the microphone for 10 minutes, and the other four poems probably took a combined total of 7 or 8 minutes to read. So, I unintentionally dominated the presentations.<\/p>\n

I participated in a similar event 19 years ago. I submitted my short story “Slaughter in the Family Room” to my high school’s yearly literary book. When I received an invitation in the mail, inviting me to attend a banquet for the release of the book, I didn’t think I’d go, but my mom wanted to go. So she and I dressed up nice, and – I swear – that was the only extracurricular event I ever attended in high school (I didn’t even go to my graduation ceremony).<\/p>\n

On both occasions, I was disappointed to see that there were errors in my work. Earlier this year, after I’d received word that my work had been accepted for publication, I wrote back a few weeks later asking if there was anything I needed to fix in my story. The editor wrote back and said she didn’t recall seeing any errors. Then I wrote back saying there were at least three. She never wrote back and, today, while reading my story, I stumbled over the errors. The first two were no big deal – one concerned punctuation and the other spelling. But the third error concerned a missing word, and that tripped me up. Afterwards, the editor came over and apologized for not fixing that error. She also said: “And I need to apologize for something else, too.” She showed me the back of the book where it lists all the authors…except me. “I have no idea how your name got cut off,” she said, pointing out that there was even a space for my name. I told her I know how my name got cut off: because it’s alphabetically last (as usual). She understood what I meant, as she has the same last name as me. Oh well.<\/p>\n

On the way home, Jennifer and I wondered why editors don’t do any editing anymore.<\/p>\n

11 May 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, I was going to write about my trip to the dentist today, but I’ll save that for my next check-up 6 months from now. Instead, I’ll write about three things that happened this evening.<\/p>\n

I took Owen to the Mall of America today in an effort to give Jennifer some quiet time to finish her homework. Yes, I realize bringing my kid to the mall is lousy parenting, but the weather was awful for visiting a park, and zoos and museums are too expensive.<\/p>\n

1. They have mini-golf at the Mall once again! Yay! It was way better (and less expensive) than the mini-golf place at the Burnsville Center, which has an obnoxious ball dispenser, and really lame holes with nothing interesting besides black lights.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this family of six bought a round of golfing shortly after Owen and I. Despite their large group, they soon caught up to us. At first, I wondered how they managed to do that, but then I realized: they weren’t really playing golf. The dad and mom were just taking their kids around, disrespecting the order of the holes, to play where ever they felt like it. I set my ball on the tee for the 4th hole, and right as I was about to putt, this 3 year old (?) girl comes walking across my path. No big deal, I know little kids do those things, but the father just followed along with her, and they walked over to a spot about 12 inches from the hole, and began putting from there. I meanwhile, just stood there and stared.<\/p>\n

Later, while Owen and I were at hole 10 and they were at hole 9, they just walked on past us to hole 11. Then they past up a few other groups, evidently in search of a free hole. At one point, I think on hole 15, I looked up and saw the couple ahead of us were just standing around. “Are you guys taking a break?” I asked them. The guy said, “No, we’re waiting for them,” and he pointed to a couple ahead of him and his wife. And who was that couple waiting for? Yep, the family of six.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the only hole-in-one (or “homerun” as Owen called it) of the game was Owen’s. I wasn’t even watching, but the couple in front of us was, and I guess his ball just traveled right down the green and into the hole. I missed my one opportunity for a hole-in-one when my ball actually went over the hole because a little boy’s foot was in the hole.<\/p>\n

2. While waiting in line to buy ice cream, I noticed I was being stared at. It took a second to register, but finally recognized the staree as John, a Witness from my former congregation. Once I realized who it was, I waved to him, and he just kind of reverse-nodded at me (you know, the kind where someone lifts their head up instead of down). “How you doing?” I asked him. We were about 10 feet away, but I couldn’t get any closer, as I did not want to leave my spot in line, and I think he was waiting for his wife to pay for her ice cream. He nodded again. I think he said “good.” Then he turned around and started walking away.<\/p>\n

Poor guy. I feel bad for Witnesses like that, who are torn between their conscience and their religion. John will have to get over that if he ever wants to be an elder.<\/p>\n

3. Minutes later, while I was paying for our ice cream, the cashier looked down at Owen (who had a mouthful of food) and said: “Hey, little squirt, you should thank your dad for that ice cream.” He didn’t really understand what she was saying; I don’t think he’s ever heard the word ‘squirt’ applied in that way, and I don’t think he even knew that she was talking to him because, after all, adults almost never talk to kids that they don’t know. I smiled at Owen and said, “do you like your ice cream, buddy,” but he was too shy to answer. Then the cashier said: “I’ll give your Daddy a dollar off if you say thank you.” So then, desiring the discount, I looked at Owen again and said: “Say thank you.” He said it real quiet, real sheepish.<\/p>\n

I know why she gave me the dollar off. Because those folks at Cold Stone have a tip jar sitting out (which seems really stupid to me – why should I give a 15%+ tip for that?) and they really prostitute themselves out in an effort to get that cash. I was going to throw the extra buck in the jar, but then I thought: “No way, this lady pissed me off.” No tip for her.<\/p>\n

Here’s the deal: it’s not the Cold Stone cashier’s job to teach my son manners. If I wanted to guilt him in to morality, I would raise him religious. My son is not the kind of person who thanks me instantly upon receiving something like that. He’s usually overwhelmed out in public, anyways. He’s more they type who, while lying in bed that evening, will say: “Thank you for bringing me to the mall today, Daddy.” In fact, he’ll even thank me at times that I don’t feel it was warranted. Like the other day, I was pushing him on the swing at the playground, and he said: “Thanks for pushing me.” And, at any rate, I don’t really think I need to be thanked for everything anyways. Forcing those words out of someone renders them sterile. There are other, more meaningful way to connote gratitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 May 2010 Today I was invited to read my short story “Big Trees” at Hamline’s Fulcrum Showcase. The Fulcrum is a book of student works that the university publishes yearly. They had an indie-folk band playing before the event began, there was artwork on display, and five people got up and read their work. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}