Wise Cracks

A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by Madeleine L’Engle. Published in 1962, it went on to win a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, among others.

It was the first tome in L’Engle’s series of books about the Murry and O’Keefe families. (the foregoing facts from Wikipedia)

Who cares? Why is this relevant to anyone, most of all you?

Editors and agents hated it.

It was rejected 26 times in a two-year period. That’s more than a bottle of gin a month in rejection letters! It subsequently sold 8,000,000 copies and has seen 60 printings.

What do editors know? They judge your book before it has been gifted with a fine cover! (From there on out, it is judged by its cover; you know this is true!)

Everyone except perhaps your family has told you to persist as a writer. (Your family may have encouraged you to train for a “real” career. Understood.) This story shows why.

Acceptance may have to do with timing, headaches, cultural values or mores, personal tastes, closed-mindedness, craziness, pessimism, budgets, deadlines, closing time, marital problems, genius (yours) and myriad other events or attitudes.

If you’re out-of-step on any of them, your carefully-crafted script could be overlooked. My proof is the anecdote above, many more like it, and the plethora of very poorly written books that somehow make it to number 1 on Amazon.com.

Rejection is just a wrinkle. Deal with it.

Bath tissue has been bugging me lately. I’ve written previously about bath tissue pricing. I was at Wal-Mart considering whether to buy 12 double rolls which equaled 24 single rolls, or 24 double rolls equivalent to 48 single rolls, when scanning for package pricing, there was this interloper of 18 roll packs. Even if 18 = 36, how do you compare that to 24 or 48 without carrying a pocket calculator?

I go for soft. (Notice we no longer have colored tissue which might work evil on our bottom(less) parts with their #4 or #3 or #unknown dyes?)

I tried extra strong (absorbent – whatever) but it seemed to be too thick for our 30-year old pipes to enjoy, never mind the 30-year old septic system. So I switched. From something I really loved but could find at only a few outlets, to something lighter, thinner, that had an all-too-cute motto involving slightly more-than-middle-aged men performing unseemly acts in supermarkets, or woolly bears doing things in the woods that one cannot smell if indeed no one is “there.”

Last shopping trip, the 48 aka 24 aka 12 pack rolls were either unavailable or not on sale. We opted for the 24 = 24 pack. The plastic packaging was just as large as, or larger than, the other; but presumably the same amount of relief-producing soft stuff was inside.

Till I opened it yesterday morning. Six four-packs inside. Each four-pack was slightly smaller than a Coleman camping pillow. More like an airline pillow. Good lower back support on a long car trip. By the time I’d wrenched the contents out of the second layer of plastic wrap, they were squashed. A little flat. Smaller still.

I loaded the tiny little roll onto the bathroom dispenser, trying to ignore its pathetic insignificance. All seemed well. Everyone (both of us) was able to use the little professionals’ facilities and go along to work. Since I work at home, I noticed its diminishing presence every couple hours. By 3:00, it was gone. Over. Finis!

Unlock and reload.

How do they manipulate the numbers, because they print square inches and possibly even cubic inches on every pack? I’m sure I never used a whole double roll in one day (at least not since “my friend” stopped visiting years ago).

My eye was glued to the replenishment supply. How long would it last? Till bedtime? Till morning?

Today is our second day with two rolls on the hook per day. With only one person home most of the day. OK. I confess. I. drink. water. But not that much. Just enough to keep two lumberjacks alive.

I haven’t done the math. But there’s no way these two little potato-sized rolls equate to one of the gargantuan 12 = 24 rolls we usually use. The 12 = 36 rolls are not even in the running. Eighteen? I’m still mad at Wal-Mart about that. Stores should make it easy to comparison shop. It’s not like they can let you use the product and report how much is necessary “per serving.” But they could at least say “this equals that” or “this is an aberration; buy the one you’re used to.”

Most of all, I’m disturbed I’ve spent two days thinking about how quickly a roll or two of kiss-ass paper disappears. Is this weird?

Pet peeves are the easiest writing subjects, because we have strong emotions around things that annoy us.

A big one for me is discourtesy. For example, looking for a parking place in a residential neighborhood, you notice all the driveways seem to be about two car lengths apart — and have two cars parked there. At last up ahead you see one car and think you’ve found a spot, only to draw near and realize the driver parked smack in the middle of what could have been two available spaces.

Or you’re waiting at an intersection to pull out into traffic. The wait is long. Finally only one car is  coming from your left. Wait, wait, wait–then it turns right into the street you’re waiting on. Had the driver used a turn signal, you could have pulled out and been half a mile down the road by now.

I generally think of others around me. If I’m standing on the sidewalk and people are approaching, I move over to give them room to pass. When stashing my shopping cart while browsing a department, I push it off to the side, out of the aisles.

The problem with being a courtesy freak is that it’s inherently bad form to express pique over another’s thoughtlessness. How courteous is that?

I received an email yesterday from Neale Donald Walsch who put this beautifully:

It is not necessary for you to report everyone’s mistakes to them,
much less to give them corrections.

I appreciated the reminder. I knew it. And I knew I needed to give it more consideration. So I looked it up again today and am writing about it.

His email went on to say:

You would not welcome someone else pointing out
your own misstep, or less-than-totally-efficient approach
to something. Why point it out to them? Do you see it as
your duty in life to make sure that all goes the way you
think it ‘should’?

Maybe it’s the teacher in me. I think by pointing out to a member of a minority that voting to discriminate against other minorities is not only illogical, but also wrong, that he or she will say “Ah, I see your point. I want inclusion and equal rights in society, so I should vote that others can have them, too.”

Now what’s wrong with expecting that?

Image by Gisela Merkuur from Pixabay