'I write'

Who doesn't love a bargain?

Several of the advertising inserts in last Sunday's paper touted the first of the back-to-school specials. Among the treasures on offer, Walgreens advertised five packs of mechanical pencils for 19 cents a pack (limit six), and Office Max was selling those black and white marbled composition books I so dearly love for 50 cents each (again limit six, so I guess that's the magic number).

I needed both for my work and the prices were too good to pass up. I do my writing on the computer, but mechanical pencils and those composition books are tools I use to capture ideas before they drift off like a careless child's birthday balloon on a breezy day.

I had errands to run yesterday that took me past both a Walgreens and an Office Max, so I was in business.

At the Walgreens, I faced a wall of school supplies and in this forest I couldn't find the particular tree I was looking for.

A woman with her Walgreens smock and stocking cart passed by, and I asked her help in finding the mechanical pencils on sale. Of course they were right in front of me all along. "That's a lot of pencils," she pointed out as I bagged my limit. "Are you a teacher?"

It was a logical question to ask a middle aged man in shorts, sandals and a t-shirt shopping at Walgreens in the middle of a summer day.

"No," I replied, taking the briefest breath before continuing. "I write."

This was the first time I had ever said these words to a stranger inquiring about my profession. It felt a little strange to say the words out loud, almost like a lie, but simultaneously empowering. Notice I didn't say "I'm a writer." I couldn't go that far--that would have been too much. No, for now "I write" is sufficient.

To my great relief, she didn't ask if I had written anything she had ever read. I think my last published work was a letter to the editor in the New Orleans Times-Picayune back in 2004. I sent the same newspaper another letter a couple of years later, but that one was rejected.

Wait--there was also my series of articles about global sales meetings regularly appearing in Wiley World, our corporate magazine. Since I saved the company the cost of sending a PR type to our meeting to document it, my journalistic bent was much appreciated. That series came to a crashing halt when I got bored writing the exact same story for the umpteenth time, and, convinced that the readers of Wiley World must be just as bored, took a slightly more innovative approach. Turns out boring is exactly what was desired, and that article was completely rewritten by one of the corporate communications people (who wasn't there), and I wasn't asked to contribute again.

But, back to Walgreens: instead of asking about the nature of my writing, the conversation took an odder twist.

"I used to write too," the stock clerk said. "Short stories and poems. But my ex burned them all when he was drunk after we had a fight. He was an addict and an alcoholic and mean," she added, perhaps unnecessarily.

From there the conversation became even less predictable, but also less interesting, so we'll leave it there.

Had dinner with Kevin last night. Kevin was my last manager at Big Publishing, Inc., and he was in town training my replacement. We settled on dinner at Lovoy's, one of those 50 year old time capsules of a restaurant, my favorite kind. Lovoy's is an Italian joint, so we tucked into our dinners of veal Parmesan and chicken cacciatore and shared some good conversation.

We talked a little about business and a little about family, but a lot about travel, mostly my recent adventures in France and his trip to Brazil. Kevin seemed genuinely interested, so I did most of the talking. The evening passed pleasantly and too quickly before I returned him to his hotel and his life, which, until very recently, was my life too.