First Impression

One of the first stories I wrote was called

I’ll Grow Up to be a Gum card

And frankly I was searching for approval but I didn’t know what to do with it, who I might ask to read it.

Then the light came on. Charles Phillips a co-worker and one of my best friends. We played golf and tennis together. But that wasn’t the angle I played. I knew that “Chucky” led the league in nice and wouldn’t say a bad word if you paid him. How nice and easy going was he? He owned three Amway sales kits and six Gideons’ Bibles just because he couldn’t say no to the door-to-door guys that unloaded them on him.

I took a bound draft of my first effort to him and asked him to read it to see what he thought. We were working in a big news room together, a sea of desks, so I could see Charles and he was actually reading my story.

Suddenly he just closed the manuscript and slipped it in to his desk drawer.  This brought me out of my chair like a heat-seeking missel. I went to his desk and asked, “Well, what did you think of the story!”

He paused and finally said, “Well, I just didn’t get it!”

I was crushed.

Fast forward!  About a year later Chuckie had moved on to the beach where he’d opened an insurance agency. On a Friday my phone rang at work. In fact, it had been ringing all morning because Sports Illustrated had not only bought, I’ll Grow Up to be a Gum Card, they had published it that week with a cartoon of me in a Yankees uniform on a baseball gum card.

So, the phone rings, I answer and hear Charles’ voice,  “Cairns, he said, “I got my Sports Illustrated yesterday and read that article again….”

I’m thinking, oh boy here it comes!

“And I wanted you to know,” Chucky said, “About that story. I still don’t GET it!”

And that, the laughter that followed alone, makes it my all-time favorite critique!