Loose Leaf Notes

My son, Josh, was published by the time he was 3 years old. An article and a poem I had written appeared in “Mothering Magazine” around that time, and I was a regular contributor to “Nurturing,” a Mothering-like magazine out of Canada. I sent his poems, drawings, stories, and recipes, along with my own submissions to “Nurturing” and, much to my delight, they frequently used them.
Today, Josh is fully grown. Although he is primarily a potter, he is an artist in every sense. He has a way with lingo, lives larger than life and has stories to prove it, the kind that you couldn’t make up if you tried. I knew when I started this blog that if I ever was at a loss for what to post, I could dig into his wealth of stories and find a gem. He’s agreed to guest post a story from time to time, but because he’s nearing the end of a school semester and preparing for a 3 week trip to England after that, I don’t expect one any time soon. So I’ll relate a story he told a group of us over a sushi supper last Friday night. He calls it “The After School Special” and I’m guessing he was about 19 or 20 at the time. It still makes me shudder:
She was pretty and blonde. They were in bed, making out. They had been drinking. Things were heating up when he rolled over and his head hit something hard…metal. “What’s this?” he asked her. He was shocked to see that it was a gun. “Let me show you,” she said, grabbing it. It was loaded! And went off! “Hey, can you keep it down in there,” a friend from the other room shouted to them.
As Josh tells the story, “It blew up a shoe, and after that, I lost my license.”
I was confused. “Did you get pulled over, driving home?”
He whispered in my ear a hint of what he meant, and then I understood that HE WASN’T IN THE MOOD anymore.
He got the message loud and clear, and he was never in the mood with her again. When they ran into each other months later, she gave him the bullet as a souvenir.
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In Other News: Loose Leaf is being featured in a Showcase Carnival this week hosted at BlogCruiser. Go take a look. There are a variety of new blogs to check out with topics including everything from sex to politics.
Also: Mainstream Media and Bloggers by Juan Cole is an article worth reading. It’s about the state of blogging today. Cole is an author and Professor of History at the University of Michigan.