Bait

Quite a few years ago I wrote a Children's Story as the B-day gift for the daughter of a friend. It's a simple story and I had fun during the writing process. I sent it to a publisher I met at a Writers Conference Retreat weekend. Nothing ever came of it--except I received a personal rejection letter from the publisher rather than a form letter from an assistant of an assistant. (FYI: You're supposed to be really impressed with the personalized, high-level of my rejection.)

Several years ago I was driving home from St. Louis and I came to a wonderfully picturesque  area on old Route 66 which was dotted with interesting barns, antique shops, flea markets, and herds of cows mooing at their gates,  etc. I was intrigued by the different colored tags in the ears of the cows and wondered at the different meanings they might have.  The vague form of a second Children's Story started to take shape. I jotted down a few ideas of the adventures of a couple of calf-sisters and a "moral" of the story. I also took "inspiration pictures" of the area and a few of the cows. I thought I saved the information to a computer file or a note on my iPhone. Try as hard as I might, I can not locate the information. I recall one of the adventures involved escaping from a flash-flood in a canyon. I know nothing about the nature of flash-floods in canyons or how one would escape. I would like to include factual and realistic--but simple--escape plans; however,  I never seem to be at a computer to google this information when I think of it. Those are just a few of my excuses for not attempting to write the story.

About six months ago, I was at one of my favorite Half Price Books store perusing the $1 Clearance Rack when I spotted "The Worst Case Scenario Book of Survival Questions."  My friend, Alicia, had been reading a book in which the heroin faced every natural disaster known to man except a swarm of locusts and the Death Angel passing over, and quite frankly, by the end of the book even they may have made an appearance! I thought the calf-sisters should face several hard-ships or adventures with increasingly "bad" things happening to them--but not so bad as to be nightmare-inducing to young readers. When I saw the Scenario book, I bought it thinking it would be a great resource if I ever did write the story of the calf-sisters.

I still have not read the Scenario book. Nor have I found the outline or notes I made on the calf-sister story-line and moral. Last night I glanced through the Scenario book ISO information related to surviving flash-floods, or any disaster in a canyon setting.  This particular Scenario book does not have this information. But, I found a "Survival Aptitude" test at the end of the book and decided to take the test and rate myself.  I viewed the test as a sort of "pre-test."  After I actually read the book I'll take it again as a "post-test" and see how much I've improved in my survival skills knowledge.

I thought I did pretty well on the test...until I tallied my score.

According to the Scenario book,  I am "an accident waiting to happen." And the parting sentence of advice to me was, "Try not to leave the house."  Presumably, because I would die or at the very least, be harmed. Seriously.  In fact, the Scenario book classified me as "Bait." I'm pretty sure Martha Stewart would not say, "this is a good thing." In fact, I'm thinking, I may not be safe to be around!  Maybe I should go ahead and retire to a cabin in the woods in order to spare my friends, coworkers, and total strangers I come into contact with while walking on the street or shopping, from suffering some terrible disaster because they come into contact with me.  Of course,  the woods can be full of "Lions, and Tigers, and Bears...Oh,  My!"

On second thought, since I'm "bait,"  retiring to a cabin in the woods might not be the safest place for me! This has got me to wondering where would be a safe place for me to retire?  So far, I have only come up with the safety net below the tight-rope at the three-ring circus. But, now that I think of it, while I would probably feel at home among the flurry of activity at the circus, with my luck an acrobat would fall from the wire above and land on me.