Can I have your autograph?
It’s always cool to instantly bond with strangers – chatting with other dog owners at the park, befriending other backpackers in a foreign country, or simply bonding with the cashier at a store. The connection is always short, but it’s often about something you’re interested in or passionate about. Last night, I was at Barnes and Noble, picking up Lee Child’s latest thriller when the cashier goes, “I’ve read all his books!” So, that was my cue to say, “Yeah, isn’t he awesome?”
So we gabbed a bit, and I tell the cashier, “He was in town recently doing book signings at the Costco in Gilbert and the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale. And I thought about going, but then I realized I’m too old to get autographs!” And once I said that, it slightly depressed me. I walked out of the bookstore, pondering what I just said and what it meant. Was I really too old? Growing up, I was an uber-fan and loved getting autographs of sports heroes and writers I admired.
When mom got me Willie Mays’ autograph in the fourth grade, it was my most prized posession until dad got me Willie McCovey’s autograph in the seventh grade. In my teens, I collected comic books and baseball cards, and got them signed. When I was 16 or 17, I wrote an eight-page letter – eight pages! – to mystery novelist Max Allan Collins, telling him how brilliant he was, how he inspired me to become a writer and how I’ve read everything he has written except his first two out-of-print paperbacks. A month later, a few days before Christmas, Collins sent me a brown package. I ripped it open, and it was copies of his first two books – and they were autographed! (more…)
The weed is dead
It’s over. I lost. My neighbor is the winner of the 2007 Tallest Weed Contest. This past week, I hired a new gardener, pointed to my tallest weed – about 4 1/2 feet tall – and told him not to rip it out. Well, this Saturday, during a two-hour cleanup, one of his workers pulled it out of the ground. The gardener rang the doorbell and told me the bad news afterward: “My worker just got really excited because it was so big – and those kinds of weeds are really easy to rip out, and he just….” (The gardener stopped talking and showed me the proper swoop-down-to pluck-a-weed-off-the-ground technique).
I shrugged my shoulders, and said, “Eh, no big deal.” At least my backyard is clean!
I can’t believe I’m blogging about weeds.
Wylie Wong writes for a living. This is where he posts his personal musings. 
