The Slidy Thing
April 2, 2000
11:11 a.m.
I finished a story today. Well, not quite--I mean, it's still got to go through Lisa's copy edit--but the story part is done, and it feels pretty darned good. I haven't written "The End" and really meant it for a little while.   So I was talking to Lisa (the wife/copy editor, not the writer/friend) the other night. She had gotten me a portable CD player so I could listen to stuff at work. "How's it working out?" she asked. "Just fine," I replied. This, of course is the classic male response to about any question. "Where did you put it?" "Oh, I put it in the little slidy thing under my desk." "The slidy thing?" Yeah." I looked at her and realized I wasn't going to be able to get off that easy. Not to be stereotypical here or anything, but women just seem to want a lot more detail in everyday conversation than men. I mean, I think anyone ought to be content with knowing that the CD player rested in the "slidy thing" under my desk. Not Lisa, though. Maybe it's the copy editor in her. Whatever. Yeah, the slidy thing," I replied. "You mean the drawer?" "Well, if you want to be specific, I guess it's a drawer." "I see." "Except it doesn't have any sides." "No sides?" "Right. It's a slidy thing with no sides." She looks at me with wide eyes that tell me she's still suspicious. "Well, it's like a keyboard drawer," I explain. Actually, I realize it is more than just like a keyboard drawer. It actually is a keyboard drawer, an old style keyboard drawer made of wood with little lips around the edges. "A keyboard drawer," Lisa says, her head nodding with a sense of satisfaction that had been missing before. "You put the CD player on a keyboard drawer?" "I just call it a slidy thing," I reply, holding on to the last bit of my pride no matter how much of a losing cause I'm fighting. "I see," she said. Living with a copy editor can be pretty demanding.  We feel your pain, Ron Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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