While we’re all waiting to hear if I’ve managed to snag an agent’s interest, thought I’d share an odd tidbit from my past. We could use a breath of fresh air around here.
(Or in this case, a breath of canned air.)
I do not do Spam.
I have good reason.
You see, we moved around the country a lot while I was growing up. We weren’t military types. No, we were the grass “could be greener over there” types! Okay, okay, the parents were. I was an odd, too grown up child with a smart mouth–one who really preferred staying in one place. I had this deep-rooted first-day-of-school-in-the-cafeteria phobia that was revisited in reality way too often.
(Remind me to share about the year I spent every day like that–couldn’t make friends and was finally outed as a narc– I looked too old to be a high school kid apparently.)
But, around the time I was going through puberty, my parents and some friends decided to try a new way of life and we all moved to this spot of land in the Ozark Mountains. They scoff when I call it a commune, but uh, everyone shared the land and put the money in a common pot. At least, I believe that was the idea in the beginning. We even started out with common ideals, an organic garden, etc.
(Remind me to share the metamorphoses of that garden–later referred to as the Demon Snake Pit.)
We all learned the hard way that this sort of thing rarely works. I honestly don’t know everything that happened and I really don’t want to. But that last winter, circumstances grew to alarming lows and things got tight as my father and another had to stay out of state to work and send money home. The only store within miles was this tiny hunter’s type lodge that kept easy, canned eats like Spam. Can you guess our main diet that year? Lovely, salty, funky canned meat fried up with potatoes.
(Remind me to later share the part about the pasty, alien bologna. Strange flat meat-like product kept on fresh supply. Barely resembled that found in grocery stores. To this day, I wonder if it was really bologna or something more sinister…)