Getting High In the Deli

Before I was promoted to the title of “Mommy, the Boss of This House,” by my children, I worked as a high school English teacher. My journalism career was launched by an unsuspecting teenager in a journalism class that I taught who challenged my ability to teach the subject when I had no real-life experience as a reporter. Realizing that this surly student was right, I called an old college friend who was now the Editor-in-Chief of my local newspaper, and asked him to “throw me a bone” so I could show the class something published. He gave me my first assignment, a piece for a special bridal section, and I was off and writing. Soon after, I left my position at the high school to raise children, and I found myself a drug with no ill side effects. It really wasn't that shocking, I discovered the thrill of publishing.

The next thing I know I'm getting high in a deli. I see the headline of something I wrote on the front page of the local newspaper. It's not The New York Times, but who cares, my voice has multiplied. I hand the cashier a dollar, and wait impatiently as her claws for nails, embellished with leopard print at the tips, slow her down. Now I'm frantically flipping through the pages and jumping up and down like I just got put through to Hollywood on American Idol. The cashier's face twists in that way an adolescent usually expresses sarcastic confusion, because I'm starting to squeal at my son whose peering up at me from his stroller. "Look! Mommy's published and she's FAMOUS (in a small, local sort of way), " I obliviously shout in my mommy sing-song voice. My son, whose not yet two years old, is staring intently at my moving mouth. It seems he's thinking, "Calm down mommy, almost doesn't really count." Sadly, it's too late, because now I'm hooked. I'm writing on napkins and the back of my hand. I won't stop till I've hit bottom, the local Bargain Basement Bookstore, that is.