When I was about seven, I was jonesing for a suede vest with fringes on it. That was kind of a big deal for me because day-to-day clothes were kind of drab in our family. Most of my shirts were hand-me-downs. I had two older brothers, and cousins up the street, and stuff got passed around.
Of course, I was shorter than most and thicker around the middle, so a lot of their pants didn’t fit me. I wore a lot of husky-sized dungarees which we bought at Sears. Above that, I wore whatever shirt didn’t have a hole in it. No one ever handed-down a suede vest with fringes on it.
It wasn’t all boring, though. My easily-angered, hawkish father bought me pint-sized army fatigues so I could play dress-up as a soldier. He got me utility belts, ammo bags, and toy guns to complete the outfit. If you put a uniform on a canned ham, that’s pretty much what I looked like.
Me with a helmet and gun.
At the other end of the spectrum, my mother was prone to buying us fancy pants and jackets for Easter. So we had colorful jackets, like we were realtors or something, but with fake family crest on the breast and fake pockets on the side. She put an ascot around my neck which makes for a cute picture, but those outfits were no more practical than my military costumes.
My 1st Grade school picture.
The suede vest with fringes is the first thing I remember wanting, and I begged that it could be my birthday present. I had my reasons for wanting it, but I’m not exactly sure where I got the idea.
Had I seen teenagers in the city park wearing suede vests with fringes? Perhaps. This was 1971 and even in our suburb, teenagers would have sported such outfits. The cops had to have some way to know who to chase and harass, and hippie-wear was that way to know.
Or maybe I saw Sonny Bono wear it on his TV show?
My mother gave me that vest for my birthday. It was dark brown, and the fringes started near the top and stretched to the bottom, swaying, as fringes do, when I moved. I really thought this was a new beginning for me.
Mom took me out to the city park for a photoshoot, and there I was with my suede vest on top of the merry-go-round, and there I was, wearing my suede vest, climbing the ladder to the slide… I was adorable.
It bears repeating: “adorable”
My plan was to wear it on the first day of second grade. I fully expected to be as cool as Donny Kimora or Rob Razak. You know, the cool kids.
But that didn’t happen. No one mocked me, or anything. It was just silence, which is far worse. Before lunch was over that day, I knew I would not be cool in school.
When I got home that day, I shoved the suede vest with fringes into a drawer and we never spoke of it again. Until today.
But that’s how you react to things when you’re seven. Or maybe when you’re twenty-seven. It takes a while to learn how to deal with other peoples’ reactions to how you look, what you wear, and what you do.
We’re not born knowing how to be ourselves. It took me even longer to be comfortable sharing my writing. I was afraid of what people would think and didn’t realize that the only way to get better at something is to make the mistakes and get feedback.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I have made a new design and plan for the current work in process. A week ago, I took a webinar on novel writing from an author I’ve been following a while, and it was heartening to hear his process, and see that I’m not unusual to take a different story direction in the rewrite.
When writing a novel, the characters and their interactions often change the story direction. You can either change the characters or you can change the story. But to force a story onto unwilling characters makes for bad fiction.
Maybe You’d Like
I’m in a group promo this month called: May’s the Month for Mysterious Men. This is an opportunity to judge some books by its cover and see if there’s something you’d like to read.
All these books are mysteries of some sort.
Next Picayune
I’m working on some other things with my current books, so I’ll have that to share soon. Meanwhile, thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune
All the best,
–mickey
P.S. I keep tweaking my writing website, and recently added this nifty press kit, hoping to arrange some readings and a podcast tour…