The Spouse Thingy is reading my manuscript, looking for typos and stray words that seem to appear out of nowhere—remnants of the original draft that just didn’t get backspaced over during rewrites—and he’s handing the pages over a few at a time. This is the last step before the manuscript goes to layout; the cover is almost ready and the back cover copy is done (fingers crossed that other-author blurbs will fit on it!)
This afternoon I took my trusty netbook and 50 of these proofed pages over to Border’s where I intended to make corrections to the digital version and people watch. But I got there and realized with a well dammit--and after I had already bought my iced tea—that I (again) left the flash drive with the manuscript on it at home.
I figured what the hell, I’ll sit down anyway and flip through a magazine, watch the people come and go. Now, I wasn’t reading garbage, I was looking at an issue of Scientific American Mind (not that I’m cerebral; there’s an article in it about how working out can make you smarter, and I need all the incentive I can get to push my ass to the gym). This grimy looking guy in dirty jeans and holey t-shirt walked by, looked at me with a sneer and muttered “white trash” and then walked away.
WTF?
I was totally not wearing my white trash clothes today. I have no idea where he was coming from. Still, if reading something so brainy was going to get me sneered at, I figured I might as well put the magazine away (no worries, I paid for it) and pull out my Kindle to read for a bit before heading home to avoid housework.
No one sneered at me for reading on it, even though Border’s sells the Sony Reader.
One of the things I’m seriously enjoying about the Kindle is the sheer volume of books available that have been written by independent authors. These books are typically very inexpensive (and often self-published), but most of the ones I’m buying are very well written. Right now I’m reading an epistolary memoir, Learn Me Good, and I laughed out loud so often that people started to glare at me.
Hey, if they can sit there and carry on conversations on their cell phones, I can laugh out loud.
Or at least snicker.
Damn, that just made me want a candy bar...
9 comments:
I think he was commenting on himself! If not, he needs to look in a mirror!
What gives people the gall to comment like that out loud to someone? How does he know you're not going to pull out your big ole switchblade & make him say it again?!
Amazing. There are rude people everywhere.
Did you report him to the management? I might have. How rude.
People are entitled to say stupid things...I found him more amusing than offensive, probably because of how he looked. Kinda like the stereotype of white trash...
Rude people are everywhere and I guess ignoring them is the best thing to do. It's a shame that you forgot your flash drive and didn't get any work done, but you probably needed a little break anyway.
I had a feeling that there were rude people outside of NYC. You've confirmed that for me. Doesn't make me feel any better about the rude people in NYC though.
I think he was talking about himself. The ignorant ones usually do.
Maybe that was like the scene in Annie Hall where the Woody Allen character insisted people were saying "Jew eat" instead of "Did you eat?"
Maybe the guy said something that only sounded to you like "white trash." Maybe "Why the rash?"
Poor guy. No doubt he's got rash all over his parts and pieces. Hey, it's a theory!
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