Daddy's got his beer and he's glued to the television
An' Mamma's in the kitchen
With the dishes and the pots and pans
An' I be in my bedroom
Contemplatin' all the living I'm missin'
Just waiting for the day
I won't have to follow someone else's plans
I'm frustrated, my hands are tied
I'm frustrated, my brains are fried
I'm frustrated, no place to hide
Cause they see what they wanna see
An' no one ever knows that I'm lonely
I've got rockets in my sockets
But I got no place to go
An' in my dreams I find my one and only
Then I wake up in the morningAnd reality really blows
I said, I'm frustrated, my hands are tied
I'm frustrated, my brains are fried
I'm frustrated, no place to hide
d.: Honey, have you seen my computer? I need to fill out some forms and I can’t find it.
Eudora: It’s in the kitchen, in the refrigerator, between the toaster and the breadbox.
d.: I’m looking in the refrigerator, but I don’t see it.
E.: (Men can never find anything). It’s right here, where I moved it to after you left it on your desk last night. I didn’t know why you left your computer on your desk. I thought that you forgot to put it away.
d.: (Because that’s where I usually use it.)
E.: I put it right where I said I did, under the television, between these two folders and behind this stack of your manuscripts. A legally blind man could have seen that, dear.
d.: Okay, thanks. Now, to fill out this form. I need to hurry, though. I have five minutes to type my life’s story, or I’ll need to go through the whole sixty-seven step process to resubmit my manuscript.
“I was born in a town so small that the one traffic light had to double as the one streetlight. I lived on a small farm until I went to college. That’s where I learned the value of hard work.” (ring).
C.: Hi, d.c., what are you doing?
d.: I’m filling out this form so that I can change one word in my manuscript that I wrote and turned in to a publisher. I really don’t have time to talk, though.
C.: Oh, well, that shouldn’t take long.
d.: Well, I need to give them my life’s story, so that I can change “this” to “that” at the very end of the last chapter in the manuscript, and I need to turn in this form in the next three minutes to avoid having to go through a long process to resubmit my manuscript.
C.: Can’t you just leave it like it is?
d.: No, it doesn’t read correctly if I don’t change this one word. Now, where was I?
“My formative years were spent going to school, playing sports, and doing chores on the farm. I developed a fondness for animals, as well as a respect for those who earn their livings at manual labor.”
I’ll continue this tomorrow. It’s time to go to work now. I guess I’ll just need to fill the long form out again to submit my manuscript.
Three weeks later…
d.: I got the copy of my manuscript back. Now, to read the whole manuscript and see how that one word changed the flow of the story….no, I think “this” really was better in the last chapter. I suppose that I’ll need to fill out another form, and I can’t plagiarize what I’ve already written. It’s now illegal to even plagiarize one’s self, so I need to re-write this whole form to change this one word back to what it originally. If I’m going to go to this much trouble to fill out this form again, maybe I should rewrite the whole manuscript. That way, I’ll have two different manuscripts, one that says “this” and one that says “that.” Then, I can decide which one I like better. Oh, well, writing is rewriting, I guess.