I called
family and apologized in advance for disgracing the Martinez name and
honor. I begged my best friends to stand
by me as I prepared to publicly humiliate myself.
The weekly
newspaper hit the neighborhood Thursday morning as I prepared to leave town for
the weekend – not because of the column I had just written but because I was on
my way to a teacher’s conference in Dallas.
I opened my
copy and saw her – LadyBoomer – in her place in the centerfold of the small
community paper, every word as I had written it. It was up to the readership to
decide if I was a writer or not.
* *
* *
Three months
before (December 2001) I had just survived a divorce that had taken five months
to finalize. I was ready to forge a new
future when I opened my weekly Herald and saw an ad looking for an
op-ed/personal column writer. All I had
to do was dust off my resume, create a column voice, and submit three, 250-word
samples – all in one week’s time.
What did I
have to offer? I was a newly single,
fifty-something woman with an empty nest, facing the new millennium with an
even emptier pocketbook – and I loved to write.
There it was: I was a lady, a
boomer, and single. Surely, there must be others in my situation. Maybe we could commiserate and laugh at
ourselves while we did it.
I submitted
everything well within the time limit and I waited. And waited.
And waited. Every week I opened
the paper and nothing.
I came home
from work one day in late February to a phone message from the paper’s
editor. My hand shook as I returned
his call. The response for the job had
been overwhelming and it took a while to read and choose the top four
applicants. I had been chosen among
three others.
The
editorial board had decided to let the readership choose the winner. They would print one entry every Thursday
throughout the months of March, April, and May, and the column to get the
biggest response would go weekly in June.
Was I in?
My confidence
was a low as the pay, but I figured I would get some experience from all
this. I was asked to beef up my three
columns (up to 450-550 words), and resubmit before the last Thursday of each
month. (I worried since the assignment
wasn’t alphabetical and I was last in the rotation, I might be the weakest
writer.)
The first
column played with the author’s last name and how people always worried over
how to pronounce it. I read it and got nervous.
It was so “cute.”
The next
Thursday we read about junk mail and I started to worry. This one was so “tame.”
The third
writer told about a daily fight she had with her husband over their one Lazy
Boy chair. I lost interest halfway
through except this was my competition.
I. Was. In.
Big trouble.
This was
when I started calling my family and apologizing. I begged my friends to not
abandon me. I called my editor and asked if it was too late to change my name
to a pseudonym.
He laughed
at me and told me to leave it to the readers.
* *
* *
I got home late
on Sunday from the conference to find my answering machine flashing with
messages from family and friends. I started my computer to find both email
inboxes full of emails, all congratulating me.
The column
on “Why I Joined the Gym” (because I was looking for a man my age, healthy
enough to get his own evening snacks) was a hit. LadyBoomer received 643 emails
that week.
PS: LadyBoomer ran from March 2002 until I
retired her in October 2005. She was a grand old gal.
Oh my word...one of my favorite posts! I am amazed!
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