Advice from a small town girl

I think I’ll poke a little fun at the editor this week. Really, I’m poking fun at myself, but I’m disguising it.

Every once in a while, I forget to write my own headline for this column. That’s the first mistake.

Then I read what the editor supplied. That’s the second mistake.

It’s not the editor’s fault, you know. If I could just remember to go back to the top of the page before that final save and the email to The Record.

If I could just figure out what the heck I was writing about that week (because most weeks I just make it up as I go along.)

As near as I can tell, even though I’m usually chuckling to myself as I type, or shaking my head in rueful dismay, or trying to control the steam coming out of my ears, the editor isn’t getting that same feeling as he/she reads the column.

That may be the third mistake. Actually, we need to call that the first mistake, because it’s really the upshot of all of this, you know?

Because if the editor can’t tell what the column is really about, how can I expect anyone else to?

As I was typing (I know they call it “keyboarding” now, but I just can’t!) last week’s column, I was planning to compose a headline around the word “blessings.”

Not the fact that I think I have “summer SAD.” (By the way, I still dislike summer. Intensely. Very intensely.) But I didn’t get my headline composed, and the rest is history. I like to write headlines. I like to think that I do it fairly well. When I remember to do it.

Of course, now that it’s too late, I can think of lots of good ones.

“Blessings increase when you count them” comes to mind.

“The best thing may be three best things” is another possibility.

You get the drift.

There have been a lot of stories in the news this past week that have made me think.

Thinking is hard.

I still haven’t arrived at a personal conclusion about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmer-man trial. I’m not sure I ever will.

I was incredibly touched by President Obama’s speech after the trial was over, not because I will ever understand what it is like to be black in America, but because I have been that person who locked her car doors when an unfamiliar person of another color was approaching. And it shames me.

I continue to be astonished and dismayed by yet another twist of cruelty in the Middle East. Now the Syrian rebels are turning on each other.

And I find that I really don’t care about the royal baby.

Instead, I find myself thinking about just that.

Myself.

And my headline.

Have a good week!