I didn’t start writing with this blog, or the blog before Rubber Shoes.
In the 90s, I wrote scores of short stories and completed 3 novels. All of which were horrible. I’m not being modest or self-deprecating. They were horrible. Mostly.
I had a tiny bit of success. I won a short story contest and got paid fifty bucks. I also got some really nice hand written rejections.
Then in 1998, I wrote an essay and submitted it to Writer’s Digest for their yearly competition. I entered the personal essay category even though at the time I was all about fiction.
I cannot begin to tell you the excitement I felt when Randy and I came home to find a voice mail from Writer’s Digest telling me I had placed 10th for my essay 8 To 9 In 66 Hours.
My baby boy was actually a baby then and my 27 year old still had the voice of a chipmunk.
I won 10th place and did what any aspiring writer would do.
I immediately stopped writing. For over 10 years.
I don’t know what made me think about this essay, but I was thinking about it and realized that it’s gone forever. It’s possible that there is a copy in a box in my basement or garage, but the possibility of finding those few pages would be like finding a happy worker in a cubicle.
Before my baby boy made the scene, Randy and Zach and I moved from Kansas City, Missouri to Wichita, Kansas. Randy and I weren’t even married yet. We moved to Wichita because Randy was offered a job there.
Within a week of starting his new job, Randy had to travel to Tuscon, Arizona. It was late July, so Zach wasn’t in school, I was jobless, so we decided at the last minute to join Randy in Arizona. Unfortunately, last minute airfare was cost prohibitive, but was that going to stop us from getting to Tucson from Wichita? No, it was not.
I had never traveled by Greyhound bus before. How bad could it be? And if you are going to travel by bus, why not take a little boy with impulse control issues with you?
Zach was 8 years old when we left Wichita, it took 33 hours to get from Wichita to Tucson. He turned 9 while we were in Arizona.
I wrote the essay about our trip down and back. I won’t say the trip was fun, but it was terribly interesting. Other than the dozens of hours that were so boring, they numbed our brains. I have never traveled by bus again and unless I find myself in a situation where it is completely necessary, I never will again.
Only that isn’t completely true. Two years in a row a friend and I took a bus from Coshocton, OH to New York City to shop for a day. I don’t know why this doesn’t count, but it doesn’t. Maybe because the friend I traveled with didn’t pinch me when she got bored.
I’m not sorry we traveled by bus. Zach and I met some fascinating people. I am sorry, however, that I lost that essay. It was the first thing I had ever written that I could read and be forced to admit that it didn’t suck.
I think, what I will do, is try to rewrite it from an 18 year old memory.
I suppose I will have to rename it 8 to 9 in 66 hours and 18 years.
I also feel compelled to add that I might have pinched Zach back. Apparently, if I spend enough time on a Greyhound bus, I act like a 8 year old boy.
Then in 1998,
You had me at Hello.
Hahaha…Jerry Maguire..he just keeps popping up.
So…. any chance of reading the original, then? Couldn’t have sucked….
I honestly don’t know if it even still exists. It MIGHT be in a box somewhere and I MIGHT run across it..but it’s possible that it’s gone forever.
The premise sounds interesting–I’d love to read the essay!
I’m going to recreate it from memory. I would LOVE to find the original and compare the two. That would be interesting to me. If I do find it, I’ll post the original as well
I loved reading this and I love reading all your posts. You’re a great writer and me likes your writing style too. I wrote this Urgency Junkies Anonymous essay years ago but I can’t find it. I was wanting to use it for a Throwback Thursday post. I don’t know if I can recreate it, guess I never thought about trying. But I do hope you’re able to piece together your lost essay. I’d love to read that too! 🙂
You should try to recreate it! You’re still using the same brain..SOME of has to knocking around in there!
And thank you. 🙂
LOVE this! I can totally relate….well, about the writing part, not the bus. Never rode one because I have bathroom issues….bahahaha!
Yeah..the bathroom on the bus should be avoided at all cost. haha.
A bus ride. These days. OMG I can only imagine. I’d love to read it.
I am going to do my best to recreate it this weekend. I might have to meditate. Or time travel.
I have an old notebook or two laying around with the horrid scrawling of my younger days as well. I never entered into any contests for writing and glad I didn’t. As I look back on what I had written (from memory), it was horrible. I do hope you find that essay at some point. I think we would all like to read it.
I do want to find it. I want to compare it after I try to rewrite from memory
Fascinating! I won my first writing thing in 5th grade for D.A.R.E. hahahahafuckinghahahaha to no drugs! It was fun tho. I still don’t think I’m a very good writer but when the mood strikes I need to put it down on (virtual) paper.
I love reading your blog, Rocco..and I read a LOT of blogs. There is honesty there and that is always insightful and it’s easier to feel a connection when a person writes from a place of honesty.
I know there is. I get crazy amounts of writers block and never know what direction I want to go with a lot of what I want to write. It’ll come to me at some point.
And thank you so much for the kind words on my blog!
I’ve only ridden a bus once for a very short ride in Vegas…that was enough. I would also love to read this story written by a younger you. Isn’t it amazing how we are so willing to put our dreams on hold or simply give up on them altogether for real life. Here’s to chasing our dreams!
Absolutely! I don’t want to give up again.
I am tempted to come help you search. Because I want to read the essay and I might have to electronically pinch you if I can’t. (P.S. So glad that you are writing again.)
Thank you so much! I am too!
I vote you look for it. Take time off from your new gig if need be.
Hahahah…they might not be understanding about this situation.
Ah yes…I once crossed Canada in a greyhound bus and turned into a whining two year old…
It’s possible we both behaved like 2 year olds..
Ain’t that the truth. Got my first book published and then pretty much stopped writing for two years. Only my agent breathing down my neck got me going again…reluctantly. lazy…that’s me! Such a bummer that the essay is lost.
I don’t know why we do these things…I don’t know what got me started again. Certainly not an agent..hahahah…I think it was because my head was about to explode.
Good luck with your essay, I would read either or both. I lost the only written copies of some song lyrics with the stolen contents of a storage once, and despite my best efforts at recreating them, was never able to satisfy myself that I had done so. Of course if I’d just sung the damn thing more often I’d have remembered it, but I wrote it before I was 20, and I hated my singing voice back then. Interestingly, though, when thinking about it for this comment, I remembered more of it than I did back in the ’90s when I tried to rewrite it.
oooh..cool…write them down!
You could try contacting Writer’s Digest, I bet they have it in archives.
oh and pssst it’s spelled Tucson, I grew up there and it’s kind of a pet peeve of most Tucsonans that people switch the c and s around. 🙂
I fixed it!
You know, I THOUGHT I had it wrong…I also can’t tell my right from my left if it makes you feel any better. haha. 🙂
Another great post
Thank you! 🙂
I rode a bus once, with my mom, and I don’t remember any pinching, but I remember the sound and the smell of the bus, sort of nostalgically, but not fondly enough to want to do it over again. 😉
I somehow very luckily still have two essays that I wrote when I was a junior in highschool–one is an English comp class paper I wrote about my experience the day our house burned down, and the other is a funny paper I wrote about going jogging with my aunt. I keep them in our locked safe now, because they’re handwritten and sort of precious. Hope you can find yours! But how cool is that, to have placed with RD. I never competed, though my daughter has done (and won) some super cool stuff already with her writing and spelling talents. 🙂
That’s so cool that you have them. I MIGHT have it…it I’m not sure..
I also have to say one of my favorite 72-year-old relatives was forced by an Amtrak mishap to take a bus withOUT ANY A/C, for like a million hours, from Portland to Spokane, WA, and by the time they stopped, she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and her underwear. Because she was too warm, and it seemed like the thing to do, and that’s just the kind of person she IS. I’m pretty sure it guaranteed the seat next to her would stay unoccupied, too, haha.
We used to call people who rode the bus ‘window lickers’. Somehow that seems wrong now.
PS: have you tried looking under the bed?
UNDER THE BED!!! I’ll check. I’ll probably find that missing flip flop.
Would love to read that, or a new version of it
I always fancied seeing the US via Greyhound, I guess it’s not quite as romantic as the idea then?
🙂
Oh no…No…you don’t want to see the US by Greyhound. It’s loud and crowded and uncomfortable and stinky and they only stop at McDonald’s and bus stations.
Damn, I’ll cross that off my bucket list then.
You’ve probably already considered this, but maybe Writer’s Digest has the essay somewhere in it’s archives? Love your blog and would love to read another story of yours. The only bus I rode was back and forth to school in the 70’s. It was a long ride. We had one driver who was so erratic in his behavior that when I think back on it he probably shouldn’t have been around kids. But we weren’t wimpy kids back then dammit, we handled crazy and rode bikes without helmets 🙂
I think I will contact them and see if they have it. haha..bus drivers were crazy back then. Ours was named Nellie and she wore a crazy woman’s amount of make up
Good luck… Although I am almost 100% positive that were you to find it you’d be embarrassed because in the years since then your writing has grown so much.
We’ve been through a bunch of old stuff and it is HORRIBLE…but it’s fun, too.
In the early 80s, I had a Bummer published in Dynamite Magazine. I lost the issue, and it haunts me to this day.
I can’t wait to read your recreated essay. And I hope you have more luck tracking down the original than I’ve had tracking down that magazine…
So far, nothing. I’ve found some really interesting stuff though. And some short stories I wrote. OMG…they are horrifyingly bad. I weep for younger me.
I rode a bus from east to west once.. ONCE.. 2000 miles of swollen feet hell. Never again!
I can’t even imagine a trip that long, I don’t remember swelling up on my trip..but I may have blocked that memory
You know you will turn yourself crazy to find it and then out of the blue it will show up or not but it makes for good mind research and nostalgia!
Having lived just outside of Wichita I feel I MUST read it! Search endlessly for the original and in the meantime write it from your current memory 🙂
I did..I tried to rewrite, I’m sure they are nothing alike. Well..maybe something alike..but not much.
Can;t wait to read it !
Have the best day xox
Thank you sister! It was strange trying to recreate it…I’m sure they are wildly different