Friday, July 6, 2012

20things : Long Distance


*thanks to Daniel Shapiro for giving me the idea for this one

1. Facebook comment: I like having the recordings because now I can listen to you read whenever I want. I can resist the urge to call you and plead for you to read me a poem over the phone.

2. Okay, that's it. I'm changing the outgoing message on my phone:

3. Ms. Khoury only accepts phone conversations in poem form. For all other topics, she'll be happy to arrange a meeting, or send some email.

4. I still haven't changed my cell back from the Ohio number, and it's been seven years. 

5. In 2006 I got called up for jury duty in Franklin County. I had to send them a document proving my new location.

6. Among the top ten ways to get out of jury duty: move.

7. I'm just shy on the phone. 

8. You know that moment, when the two people try to talk at once, and then it's like you go; no you go; no you go? 

9. That's what it's like talking to me. 

10. I make exceptions for family.

11. It's easy to get my mom to do all the talking. I just keep asking questions.

12. Or, first my stepmom does all the talking, then she makes me do all the talking. 

13. My dad says hang on I'll put [your stepmom] on the phone.

14. In my formative years before there was internet, I was one of those girls who would tie up the phone line.

15. Once I read a boy the better part of some novel that we had to take a test on the next day. I don't remember which. Let's say it was Hard Times or The Grapes of Wrath.

16. Reader, I liked him.

17. My mom would yell at me every fifteen minutes to hang up. She did not believe we were doing homework.

18. He got a better grade on that damn test than I did.

19. What was the significance of the stairs? Their hats? That dog on page 63?

20. Endless essay questions. I don't know. I don't remember. Can I just put my head on the desk for a minute? A scrawl that trailed off the page.




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