Various Happenstances of SethJuly 21, 2005So, it hasn't been a great month for me, literarily speaking. My first book went out of print, and the fellow I'd sent the draft of my second book to wrote back to say he thought it was unlikely it would see publication. To be fair, he'd seen an unedited draft, and the miniscule part I've now edited is much better, I think. But it still felt like a setback. Having first and unprinted second books both devalued in close proximity, I must admit, was not encouraging. Nonetheless, the month has not been without its good points. Surprisingly*, one of these was the cleaning of my room. Making the room look a bit cleaner was nice. But really, that was the least rewarding part of cleaning for me. Sure, the stacks of papers on my desk are a bit smaller, and the big pile of stuff in the corner of the room is about half the size it was, but none of that really matters. More important, to me, was the sheer volume of stuff that I was throwing away. I filled a rectangular wastebasket with paper and cardboard I was discarding. And I was infused with a sense of accomplishment, a belief (however foolish) that I was really doing something worthwhile by excising this junk from my room, my house, my life. Why I'm never able to catch it all at the door, discarding it before it has the chance to be stacked in piles and buried in boxes only to be uncovered years later, I'll never know. I try to throw out things I won't want to read again, but clearly I have not done a good enough job. Best of all was what I didn't throw away. I found a birthday card from my grandmother from two years ago, with $10 bill still inside! It almost made up for the $100 check I found, written in 2002 and hence uncashable. D'oh! I was quite displeased about that, leaving me with a net total of -$90 found in my cleaning. But this all pales in comparison to the bestest thing ever: Wedding RSVP cards. I attended two weddings in the past month or so, both for pairs of friends from college. And I had dutifully sent in my RSVP cards to both of them. But perhaps this was due to the fact that their RSVP cards had requested a meal selection. Because cleaning my room led me to find no less than three wedding RSVP cards from 2002 and 2003 that I had never managed to send out. I found myself staring at these old RSVPs for parties long past. And the thing is, they had all come with pre-addressed stamped envelopes, and pre-written notes with fill-in-the-blanks for your name, binary attendance (yes/no), and a small space for other. So I figured, what the heck. And I filled out each RSVP with my name, indicating my attendance for the weddings I had attended, and my regretful decline of the invitation for the wedding I had missed**. After sealing the envelopes, I dropped them into a postbox, and was grinning like an idiot for the rest of the day whenever I thought about it. I do wonder what people's reaction will be to receiving slightly tardy RSVPs. I think I'd probably find it somewhat amusing, albeit perhaps less so than I do from this end. Mayhaps it will depend on whether the couples' parents have a sense of humor. (And could hence also serve as good research for whether humor is genetic, as the couples themselves all have a good sense of humor.) I'm curious whether the parents will inform my now-married friends of this untimely RSVP with laughter, sternly comment on my lack of character for being so late, or simply discard the card altogether without a second thought. I suppose so long as it's not the latter, I may find out.
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