Andrew J. Lederer

Turns out it's hard to write something cogent while simultaneously laughing at someone and delighting in their humiliation.

But, believe it or don't (and I know you might disbelieve, though experience says my analytical aim is true), the primary culprit in said post's ineffectiveness was one sentence: "She was holding it over my head so it will leave me empty and despairing just as it left her that way." Its inartfulness changed the featherlight offering from a tiny blurp of life into something cloddish, which I knew as soon as I read it back.

But the entry was already posted.

Now, a more stable person would have unposted or edited the thing, but as I've written before, I feel that once you put something up, it should not be changed as, once someone out there has read it, it's like lying about your talent to make what other people read something better -- and even more of a lie to remove the piece and pretend it wasn't there.

So, I'm stuck with a black mark on my permanent record card.

Then again, as an expression of my fallibility, which you guys out there might have been unaware of, the incompetent writing shows that I'm human, just like you. Perhaps it will bond us and be the start of a new, mutually-forgiving relationship.

As an illustration of the kind of forgiveness I'm talking about, I forgive the woman who called Friday and said she was bringing 15 people to "Anthology" but didn't.

. . . No. I don't forgive her.