Nothing makes a room feel emptier than wanting someone in it.
— Calla Quinn
Did you miss me the last couple of weeks?
Were you concerned? Did you post about me on Nextdoor?
Something like: “Does anyone know why T. Michael Stone didn’t write a column the past two weeks? Also, what’s traffic like on Highway 44?”
Or: “We had a wonderful dinner at the Italian Chophouse, but I was so worried about T. Michael Stone I could barely eat. He didn’t write a column this week. I fear life at the lake won’t be the same without him.”
Or maybe: “I really like the columnist who replaced that insufferable T. Michael Stone. He’s not funny.”
Well, I aim for profound, not funny. I’m not a clown in a red nose riding a bicycle backward for your amusement.
That said, I suffer from chronic existential anxiety, so it’s always easier for me to process criticism than praise. As Confucius said, “A thousand reassurances can be pushed aside by one savage repudiation.”
I’ve learned most people rarely feel compelled to send a note of encouragement to a newspaper writer, but they do seem convinced no writer should enjoy a sense of accomplishment for very long.
It might have been nice to receive a few emails checking on my well-being, but that’s alright. I only missed two weeks.
Back on July 4, 2007, my face appeared alongside my column in The Monroe County Reporter—and then vanished forever. The good people of Monroe County haven’t read a word from me in nearly 19 years.
The manager of the Captain D’s on Lee Street in Forsyth noticed my absence after a few weeks, and I got a handful of emails and texts when word spread I no longer worked there. But—hard as it was to imagine—life went on.
Just as it did these past two weeks in Lake Country.
In that final Monroe County column, I mentioned winning a GPA award in the Serious Column category (again: profound, not preposterous). I also wrote a line borrowed in spirit from Bull Durham:
“This is a very simple job. You think the word. You write the word. You spell-check the word.”
Nothing much has changed.
If anyone had asked why I hadn’t written recently, I was prepared with a tragic tale about suffering for my art. But I didn’t suffer. I wrote two columns.
They just weren’t very good.
And since I run T. Michael Stone’s quality control department, I had no one to blame but myself.
It’s not like I was malingering. I showed up, sat at the desk, and spent the usual hours conjuring and worrying over paragraphs.
The only thing I conjured of real value was a television commercial.
Our advertising director, Matt Plocha, made jambalaya for his family at Easter and brought me a sample. It was excellent. I told him he ought to jar it and sell it locally. I even came up with an ad:
As Hank Williams sings “Jambalaya,” the camera pans to an aquarium and settles on a slowly undulating shark.
The shark stops moving when a man enters the adjacent room. It watches as he prepares a small bowl of food.
The man brings the bowl to the table. The shark says, “Jambalaya. My favorite.”
The man takes a bite, then abruptly stands, returns to the cabinet, and grabs a bigger bowl.
Cut back to the shark: “Matt’s Holiday Jambalaya. You’re going to need a bigger bowl.”
Get my Clio ready.
Selah.