G-A-S Spells Gas

When I was five, I spelled my first word. Back then, few kids went to Kindergarten, so I learned about letters and sounds on my own. I was pretty proud of myself when I took my carefully crayoned word in to my father, who was doing his business on the toilet.

Unfazed at my interruption, he said, "Do you know what it spells? G-A-S. That spells gas."

The irony of that moment did not occur to me until just now. (Anyone who read my post, Canning the Muse, will now understand the historical significance.) That aside, GAS was officially my first word, and I got a lot of mileage out of it. I easily remembered the letters' names and the sounds they made, and from that point my older cousins could no longer spell all the sneaky things they were up to. As in, "Hurry, hide the P-O-R-N-O." Cuz I'd just head to the kitchen and say, "Grandma, what's porno?" And the whole world would light up. As an aside, that's how I learned the valuable skill of flustering the shit out of relatives.

By the time I entered first grade, I was ahead of most kids (nobody could lasso syllables like me: "Por-no. Hey, that's two syllables!") And within a year, I was writing stories. My first one, scrawled on a yellow-lined tablet while sitting in my grandfather's real estate office, was about pigs that could fly. Why yes, this is THE story that spawned the internationally famous saying. My mother still has the original, so I can prove it. (You do still have that, right Mom?)

It wasn't until after I got married and began popping out babies that I tried serious fiction (pregnancy at the rate of wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am will inspire you to make shit up in your mind just to get away for awhile). With four kids, a full-time job, and despite an absent and volatile husband, I stole an hour here and there and before long realized that writing was my true calling.
Which brings me to the point of this post. Here I sit, broken-hearted, came to share, and instead I martyred. I'm staring at colored folders containing six plotted novels in various stages of writing or rewriting, completely out of G-A-S. I'm not blocked; my muse is on strike, and I don't know why.
On this perfect rainy writing day, for all I've accomplished at my true calling, I might as well be watching P-O-R-N-O.
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