Zero the Hero

I might just have an idea for a one-act. Lifted directly from a story on the Travel Channel, with certain modifications ... Tomorrow I'll be meeting with the woman who is leading the playwriting workshop. Bright and early. She was my teacher at the university about five years ago, so I have a pretty good idea what to expect. At work today I abused my privileges and printed out some of my short plays to catch her up. It's disheartening how little "catching-up" she'll have to do. In five years I re-worked a one-act I already won an award for, re-worked one ten-minute play I thought I'd finished, and wrote a couple new ten-minute plays. Then I got into avant-garde theatre and made a mess of things. Lines like, "Now no one can play with the dog baby," "I bounced for science," and "International waters be damned!" haven't helped my marketability.

When I called this woman on the phone last night, I said "The only feedback I get is rejection letters." And it's true. I don't know anyone else who does this. And she said, "They say the average American has nine friends." I said, "Do they count pets?"

Not to get off track, but I don't have nine friends. Not even imaginary. I invented Esmeralda to help me play water polo. Is water polo the same thing as wet dodge ball? Because it sure seemed that way.

I should probably learn something about grammar. I learned enough to forget and now I need it again. More than I need calculus. Calculus has never come up, not once, in the last ten years. Now algebra, that's pretty frelling useful. And the fact that zero times any other number is still zero, that's bailed me out on occasion. Like on those commercials when they say, now our internet service is ten times faster! And you say, wha? It's still dial-up, how can it be ten times faster? And then you say, Eureka! Voila! Zero times ten is still zero! Thank you junior high school math teacher! That's making a difference!