From the mouths of babes….

I just treated my daughter to a mini-tantrum (no, not at her!). A rejection slip for a story of mine just arrived, from the market to which I have my largest ratio of “near misses” in my submission history. When I got done saying things like “Gaggle rogga fruggool Nozmeth ZOOM!” (because, you know, I can’t say what I’d really want to say in front of her), she asks what’s wrong, and I calmly explain:

“Well, Sweetie, I sent a story I wrote to this magazine, and they sent me back a nice letter saying that while they like it, they didn’t like it enough to buy it.”

She thinks this over for about 1.6 seconds, and then replies: “So send them a story they’ll like better, Daddy!”

One of the great unexplored mysteries of human nature, I think, is how children sometimes seem to instinctively know exactly what to say.

Pardon me while I fire up my printer….

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