Someone always takes me down a peg

I’ve received a lot of kind emails from readers recently and it has me biting my nails. When I get a lot of positive feedback, I can be certain someone’s also going to whack me pretty good to take me back down a notch.

A friend recently told me he found one of my older books at a Half-Price Books. He wanted me to sign it, but first, he had to tear out the page where I’d already signed it to someone else. “I can’t remember what you wrote, but it was really nice.” “I’m sure it was.” Another friend mentioned she’d spotted one of my books in a free lending library along a bike trail. She thought it was great my book was being circulated. I was thinking it’s great when a book actually sells and I see a little money.

The husband also does a wonderful job of keeping it real. He has a good eye for detail and has edited nearly everything I have written the past 25 years before it has gone out to another set of editors. (If you’re a retired English teacher still furious about something I wrote with glaring errors, send your blistering note to him, not me.) Often he’ll edit something for me in the evening and fall sound asleep reading what I’ve written. And yet I still keep getting out of bed in the morning.

Fortunately, I once heard Jack Benny’s daughter give a lecture. She said that when she was a small girl, her father often let her sit in his den when the comedy team came over to write. They’d write a joke or a skit, someone would read it out loud, and they’d discuss whether it was funny or not. Nobody ever laughed.

In that moment she unraveled the mystery of my entire adult life — I married Jack Benny.

On a more positive note, I had an email today from a retired police officer in upstate New York. He said I had a talent for writing and that he particularly enjoyed a recent column. “You could end your career on that one if you wanted.”

It was a compliment. I think.