Well the big PRT survey is done and the results are in and apparently one of you readers does not like my column. So, for those of you that do, sorry, this column isn’t for you. This is just for him or her, but feel free to read along.
So, my dear Column Hater, ever since reading your comment about getting rid of my column in the PRT, I have been imagining who you are. Sure, it’s easy to imagine you glaring at me in the grocery store clutching your non-reusable grocery bag full of saltines and canned soup in your Make America Great Again hat right after I made fun of You-Know-Who, but that’s too easy. Maybe you’re a man who just doesn’t like how I routinely use my husband as the butt of my jokes. “Not a proper wife” so on and so forth. (FYI Zach approves every story about him before I submit anything.) Maybe you are an English major that hates my constant use of parentheses and my run-on sentences or that I am not formally trained or whatever you literary types get mad about when someone like me rambles on and on in a local paper (hee-hee.) I even imagined that you were the person who didn’t like the drum circle and perhaps kittens and babies. Does nothing make you laugh? Maybe you are someone I see every day (heck, you may even be related to me) who just finds me annoying and doesn’t want to read my thoughts in the paper.
I can handle that. Ok, so maybe at first, I couldn’t. Maybe when I read your comment about getting rid of my column in the PRT, it got under my skin, or – the real truth – it bruised my ego. My “super, giant everybody loves my column” ego. Thanks for keeping me humble. Just so you know, of the 200 plus responses, yours was the only one that didn’t like my column. You’re a trend setter, a maverick, you’re a man/woman that speaks his or her mind. You had the guts to take an anonymous survey. Ok, so that last comment probably didn’t win you over.
It’s probably my sarcasm you hate the most. I feel the need to explain. Month after month, year after year with no formal training I put myself out there, my name and photograph attached to each column I write. Not to take over the town or change your view of the world, it’s just because I’ve been given the opportunity to write. Turns out people like it. Everyone but you (and maybe a few others who don’t take surveys). If this was the old west I’d challenge you to a duel, but we live in the time of anonymous comments. So, I’ll just have to keep guessing who you are month after month. Don’t get mad. And promise me that when I guess right you’ll let me know. It’s the least you can do.