"Oh, honey"

Funny how things come around. Life confirms fiction. Fiction confirms life. Back to the Future. 1985. I'm a sophomore in college, my wife a freshman. We are young young young, and know what we want to do in a really big sense, but not a vocational sense. My wife loves numbers. I love words. I don't remember where we first saw Back to the Future, but I do remember the tremendous thrill of optimism it held. Even more, I never forgot the scene where the "happy" McFly opens the box with copies of his book inside. 

Yes, I thought, that is happiness. Of course it was just a movie. Several years later, in graduate school, I was taught to distrust all forms of narrative as ideological. I became suspicious of my own instincts, and temporarily disavowed "authorship." I think this was a good thing. And while I came to eventually reject the strident and thrilling militancy of graduate school, the deep skepticism remains with me today.

And today, a box came. Much like the box that came for McFly. Full of copies of my book. For a moment, unexpectedly, that scene from Back to the Future rushed into my head. A Cultural Dictionary of Punk turned out beautifully. A nice, thick, heavy volume, full of words sure to infuriate. 

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Biff enters with a box.

Biff: Mr McFly, Mr McFly, this just arrived! (to Marty) Oh hi Marty! (to George) I think it's your new book!

The box is opened. It is a book - A Match Made In Space by George McFly. On the cover are two teens, who look a bit like young George and Lorraine, and a spaceman who looks like Marty with his radiation suit on.

Lorraine: Oh honey, your first novel.

George: Like I always told you, if you put your mind to it you could accomplish anything.

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Comments

[Chuck]

Congrats, Nick! I've been doing my own celebrating this week, too. It's a wonderful feeling..."giddy-making" as one of my commenters on Facebook put it.