Considering A Rerun
March 2007 In and Around Town - Delta

Awhile ago, I was talking to the editors of this fine publication at the Chamber mixer. They mentioned how much they liked my last article, and I confessed to them that it came together at the last minute. They told me that if I ever hit writer’s block like that again, or went on vacation, that it was OK to rerun an older article. That was a relief.

So here I am, the day before my deadline. I’m contemplating rerunning an article from two years ago, and I’m thinking that it’s like when sitcoms run those “flashback” episodes. You know the ones: In the first scene, the characters are in some situation where they find themselves reminiscing, and then the rest of the show is just a string of scenes from past episodes. This is a way for the writers to get out of writing an actual episode, and the actors only have to show up for a few hours, and everyone still gets paid. For family shows, it’s often a painful reminder of how the once cute and precocious kids have turned into geeks who will find themselves on a reality show.

I started several articles that just never panned out. Here is a sampling of self-rejected articles:

1. London (Name) Calling: Some Americans go to other parts of the world and just HAVE to make fun of the names of things, especially if they sound dirty, because many of us are secretly sixth-graders at heart. I probably couldn’t have published this article, but you can read it on my blog (kmoss.blogsource.com). You’ve been warned.
2. The Telephone Game: A few weeks ago, I heard a rumor that one of my favorite stores was closing, but it turns out it wasn’t. And then a friend told me that another friend of mine had encephalitis, when it turns out she had cellulitis. As Emily Littella used to say on “Saturday Night Live”, “That’s very different. Never mind.” And that was pretty much the end of that article.
3. Kid Shows and Beefcake: I started this one a few years ago when my daughter was about 18 months old and started watching, “The Wiggles”. The moms in our playgroup would have discussions about which Wiggle they thought was the hottest. I realized how inane this was, that a group of educated, sophisticated women would be having conversations like this, with much larger things at stake in the world, and that I desperately needed to get a life, and that most of us agreed that Anthony is the cutest.

So that’s my Bloopers, Outtakes and Practical Jokes edition of my article. I hope you enjoyed it. If not, you can reminisce about my older articles that I wrote back when I was young and precocious.