What I Learned From Dinner With Kristin Nelson

Hi, my name is M, and I'm an introvert who likes to make things up.

Hi, M, whispers the support team.


Large groups of people make me nervous unless I'm showing off in front of them.  One-on-one conversations with strangers cause so much sweating and conversation-rehearsing that I'm amazed no one notices that my responses sometimes sound crafted (because they are).

So picture this.  An introvert (*coughcough* me) sits with her writer friends at a banquet.  Half of the table is empty, and they have no idea if the seats will be filled with other writers, by editors, or by agents.  The writers joke and laugh and talk about the conference and the workshops they've attended, and then all of a sudden they all talk quieter and look surprised and eager and oh-so-nervous. 

Why?

Kristin Nelson, Sally Harding, and Hannah Bowman.  Grabbing. Chairs. At. Our. Table.

I'm fairly certain that my heartbeat, instead of sticking to the regular thump-thunk thump-thunk, went thunka-thonka-thoinka-plunk.  Because, let's be honest, if you want one of the best and coolest agents of young adult novels to represent you, you want Kristin Nelson.  She is really nice, unfailingly honest, and personable.  Oh, and she sells novels to publishers.  Lots of them.

Of course, I was 100% terrified. I managed to break the silence with a very breathy, high-pitched "Ohofcourseyoucansithere."

Before I go on, perhaps I should mention that Kristin's agency, which is based in Denver, has rejected my manuscript.  Twice.  Currently I am in denial that these rejections ever happened, and I'll probably query them again with my next project.  Anyway... Kristin sat next to me, and the time that followed was fantastic.  Sitting next to Kristian was like having an ex you still have feelings for wink at you from across a crowded room (with the added exception that they have absolutely no idea who you are). 

A few minutes of small talk made the wobbly feelings in my stomach subside, and I actually got to have intelligent conversation with Kristin and Sally (Hannah was a bit too far away to join in).  After an author appeared out of nowhere to hand Kristin his card and join our table, I felt like I joined the agent club.  I viewed the secret aftermath of the author's invasive approach, laughed with them about it, and forgot my nerves so quickly I was able to enjoy the dinner, my friends, and the agents.  Even when the new author ruined my chances to pitch to any of them (it's a simple matter of timing and the secret code of When To Pitch And When To Pretend They Don't Represent Your Genre), I didn't feel like a moment had been wasted. 

Other people might look at the night and think, "Well, she should have at least tried to pitch" or "How could it possibly not have been wasted if she didn't talk business with at least one of them?"  Good question.  The short answer?  I'll take any encouragement I can get.  And when Kristin Nelson tells me that writers are crazy (duh) and I get to hear about her niece, who is 16 and taller than me (I'm 5'10"), I feel encouraged.  I believe that as a crazy person, I have the unique right to try the same thing over and over again, with the electrifying, thrilling confidence that one day I will get a different result. 

I pull magic, heroes, psychopaths, guts, and glory out of my head and hope other people like it.  I spend years working on novels that may never sit on a shelf at Barnes and Noble.  I send letters to agents and editors, trying to find just one who, like me, is in love with the world in my head. Those letters don't just go out once.  They go out over and over and over again.  Just try and tell me that the banquet was a waste, or that I'm crazy.  Because having dinner with Kristin Nelson taught me that if I can get her to laugh, other agents will read my words, get the jokes, and fall in love with them.  And gaining that optimism can't possibly be a waste.

...but no one looked out the window: Smoker Guy

His name was Rutherford Alexander Thornswallow the Third, and he hated people who told him that he needed to quit smoking.

His girlfriend was doing it at that very moment.

"I just don't understand," she whined.  "You promised you'd stop."

He looked at her with tempered confusion.  "I never said that, Lena."  His consonants were long and drawn out, the remnants of an accent molded in his childhood.  Rutherford never told anyone where it was from, though it was entirely possible that even he didn't remember.  He took another, deeper draw on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out over his left shoulder.

"You did!"  Lena exclaimed, her bright pink lips convulsing into a pout.

Rutherford shrugged.  "Whatever."  He finished the cigarette, dropped the butt on the ground and stomped on it.  "Guess this isn't working.  See ya."  He turned around and walked away.

"Ru?  Rutherford?" Lena screamed after him.  "Are you breaking up with me?  Rutherford!"

***

The Lena Episode was a record ten days, four hours, and a handful of minutes.  Rutherford hacked and spit as he kept walking to his apartment, glad that she hadn't tried to follow him.  Jane had tried to follow him when they broke up.  Zora had stalked him for a month afterwards. 

On his way home, he stopped to get an Americano.  He sat for a while in the sun, wishing he could afford prescription sunglasses and glaring at anyone who passed by.  

A woman with bright auburn hair stopped in front of him and stared.  Rutherford tried to ignore her. 

"Hello," she said.

Rutherford looked her over.  Long legs, lean arms, straight nose.  Nothing that went against his Code of Women.  And she had mind-bendingly artistic tattoos covering both arms.  Double plus.  

"You look like kind of an a**hole," she said.  "I'm Roxy."  She put her fists on her hips and grinned. 

"Rutherford the Great," he said.  "And I am.  Just ask Lena."  He nodded toward the corner.  Roxy turned, but there was no one there for her to see. 

"Right.  Can I bum a cigarette?"  She had ice-blue eyes that seemed to be alive with electricity.

Rutherford looked at her sideways, trying to figure her game.  He ignored the cigarette line on purpose.  "I only date women with four-letter first names," he said, as though that would get her to go away.  "Nicknames don't count," he added.

Roxy looked amused.  "It's not a nickname, Rutherford Your Greatness.  It's the real deal."

"Eh.  Not interested," Rutherford said.  He was lying, and he thought that she knew it.  But he had a rule against dating women who came on to him first.   

"Right.  Well, then, I'll see you tomorrow. Over in that park," Roxy said.  She pointed to a spit of green and brown grass surrounded by a cement containment wall.  It was covered in dog crap and mangled pigeons.  

"Uh huh," Rutherford said.

Roxy walked away, her long hair swinging like a pendulum behind her. 

***

Rutherford picked up a girl from the bar that night.  Her name was Tina.  She had beautiful blond hair and was very, very fun when she had loosened up. 

In the morning, Rutherford sat in his window, his right leg dangling outside, while the left was hooked under a pipe so he didn't fall three floors to his death.  Tina came out of the bathroom, hair wet, her day-old outfit clinging to her damp skin.  She came up to him and put her arms around him, running her hands along his bare shoulders. 

He sucked on his cigarette and blew the smoke out the window.  

Tina tried to kiss him, but he turned his face away.  He was thinking about Roxy, and it bugged him.  No woman should be able to get his attention like that.  He wouldn't let it happen.   

Tina pouted.  "Baby..." she whined.  "Didn't you have fun last night?"

Rutherford smiled at her, annoyed that she didn't even realize it was a fake smile, and kissed her on the forehead.  "Of course.  Now, off you go.  I have work to do."

Tina bit her lip and smiled, twisted from side to side like a five-year-old and looking ecstatic. When she was gone, Rutherford put out his cigarette and got out his paint.

"Freaking galleries are idiots," he mumbled to himself as he flung the paint on his canvases.  He had set several up in a row, stomping on them with painted bare feet that slipped and slid in the wet medium.  The cigarette hanging on his lip nearly fell out a few times, but he caught it before it could damage anything.  At noon he stopped painting to sit on top of the back of his couch, staring down at his handiwork.

The galleries were idiots because they bought his paintings like they were worth something.  From atop the couch, though, there was a moment where he could see why they liked them.  Frenzied, harried, thrown together...He was distracted.  For the tenth time that day, he went back to his spot in the window and sucked on a cigarette, his murderous lollipop stick.

From his apartment window, he could almost see the "park" Roxy was supposed to meet him in.  It occurred to him then that she hadn't given him a time.  For all he knew, she could be there right now.

There!  A flash of auburn hair.

Without thinking, Rutherford yanked his leg inside and tumbled to the floor.  His hand landed in wet paint, but he didn't notice.  He slipped on a pair of shoes, made sure he was wearing pants, and just barely remembered the lock the door.  Roxy was just passing the entrance to the apartment building, and Rutherford caught up to her nonchalantly.

"Hey," he said.

Roxy looked at him like she knew he had sprinted over himself to get down to ground level.  "Hello."

"Want a cigarette?"  He offered a fresh one, which she took and lit with a match from her pocket.

Roxy stopped and took a few deep drags, then grinned at him.  "I thought you told yourself you weren't going to come meet me."

Rutherford shifted uncomfortably and almost forgot to blow out his smoke.  "I never said that."

"I know.  I just figured.  What did you do to your hand?"

His hand was yellow and gray, and there were stripes of wet paint on his pants.  "Sh**," he said, as he took himself in.  "I liked these pants."

Roxy shrugged.  "Come on. Park time."

Forgetting about his painted pants, Rutherford followed her.    

...but no one looked out the window

I'm kicking off a brand-new blog series with this little thought:

There is a strange world on the other side of my window.  

A really, really strange world.

Smoker Guy has a different woman every morning.  He sits half out of his red brick sill, sucking at a tiny white cig, a woman standing next to him, kissing his neck.  

Creeper Dude's blinds are down right now, but almost every day at 2:30 p.m., he sits on his knees in front of his window, a pair of binoculars glued to his eyes.  

Robe Lady is up every morning at the same time, walking around with her curtains wide open, clad only in a robe.  She watches TV while flipping her head upside down, blow-drying it with fervor. 

Crazy Bathroom Chick snuck up to our floor today and used the restroom, talking on the phone the entire time.  A few minutes later, she was screaming and cursing at the person on the other end of the line.  The thing is, no one saw her holding a phone or wearing a Bluetooth headset. 

It's a very, very strange world out there, and so few other people are looking out the window.  Who else will tell these people's stories, but me?  

Craziness happened, but no one looked out the window...except for me.

 

Avel and the Alien, Part 4

The story began in Parts 1-3! -mg

After Ezequiel's declaration, Avel and I stared at him.  I'm not sure what Avel was thinking, but I was thinking "&*$@#".  I don't know if there are actually any curse words with five unspeakable letters, but if there are, I was thinking them all.

I broke the silence with: "Come again?"

"Those buggers don't come off, man," said Ezequiel.

"I'm not sure I believe you," I said.  I didn't.  I didn't want to, that is.

Avel was still silent, taking it all in.

Ezequiel sighed and ran a thick hand through his thinning hair.  "I don't know, man.  Did you try cutting it off–"

"It broke my scissors."

"–with a saw?" Ezequiel finished as he glared at me.

I hadn't realized he wasn't done with his question.  I glared back, sullenly crossing my arms over my chest and giving him my best impression of a bouncer.

The alien squeaked, and we all jumped.

"What if it gets hungry?"  Ezequiel asked. We all looked at the alien.

"That would be bad," I said.  "Like, really bad."

Avel poked the alien, then prodded his red and purple-y skin where it met the tentacles.  The purple was spreading.  I mean, I could literally see it moving, like clouds across the sky on a windy day.

"Have you eaten anything today?"  Ezequiel asked suddenly.

"Ezequiel!  How can you think about food right now?  There is an alien poisoning your friend!"  I threw both of my hands out, gesturing to Avel.

"Yeah, so?  I'm hungry.  You hungry?"  he said to Avel.  Avel nodded.  They left me standing along in the bathroom, open-mouthed and making all sorts of surprised sounds: "Ah...uh...huh...oh."

After I recovered, I found Avel and Ezequiel eating triple stack roast beef sandwiches in the kitchen.  Ezequiel's woman of the week was there, wearing booty shorts and a tank top so small it was probably, in reality, a bikini top.  These things are often confused in some people's lives. Not mine, mind you.

"It's a garage sale," Ezequiel was saying.

As he spoke, a small group of teenagers walked through the kitchen, all with fumbling grips on a ginormous flat screen TV.  We waited for them to go through before speaking.

"Why...er, why are you having a garage sale?" I asked.  "Nothing going?"

Ezequiel shrugged and then grinned.  "I've gone straight."  His smile went even wider as the chick in the bikini top slid into his arms, gazed into his heartless eyes and smiled like a kid grabbing cookies out of the cookie jar.

"Ha!"  I said.  It came out as half of a snort.  Very ladylike, I know.  "No, really.  Why are you selling all your stuff?  And who are they paying?"  I turned slowly, my arms open to the clothes, furniture and knickknacks on display.

"I've got a man in the garage," said Ezequiel.

I rolled my eyes.  "Don't we all."  I didn't mean anything by it; I just couldn't think of anything more clever to say.

Avel was still quiet, carefully finishing his sandwich and being busy looking super thoughtful.

"Avel?  You OK?"

Avel nodded and took the last bite.

"Do you need anything else?"

Avel shook his head and swallowed.

Ezequiel and I didn't know what to do.  Usually Avel was the one with the right words or plan for a situation, so we were in completely new territory.  I didn't like it.  We waited for twenty minutes – TWENTY goshdang minutes of customer after customer walking through with stuff.

And then finally, finally! Avel cleared his throat. "I'll be right back," he said.  And he just got up and left the room.

"Where's he going?" I asked, appalled.

"Dunno."  Ezequiel turned in his chair and watched Avel for a second.  "Out back, I think."

"Should we go with him?"

"Nah, I think he's good."

I took a few steps in the direction Avel had taken, but Ezequiel grabbed my wrist – he had surprisingly soft hands.  "Let him alone, Meliora."

"But..."

"Alone."

So I had to actually sit there and wait with him and the other chick, which was awful, let me tell you.  Too many sickeningly adorable things happened in the next few minutes.  I'm not going to tell you a single one of them, because just thinking about that terrible time makes me want to throw up in my own mouth.  

Finally he came back in, looking a little more refreshed.

"Well?"  I asked.

"It's gone," Avel said.

Ezequiel and I exchanged looks, which was a rather uncomfortable bonding moment for me.

"What?"  Ezequiel said.

Avel shrugged and began to make himself another sandwich.  "I just asked it to go away.  It was very compliant once I explained the situation."

I grabbed the bottom of his shirt and lifted it up.  His skin was only faintly purple, and it was definitely minus one medium-sized shaved alien.  I dropped his shirt and looked at the cuts on my arm.  They were almost healed, and the purple was fading there, too.

"Weird," I said.  "Do you feel OK?"

"Sure," Avel said.

"So, where's the green bugger now?" Ezequiel asked.

"It crept into the bushes by the trampoline."

A moment later, we heard a woman scream from the backyard. Avel winced.

Ezequiel groaned.  "&*$@#."

I closed my eyes, then opened them quickly and grinned.  "Time to go!"


end.

Avel and the Alien, Part 3

I know you want to read Part 1 and Part 2 before you dive in...So go ahead! -m

The thing squeaked a couple of times when the shaver started clearing away fur, but it didn't fight me until I accidentally hit one of the tentacles.

"Skeeeaww!"

A free tentacle waved at me, nearly whacking first my arm, then the shaver.  I had about a third of the alien shaved and didn't really know what to do with the tentacle.  So I hit it back, slamming my hand into the tube.  Except...well, maybe I should have thought a bit longer about how to hit a moving object.  My hand didn't hit the tentacle, my wrist did. I yanked my arm back, cradling it against my chest.

"Ow!"  There were four tiny scratches on the inside flesh of my arm, right where it's nice and tender, and the skin around them was bright red and tinged with purple.

Avel twisted to look at me, so I showed him my wounds.  He grabbed my wrist and licked the scratches, smacking his lips.  "Poison.  Interesting."

"What?  Poison?"  The purple and red spread up my arm.  "Oh, *&$%."

"What's wrong?"

I pushed Avel closer to the back of the couch so I could get a good look at Avel's skin.  It was purple and red all over, and spreading quickly in the direction of his heart.  "I think it's getting into your bloodstream."

"So that's why this hurts so much," Avel said, trying to laugh.  He looked seasick and was covered in a sheen of sweat.

"You look like crap," I told him.

"Don't make me throw up on you, Meli."

"Right.  OK.  Do you want me to keep going?"

"Can you see the whole thing?" 

"No."

"Then keep going."

"Are you sure?  If it's poison, maybe we should call someone?"  Avel didn't answer, so I resituated myself, ordered my nerves to ignore the burning sensation spreading up my arm, and got to work.  Green fur fell in waterfalls, revealing green skin polka-dotted with black freckles.

"Still hurt?" I asked.

Avel cleared his throat and swallowed.  "Yep."

I finished shaving and sat back on my heels.  "Done."  I took the head off the shaver and smacked the entire thing against my thigh, knocking green fur onto the floor.  While I did this, Avel very slowly and carefully put his hand on the alien and inspected it.

"It feels like a dolphin," he said.  "I wonder..."  He pinched one of the tentacles and tried to pull it off of his skin.  The alien squealed and Avel winced.  It didn't look like the alien was going to budge.

"He's like a fuzzy dolphin-porcupine-octopus...thing," I said.  I reached out to poke it, but changed my mind when I saw the barbs.  I wasn't exactly keen to get nicked again.  "Now what?"

Avel sat up, carefully not touching or otherwise disturbing the formerly fuzzy alien.  "We're going to see Ezequiel.  Go grab your keys."

My stomach twisted.  I didn't like Ezequiel.  He didn't like me, for that matter.  Probably something to do with, oh, I don't know, the fact that I shot him in the shoulder once.  Twice.  In my defense, he was trying to mug me in the middle of a job.  In his defense...yeah, he deserved it.

I dragged my feet to get my keys and purse from my room, resurfacing by the front door just after Avel.  He was wearing a huge, ugly hoodie that hid the alien nicely.  We drove to Ezequiel's place in the southeast part of the city.

The neighborhood is all tiny bungalow houses on terrifyingly steep rolling hills.  It reminded me of San Francisco on steroids, if that's even possible.  Instead of parking by the house, Avel had me park at the bottom of a particularly steep hill, and we walked up.  By the time we got to the top, my legs were shaking and I was breathing like an asthmatic in a marathon.  Avel, of course, looked as fresh and relaxed as ever.  Well, I mean, if you didn't count the fact that he looked like he wanted to die.  Alien parasites do that do a person, I've learned. 

Ezequiel's house was usually darker than a seedy bar, and I always had felt like I was supposed to whisper a password to get in.  But today the house was surrounded by cars and people, and all of the lights were on.

"What the heck's going on here?"  I asked.  A nearby couple heard my comment and gave me a weird look, scowling as they looked me up and down.  "Can I help you?" I said to them, returning their scowl.  Avel didn't give me a chance to hear any response – he grabbed my arm and pulled me through the open door.

Everyone inside was crowded around tables piled with stuff.  Old stuff, new stuff, stuff in boxes and bags and cellophane wrapping.  Avel wove through it, still holding my arm, and got us to the back of the house.

Ezequiel was standing with his meaty arms crossed over a faded, grease-stained Coors t-shirt. "Brother," he said to Avel as they shook hands and pounded each other on the back.  He glanced at me.  "Meliora."

"Ezequiel."

"What can I do for you?"  Ezequiel asked.

Wordlessly, Avel led him into the bathroom and I followed.  It was the one place that wasn't full of people, and it was surprisingly roomy.

"I need your...expertise," Avel said.  He nodded to me and I shut the door, and then he pulled off the hoodie.

Ezequiel whistled and then cursed in Spanish.  At least, I'm pretty sure he cursed.  My Spanish isn't so great, but it sure sounded like cursing.

"That's not comin' off, man," Ezequiel said.

Hardly random

I am in love with a fictitious character. It's really quite pathetic. I suppose, at the very least, it's not quite so pathetic, since I am able to keep John Krasinksi and Jim Halpert separate in my head. Jim is..... sigh...... he's Jim. Enough said.

There is a hole in my oldest pair of jeans. I almost said they are my favorite pair, but since I got my new skinnies, it's a tough call. Sometimes I pretend to despise myself for being a wannabe hipster from the 40s, but then I get over it. Why fight it?

My little sister changed her Facebook relationship status before talking to the boy about it. I'm slightly ashamed of her. The announcement of the aforementioned fact was the catalyst to several seconds of open-mouthed horror shared with our other sister.

I read other people's blogs and gasp with their heart-rending angst and wish I were more compelling like that. And then I wonder, why would I want to be depressed all the time? Even if I weren't, why would I want to pretend to be?

Final project in Magazine writing: A Day in the Life. Subjects from classmates include a high school freshman who has cerebral palsy and is blind, a stripper from Philly, the guy who runs Suburban Home Records (used to be run in his basement), and a kindergarten teacher who is going blind while her husband goes deaf. I hung out with an ex-"drunk-a$$ college student" who works at the Children's Museum. It seems like a situation I should be laughing at. Like one of those super awkward jokes that only one person in the room laughs at, but only because it reminds them of another, more funny, joke.

I spent 60 bucks today on graduation announcements and a cap and gown and tassels. 60. There's a sticker on the gown that reads, "Do not wash. Do not dry clean." Hm. So, in other words, "Single use only. Place in proper trash receptacle, you taken-in idiot." Thanks a lot, University. I'm very glad to be leaving you, too.

Does anyone know of a job that includes creative writing, arts and crafts, making enough money to pay off college loans, and people who aren't boring? I'd like one.

Now

Now that it has been decided that I'm not getting honors, I'm finding it more than difficult to actually sit down and finish my paper. I just rewrote a few introductory paragraphs, one for each of my four-ish sections, and now...oh, now. Now I need to just finish the lot.

It's funny, a week and a half ago, I was in terrifying freak-out mode. I was scaring my friends and family, I'm pretty sure. I couldn't be awake without spending almost every moment thinking about my paper, and what I had left to do, and how much time a day I had to spend on it to keep the world from combusting. And now... It's like in the Bible, when people were kept from seeing things, and suddenly they were allowed to see and understand them, and it says, "And the scales fell from his/her eyes..."

I seem to have lost my scales, but I don't know that I'm going to go looking for them. I'm having quite the difficulty remembering a time when I really enjoyed writing my thesis. I love research (I'm good at it) and I love writing (again, small, albeit subjective, talent). But it seems that writing in English and writing in French have only the use of words in common. I should have known that. It was always so frustrating in France trying to explain things. Simple things like the story of my life, to complicated things about my emotions, were blown so completely and amazingly out of proportion that they became indistinguishable from near insanity.

So I should have known that French was going to kick my... butt. And I suppose God did try to tell me. It was hard enough convincing Elise to be my thesis adviser and to let me do credits over the summer. I can't even begin to explain the other hoops I had to jump through to find a committee. It was stressful even from Day One. And now... less immediate stress, I guess. I find myself hovering above a creepy pool of dampened emotions. I know they're there. They always are, no matter how much I try to ignore them.

I don't care to know exactly what is in the pool, but I have a feeling that if something else not-so-happy happens, I'm going to splash right in and be forced to find out how deep it really is. That's the now. The later, well, I'll worry about that later. Rather, I'll not worry about it later, because I'm tired of worrying. I'm tired of pushing myself to my limits. Just because Michaux did it (the subject of my thesis), doesn't mean I have to. I used to think that at least creatively, I was a little like him. He pushed himself, he wrote strange things that only a few truly loved. But he was trying to break himself up, pouring fragments of himself into an abyss that he imagined was in his mind.

Now I know better.
Why did I enjoy this past summer and all the work I did? I was spending 2 to 4 hours every morning after my run writing a story about a girl named Aralie who saves a dying magical forest.

Professor J. Sheeler

I seriously considered changing Sheeler's name, but as I was considering it, the realization dawned that I have absolutely nothing terrible to say. I suppose changing a name is more a protection for me than for the person involved, but, hey, it doesn't hurt to be kind.

I met Prof Sheeler about a year ago, in a reporting class at school. I believe it may have been his first semester teaching at the university, his alma mater. I remember walking into the classroom and thinking, "Oh my gosh it's Stephanie's dad."

My friend Stephanie's dad is small, slightly timid, and grins sideways when he doesn't seem to be exactly sure of what's going on. Sheeler seemed to be the same way: very slender, just below average height. I guess what really made the connection was that he was wearing khaki slacks and a white long-sleeve button-down shirt with a dark tie. Loafers and light brown hair parted on the side completed the ensemble of an altogether unassuming persona.

The students in my class arranged themselves relatively silently as we waited for the quiet man poking his fingers at his Mac to say something. Maybe he was nervous; I'll probably never know. When we found out the kind of writing he'd done in the past, my peers and I raised our eyebrows. How such a quiet-looking man could be an award-winning obituary reporter who'd also happened to write an award-winning book was nearly beyond me.

And then, all of a sudden, it made perfect sense. I thought of the past reporting/journalism professors I'd taken classes from in the past and suddenly I knew that there was no way I would have opened up during an interview with them as I would have talking to Sheeler.

As much as I generally do not enjoy reporting, Sheeler made the process much less painful. No question, at the end of the semester, the entire class was pretty much set on the belief that Sheeler was/is one of the best teachers who has ever graced the halls of the Armory.

I'm pretty sure that he's married with kids, although I don't know how many children he has. Two? Three? I could probably look up the information, but I'd rather not. It's like writing about people who have died or who have gone through terrible things has made Sheeler a calmer man, one who understands the meaning of being a person and not a source who gets quoted in the nut graph.

People in the J-school love Sheeler. He doesn't make it easy; he still makes us work for our grades and for our experiences. He's the kind of person who, if I ever saw him yell or even raise the level of his voice higher than just below speaking level, would shock me like crazy. Yet it also strikes me that the person he is in class could be altogether different from the person he is off of campus. Maybe he's a graffiti artist goth who spends his free time pulling off spiders' legs in the women's restroom. But as fascinating as that would be, I like it better that Sheeler is approachable and doesn't wear black lipstick. I feel like that would take away from his general cool-guy persona.