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Jakey, Get Out of the Buggy
Grampa Jake was a nasty, short-tempered, mean-spirited, frequently rude, sometimes sullen, usually drunk sonofabitch with no patience for anything or anybody, but I mean that in a good way. (Short, short story about worrying about the future.)
Free at author's website.
Free at author's website.
14 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 19, 2016
18 people want to read
About the author
Betsy Robinson
11 books1,215 followersI grew up in New York's Hudson Valley and have lived in New York City for more than 50 years. I was an actor for more than a decade and did an amazing array of ridiculous jobs to support that art. Then I became a magazine writer and editor. Now I am a book editor specializing in spiritual and psychological topics. But I write fiction--specifically, funny literary novels about flawed people. My novel
The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg
won Black Lawrence Press's 2013 Big Moose Prize and was published in September 2014. My first novel, Plan Z by Leslie Kove, won Mid-List Press's First Novel Series award and was published in 2001.
Radio host Jonathan Schwartz tells an anecdote about Stephen Sondheim: When asked if he was happy about selling 25,000 copies of a book, Sondheim replied, "Yeah, but it's always the same 25,000 people who bought the last thing." Schwartz believes this is because Sondheim's work pokes people, throws light on their flaws, makes them squeal, "No, no, don't show that! Not that!" and this makes many folks uncomfortable. Feeling so exposed evokes a kind of existential hysteria, which people then attempt to explain through hysterical negative criticisms of Sondheim's work, rather than contemplating their own discomfort. But 25,000 people do like Sondheim--including me.
I like to be poked and my writing pokes. It pokes, makes you laugh, and sometimes cry.
My edit of my late mother, Edna Robinson's novel The Trouble with the Truth was published by Simon & Schuster/Infinite Words on Feb. 10, 2015.
Postscript
I am an active reader on Goodreads and cherish my friends here whose reviews enrich my reading choices in ways I never anticipated when I first joined the community.
That said, please do not send me a friend request if you aren't interested in reading and haven't articulated why you want to be my friend in the question answer box in the friend request option. Specifically, if you are a guy looking to seduce and/or pull a scam on some lady, I'm not your lady and I will ignore your request and block you.
Radio host Jonathan Schwartz tells an anecdote about Stephen Sondheim: When asked if he was happy about selling 25,000 copies of a book, Sondheim replied, "Yeah, but it's always the same 25,000 people who bought the last thing." Schwartz believes this is because Sondheim's work pokes people, throws light on their flaws, makes them squeal, "No, no, don't show that! Not that!" and this makes many folks uncomfortable. Feeling so exposed evokes a kind of existential hysteria, which people then attempt to explain through hysterical negative criticisms of Sondheim's work, rather than contemplating their own discomfort. But 25,000 people do like Sondheim--including me.
I like to be poked and my writing pokes. It pokes, makes you laugh, and sometimes cry.
My edit of my late mother, Edna Robinson's novel The Trouble with the Truth was published by Simon & Schuster/Infinite Words on Feb. 10, 2015.
Postscript
I am an active reader on Goodreads and cherish my friends here whose reviews enrich my reading choices in ways I never anticipated when I first joined the community.
That said, please do not send me a friend request if you aren't interested in reading and haven't articulated why you want to be my friend in the question answer box in the friend request option. Specifically, if you are a guy looking to seduce and/or pull a scam on some lady, I'm not your lady and I will ignore your request and block you.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 20, 2021
Bittersweet!
July 5, 2017
An amazing, heart-warming little short story that will leave you with amazement and amusement!
July 3, 2017
Happy Independence Day to all--whether you live in the U.S. or elsewhere. This Independence Day short story remains one of my favorite things that I've written. (Nothing to buy; it's free.)
Jakey, Get Out of the Buggy
Grampa Jake was a nasty, short-tempered, mean-spirited, frequently rude, sometimes sullen, usually drunk sonofabitch with no patience for anything or anybody, but I mean that in a good way.
I loved Grampa Jake, and I know he would only allow me to write about him on condition that I'm honest, and this is the most honest I can be: Grampa Jake was a bastard.
As far as I know, Grandma Ida (who I never met because I was born after the accident, which my father—her son—swore was no accident) and I were the only two human beings in the history of Jake's life to have had a conversation with him that didn't end in "Go to hell!" This and the fact that the tree killed Grandma may account for me being Jake's only visitor after he was put away in the Home. And I was not the best company due to my upset at being a 45-year-old waitress with a future that looked like a gaping black pit. But I'm getting ahead of myself. That is a really bad tendency of mine, which is the whole point of this story. So, although linear thought is not one of my strong points, I will attempt to tell this tale in a chronological fashion.
My father, Grampa Jake's son, grew up with a deep-seated terror of becoming like Jake. So he never drank or smoked or told me I was insane to major in pottery at the most expensive college in the country. Instead, he paid for my passion for pots with the inheritance from my mother, a compulsive workaholic lawyer who was afraid to delegate responsibility. According to my father, Mom never left the office or her phone for more than ten minutes, except for the time she gave birth to me. Anyhow, the inheritance was the proceeds from the sale of her firm after she died from overwork when I was two. It financed my exorbitantly expensive BA in pottery plus two years of finding myself, only to discover that I had a deep-seated terror of being found and no marketable skills whatsoever. When the money ran out, I settled into my dead end job as a waitress for the meanest man in town, at which job I had been—at the time of my last visit to Grampa Jake—for 21 years, three months, and two days, and I hated every minute of it.
"Tell the bastard to go f*** himself!" boomed Grampa Jake. (To be honest, I must record that Jake used the "f" word frequently. I'm used to it, but out of sensitivity to those of you who are not, I will use the standard abbreviation.) "F***ing scumbag! If he won't give you July Fourth off, quit!"
And it was then, for the first time in 21 years, three months, and two days, that I really considered the possibility of life without this job, and my fantasies of destitution began. Let's be honest, who is going to hire a 45-year-old waitress with no marketable skills? Besides which I'm a terrible waitress.
[Whole story posted at http://www.betsyrobinson-writer.com/j... .]
Jakey, Get Out of the Buggy
Grampa Jake was a nasty, short-tempered, mean-spirited, frequently rude, sometimes sullen, usually drunk sonofabitch with no patience for anything or anybody, but I mean that in a good way.
I loved Grampa Jake, and I know he would only allow me to write about him on condition that I'm honest, and this is the most honest I can be: Grampa Jake was a bastard.
As far as I know, Grandma Ida (who I never met because I was born after the accident, which my father—her son—swore was no accident) and I were the only two human beings in the history of Jake's life to have had a conversation with him that didn't end in "Go to hell!" This and the fact that the tree killed Grandma may account for me being Jake's only visitor after he was put away in the Home. And I was not the best company due to my upset at being a 45-year-old waitress with a future that looked like a gaping black pit. But I'm getting ahead of myself. That is a really bad tendency of mine, which is the whole point of this story. So, although linear thought is not one of my strong points, I will attempt to tell this tale in a chronological fashion.
My father, Grampa Jake's son, grew up with a deep-seated terror of becoming like Jake. So he never drank or smoked or told me I was insane to major in pottery at the most expensive college in the country. Instead, he paid for my passion for pots with the inheritance from my mother, a compulsive workaholic lawyer who was afraid to delegate responsibility. According to my father, Mom never left the office or her phone for more than ten minutes, except for the time she gave birth to me. Anyhow, the inheritance was the proceeds from the sale of her firm after she died from overwork when I was two. It financed my exorbitantly expensive BA in pottery plus two years of finding myself, only to discover that I had a deep-seated terror of being found and no marketable skills whatsoever. When the money ran out, I settled into my dead end job as a waitress for the meanest man in town, at which job I had been—at the time of my last visit to Grampa Jake—for 21 years, three months, and two days, and I hated every minute of it.
"Tell the bastard to go f*** himself!" boomed Grampa Jake. (To be honest, I must record that Jake used the "f" word frequently. I'm used to it, but out of sensitivity to those of you who are not, I will use the standard abbreviation.) "F***ing scumbag! If he won't give you July Fourth off, quit!"
And it was then, for the first time in 21 years, three months, and two days, that I really considered the possibility of life without this job, and my fantasies of destitution began. Let's be honest, who is going to hire a 45-year-old waitress with no marketable skills? Besides which I'm a terrible waitress.
[Whole story posted at http://www.betsyrobinson-writer.com/j... .]
March 23, 2016
Maybe I'm not cut out for this type of humor. Or at least I think it was supposed to be a humorous tale.
Maybe I just didn't get it. There was supposed to be some kind of moral to the story, right?
I didn't buy the relationship either between grandpa and grandaughter. I feel like I was supposed to like their bond, but I just didn't get it.
Meh. Didn't work for me.
Maybe I just didn't get it. There was supposed to be some kind of moral to the story, right?
I didn't buy the relationship either between grandpa and grandaughter. I feel like I was supposed to like their bond, but I just didn't get it.
Meh. Didn't work for me.
March 20, 2016
I really enjoyed the bittersweet humor of this short story. The last sentence is a priceless explanation of the story's title.
March 20, 2016
A favorite line of mine was ""Monkey, monkey, monkey...although I don't believe in them, I'm going to tell you a story with a lesson. "
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews