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Good Narrative Principles

Category Archives: It’s Personal

From My Life

May 30, 2023
by Lee Eiferman
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Character Flash: Waiting for the News

All day long I’ve been waiting for the phone to ring. For the text to arrive. I’m supposed to get word today. Been walking with my phone in my pocket…in my hand. It sits beside me at the table when I’m eating.

Around 2 pm or so, I had enough. Decided to go swimming. Pool was crowded, three to a lane.  Afterwards, all three shower stalls were occupied. The fourth was out of order. I stood facing the clock. Trying to maintain my cool, thinking “how long can they take?” Five minutes tops. I listened for any encouraging sound, something that might indicate that one of them was wrapping it up. After six minutes, I lost it. Thought about my phone sitting in the locker ringing away. How would I know? And so, I cleared my throat. A heartbeat later, all three women stepped out of the shower. And yes, in case you’re wondering, there was a text waiting for me. (Notice how I’m not sharing the nature of the news with you?)

May 30, 2023
by Lee Eiferman
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Character Flash: The Not So Honest Liar

I admit I’m mathematically challenged. As a kid, I was always disappointed by the lame narratives wrapped around a verbal math problem. The alleged story was always crammed with booby traps masquerading as burning questions. I never heard enough about the grandmother riding on the train to visit her family. Who cares when her train will arrive? We still don’t know the most basic things about her.  Was she a good cook? A math whiz? A sharp shooter? Maybe that’s why it took me forever to figure out the game my advisor at the bank was playing when I asked if he sold T-Bills. Naturally, his answer was neither yes or no. Instead, he uncorked a twenty-minute monologue, rendering me numb. He had this uncanny ability to present falsehoods as facts. Like, did you know, in the event of a bank failure, the FDIC can take up to ninety years to pay me back? True? Not true? You tell me.

May 30, 2023
by Lee Eiferman
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Character Flash: I Am Surrounded by Fussy People

I’m not exactly a “go with the flow” person. I have my opinions, my beliefs. I don’t like skim milk, for instance. It ruins a cup of coffee. But then again, some of more fussy friends believe that coffee is best served black. Full stop. Period. No allowance can ever be made for a tender stomach that simply can’t handle the infusion of acid. If your stomach is that finely tuned, they would say, you should probably switch to something more benign. I suppose surrounding myself with “fussy people” helps to keep me in line. Helps me from becoming…what? Mediocre?

May 24, 2019
by Lee Eiferman
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The Scent of Foul Play

Peach vape smell, mingled with wet cash and rancid perfume. Can’t wash the smell off, I tried. We found the sodden large leather tote in the park this morning while walking the dog. Her driver’s license states that today is her birthday. Wet keys. No phone. Stray credit cards next to a swollen notebook filled with neat handwriting. Brought the bag to the cops. Could be foul. I’ll never know.

May 17, 2018
by Lee Eiferman
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Holding Hands

I do this thing every week: I go hear (and see) my friend improvise on the piano for forty minutes or so. He’s pretty amazing and astonishing, playing on a Steinway with its original sound board. The kick of it is witnessing him leap from one style to the next as the spirit takes him. I always leave feeling blessed, lucky to have fallen into this weekly ritual.

Sometimes my husband comes with me, sometimes not. It all depends on whether or not he’s at home or at some far-flung place. My husband is what you’d call “an important man”. It’s lonely work for both of us.

The weekly musical event takes place in his living room where there’s a deep couch, the sort which is easy for a short-legged person like myself to slide ever so gradually to the floor. The couch is not my favorite spot to listen. But last week I arrived late, without my husband, and so, had to squeeze onto the couch between a friend and a stranger name “Jerry” who seemed pleasant enough.

As I slipped into the music, I absentmindedly extended my hand closer to Jerry seated to my right, I suppose to brace myself. Halfway through a tender melodic piece, Jerry cradled my hand in his. I didn’t move it away. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because his hand was warm, dry to the touch, a bit naked.

The memory of his touch lingered through the week, flavoring my nightly routine, when work and the press of the to do list wasn’t generating the necessary distraction. I wondered why Jerry held my hand. I wondered who he was. I could have asked my friends, the host of the weekly piano recital, but the thought of bringing it up made me blush. Even if I were to text my friend the question, shot him an email or call, I could well imagine the blush, creeping from my neck, coloring my face to a deep strawberry glaze. I suppose you’d think it was guilt expressing itself, the dead weight of conflicting emotions, though honestly, I don’t feel guilty.

I’m very conscious of what I’ll wear tonight. It’s Wednesday after all. Jerry isn’t a regular. There’s a good chance that he won’t be there. I tell myself this, that he probably won’t come, using the same line of logic as when I prep myself for life’s little disappointments, an example of which I can’t think of right now, though, as soon as I sign off, a list of disappointments will readily spring to mind.

September 14, 2017
by Lee Eiferman
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Window Display

For as long as he can remember, Johnny has been vacationing in Upstate New York. He owns a window shop and has found out the hard way that setting up an eye-catching display is vital to his business. It’s a window shop, after all. His latest purchase was an American flag hanging from the extended ladder off a toy fire truck, an appropriate 9/11 marker. Luckily his wife Nancy has the patience of a saint, except when she’s around a fresh water lake. She gets mean when the temperature slides past 80.

June 21, 2017
by Lee Eiferman
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Jello

When asked if he actually liked his job, Jake mentions that he always suffered from a bad case of Sunday night anxiety. Heading to the office Monday morning never felt good, but, with his wife due any day, Jake was in no position to consider a change or even a lateral shift in his work life. Yesterday, on the street outside the office, Jake collided with two sweaty guys hauling away the state of the art copier and the new editing equipment from the office. Upstairs, everything in his cubicle, including his flowering orchids, his books on fonts and basics of print design were gone. Later, at home, in a heightened state of confusion, Jake tackled the room that was designated to become the nursery. His glove ripped midway through spackling the wall. Jake felt a warm rush of air along the fleshy base of his thumb. Feeling simultaneously frightened and set free, he cupped the air as his new complex reality began to take hold, like Jello starting to congeal.  (Photo: Tim Duch)

May 30, 2017
by Lee Eiferman
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Not So Nice

You’d think that a doctor would have an easier time than the rest of us mere mortals finding someone with whom he could spend the balance of his days. Lonely, the Doctor took the advice of his ninety-year-old Mother and posted his profile on one of those dating apps. Unlike at work where everything was tidy and his staff anticipated his unspoken requests, he was, after hours, lost in a sea of potential mates parading on his screen. He struggled to imagine any one of them as a person with thoughts, feelings and most important of all, political affiliation. So, he hired a matchmaker, someone who boasted that she could find him a suitable wife in under a month.   She was expensive enough. He calculated that each of the twelve dates he went on cost him on average $237 factoring in the matchmaker’s fee amortized over the course of the contract. Inevitably, even before the appetizer arrived, he was ready to kick his date to the proverbial curb. (Photo: Tim Duch)

May 25, 2017
by Lee Eiferman
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He’s a Nice Guy

You don’t even have to say it. The “but” is implied, as in, “he’s a nice guy but…” But, he chews with his mouth open. He’s a sentence completer. He’ll throw you under the bus or steal from his own mother. So, what makes him such a nice guy? Maybe, he tells a good joke. Maybe we’re “nice” until we prove ourselves otherwise.

June 19, 2015
by Lee Eiferman
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23 & Me

IMG_6445I love my parents. Those guys are so awesome. For my Sweet Sixteen they bought me a “thing” — dunno what to call it, a screening (?) a service (?) for 23andMe. I learned about it in Bio this year. My teacher, Ms. Jimenez, told us that now you can take a bit of saliva and use it to decode your genetic makeup and that just “blew her mind”.

You know, how some things can become catch phrases? Well, “blow your mind” had a good run for a few weeks. Like, “ooh, this soggy burger blew my mind” or “the soda machine ate my dollar, which just about blew my mind.” (Maybe I’m confusing “blow my mind” with “bummed me out”?) But at night, at home, I started digging around on the Internet and though I didn’t say anything about it to my crew, like how genuinely awesome it would be to have a report on my genetic self, I was intrigued.

(Note to self: “intrigued” is a good word to use in my college essay).

I bugged my parents and eventually they caved. It’s not cheap, this service, this “thing”. But then again, neither is a reading with a good astrologer. My parents don’t think it’s a fair comparison. But, consider this: both astrology and genetics tap into your curiosity about the future. And both offer you a script, which may or may not come true. Just like genetics isn’t destiny, neither is the arrangement of stars in our galaxy. Sure they both tug at you and influence/limit who you might become, but I like to think that there’s a higher self running the show.

What I really want to know is who am I? My Mom grew up in a crazy cultured house where it was the norm to learn Swahili when her Dad (my Grandpa, the love bug) was stationed in Kenya. Will that flair for language show up in my 23andMe report? Or would it be better suited to my astrological forecast? Maybe I didn’t inherit that “whatever” (gift), (flair), (wiring). My Dad makes awesome pancakes for us every Saturday or Sunday (depending on whether or not one of us has a soccer game or swim meet). Again, that’s probably not a trait that’ll appear in either the genetic report or star chart but maybe is the key to my character.

School’s out (finally!). The last few nights, me and my crew have been lighting bonfires at the beach. There’s a wildness that comes over me when we’re sitting around the fire with the ‘smores and peach schnapps. I look at the stars. I’m not thinking about astrology or genetics, instead, I’m just feeling that strong pull, that tug towards freedom. I go skinny-dipping. I kiss the boys, the girls. I’m not drunk (honest). I’m not high (okay, maybe a little).

I wish that moment could last forever. I keep thinking that if I stare at one star long enough (I can always find it using my Star Chart app) maybe I can project this wildness into energy that I can then tap into it when needed, like in the winter when the world goes glum.

And say I’m successful at pushing this essence of me towards a star (let’s just say). Is that essence the real me? More real than my genetic makeup or that I was born under the influence of Uranus (that’s a joke).