I guest blogged today over yonder.  Check it out. 

My husband is the historical acadamian in the family.  A virtuoso of electoral statistics, today he’s in his element, working in numbers, trends, and tendencies the way I relish molding sentences and descriptions.  Our diverse spheres of knowledge are apparent during our nightly viewing of Jeopardy.  Geography, history, economics?  I’m awful.  And history’s my worst. 

But I do enjoy historical archeology – finding the hidden, small stories between the giant pillars of ”notable” world events that stand stalwart along our timeline.  I love to sift through the bones of forgotten characters, searching for the gems, seldom-seen and not yet deemed museum-worthy, that their lives held. 

Today reminds me of one of my favorites. 

During my Junior Year at Harvard, I participated in a mentorship program with a professor at Radcliffe College.  (Formerly the half of Harvard attended by female students, before it became coeducational.  My graduation year was actually the first that female graduates did not also receive the Radcliffe seal on their diplomas, in addition to the Harvard seal.  Everything was officially equal.  But I felt a sense of loss for that seal.  Now, Radcliffe stands as an arm of Harvard, devoted to womens’ studies and scholarship.  It isn’t independent, anymore, and something about that is sad as well.  But it’s another blog entry.) 

I worked with a few female undergraduates and our mentor-professor to sift out the women who had made the most significant contributions to the past millenium.  Of course, we couldn’t complete this task without collecting the stories of some pretty significant-but-unknown men, as well. 

From our massive piles of index cards, gleaned from months in the Widener Library stacks, emerged the name of Henry Burns, a little-known legislator from Tennessee. 

Now, most folks (even us gals who ought to know better), know precious little about the suffrage movement.  We know it was an amendment that passed Congress in 1918 and was ratified in 1920.  We may even know it was called the “Anthony Amendment,” and surely we know the names Susan B., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and their cronies.  But we may not know that the Anthony Amendment had to be reintroduced to Congress every single year for FORTY years until it passed.  (And even then, it had to be ratified by each and every state before it became law.)  And we certainly have forgotten the names of the fellas who contributed to the effort. 

That’s where we find Mr. Burns.  By 1920, Tennessee was the only state starding in the way of women receiving the vote, nationwide.  On August 18, the Amendment came to a vote of a deadlocked state legislature.  As the story goes, a young Henry Burns, who had been a staunch opponent of ratification, received a letter from his mother shortly before he cast his vote.  Her words were to the effect of “I know you’ll do the right thing by these ladies.” 

At the last moment, Burns changed his vote. 

And that’s why I’m leaving in just a few minutes to go make mine. 

I hope that Americans realize, as we make our decisions today, that while we bicker and fret over just who should get to write a new chapter of history is about to be written, we don’t forget all the dear, small stories that put those ballots into our hands. 

They are part of the ending, too.  Do the right thing by them. 

The pic above is of Meg and my son, Judd, celebratin’ democracy.  It was taken by the enormously talented Mel Worthington.  Check out her work at www.worthington-photography.com. 

Fall has fallen.  My baby boy, struggling to master the art of stepping upright, stumbles against the ottoman once more.  We’re officially in the cruising phase (easily confused with the bruising phase).  I think of the series of phases he’ll go through next, all the way through adolescence when, Dr. Spock and his contemporaries would have us believe, he’ll phase out of phases entirely until somewhere around middle age.

I don’t agree with them.  For me, fall conjurs memories of the mid 1980s, when my mother and my Aunt Kit fell headlong into an obsession with paint pens, wooden cats, stencil kits, and glue guns.  The Crafting Phase.

I’m not really sure what started it.  Maybe it was the onset of their mid-thirties.  They’d stopped bearing children, so now it was time to nourish other things, like crossed-stitched ducks on “Welcome to Our Home” signs, and wooden spoons with lace bows on the handles that you hang on the kitchen wall.

Once every fall, Kit and Momma would stuff my cousins, sister and me into the station wagon like so many errant leaves, and drag us back to Damascus, to the Annual Constitution Square Festival and Craft Sale.  We squeezed ourselves into the way-back, between stacks of grapevine wreaths and Santas made of toilet paper rolls.  And when the rear door was flung open, we were turned loose — to ”shop” (because what does any child want more than her own crocheted toilet paper holder), guzzle burgoo and funnel cakes, and, my favorite part, enjoy the sideshow of (unintentional) “characters” present at any Kentucky fair.  There were toothless banjo pickers and blind sawblade painters; whittlers so enamoured with their own whittle-itude that they placed $50 price tags on lopsided wooden toy horses.  And, of course, there were thie “hillbilly” booths, where you usually found the most pathetic excuses for “crafts,” and the best sales people.  A toothpick glued to a piece of two-by-four, with a homemade plaquard that read “Hillbilly Toothbrush,” went for $5.95; a cut up stack of phone book pages, glued on the same (”Hillbilly Toilet Paper”) was a dollar cheaper.  One year, Meg, who wasn’t allowed to play with anything resembling a real knife, spent her allowance on a “Hillbilly Switchblade” — a tongue depressor attached to a clothes pin with a rubber band.  (Looking back, I believe Hillbillies and Vacation Bible School Teachers must have shared the same views about appropriate childrens’ toys.)     

It was with a sense of great nostalgia for the Constitution Craft Fair days that I accepted, several weeks ago, an invite to my first rural Book Fair. 

Now, I hate to crush the delusions of readers who think all book-styled events are held in upscale, white-table-clothed venues, with soft music playing in the background, white wine on silver trays, and lots of women in black and men in turtlenecks milling around, tossing out descriptors like “scrumtrillescent.”  Some readings are like that.  Some funerals are, too.

But a book fair is just what the name would imply — the food (well, some of it), the atmosphere, and, oh yes, the characters.   

I arrived at the Fair site, a middle school gymnasium that sprung up, metallic and outrageously modern, out of what looked like a 30-square mile area of cow pasture.  (Sidenote:  Is that trend, nowadays?  The more rural the school, the newer building?  I guess my alma mater in Richmond, KY, isn’t far enough out there to qualify for one of these techie remodels.  The last time I saw MCHS, it still looked like a leftover from the Welcome Back Kotter set.)  As instructed, I was early. The coordinator encouraged us to take time to “set up our table displays.”

I did my best.  (Tell all the truth, I think the last time I put together a table display it was aso in a school gym.  My handiwork consisted of a trifold cardboard poster, covered with Polaroids of me growing crystals in my mother’s frying pan.  I got an Honorable Mention ribbon, and was a little bitter.  The winner did reasearch on whether most dogs were right or left-pawed.  Because that’s useful.  At least my efforts could have benefitted some Kentucky youngster who wanted to, say, start their own meth lab.)   

This time, my display consisted of a white cotton table cloth, books stacked like they’d been flourished by David Copperfield, and a dish of candy corn.  I thought, when I bouht the candy corn, that it was a creative, attention-grabbing touch.  This was before I saw the gold lame draping and homemade fudge some of my fellow authors brought.  Oh, and did I mention the author “uniforms?”  Oh yes.  Handmade cardigans embroidered with appliques that looked like miniature books and letters.  And matching stretch pants.

But these were the least of the attractions.

As I’ve mentioned, I come to these things for the characters, and this time I wasn’t disappointed.  Every author-themed event is a veritable sideshow of human eccentricity.  But rural fairs, where you get a fair number of self-published folks, are special.  These folks haven’t been through a publicist’s “let’s market you” machine.  Some may not know what a publicist is.  A precious few appear unaware that a “public” exists.     

Now, I’m not trying to put down self-published authors.  The world of self-publication is full of jewels, brought to the page with more effort and tenacity than could be wrought by a thousand million-dollar printing presses. Indeed, many literary giants began by publising themselves. 

But from every proud tradition spring a few abberrant seeds, those fair merchants my Grandy would euphemize, with downcast eyes, as “not quite right.”  You sense, just from passing their tables, that the goal of their writing process was not to produce a book, nor to tell a story.  No, it was something along the lines of “Find an occupation that requires me to neither leave my house nor interact with another single, living soul, ever.”       

These folks seem to emerge from their subterranean lairs once or twice a year, when it occurs to them they might actually try to sell some of these cases and cases of books they paid to print.  They aren’t very pleasant.  Often, they are Discovery Channel obese, and look greatly displeased at the notion that anyone would be rude enough to invite them to move into the daylight and make some money.  When you ask them what they’re working on, they don’t look up from their Gameboys or knitting, but make vague references to needing to counteract “the crap that’s out there,” without elaborating on the ”crap” to which they refer.

In other words, in fair-speak,  I don’t think they have the right to call themselves genuine carnies.  Aunt Kit and Sharon Hancock sure were, decked out in their matching denim aprons and Keds without a care in the world.  And I tried my best to be, candy corn be damned, smiling and inviting passers-by to step up and give me a shot.

If I have one piece of advice for authors (self-published, contracted, whatever), it’s this — if you’re going to put your words out there, go all out.  Stand up, be counted, be country, be tacky.  Not everyone’s going to buy you.  But you can enjoy the view from your table while someone still wants to set one up for you.   

All writers are artists, and artists are necessarily carnies.  There’s no hiding it or fighting it; we’re weird.  We’re quirky.  We spend our times in worlds and with people who don’t exist, or thoroughly absorbed in the quirks of those who do. 

But I don’t think we’re alone.  I like to think everyone has a little bit of carny in them.  The thing they’re obsessed with that not everyone else “gets,” the movie that you will advocate until your last breath, the invention where you wish you could put your last dolar, the story they’ll repeat louder and louder until you turn your eyes toward them, at last, and admit that it is interesting, it is good, it is relevant.  

Today, in celebration of fall, I encourage all readers to embrace their inner carny.  Tell us about it in the comment thread, if you like.      

Good Southern, church-going gals are not supposed to fear death.  Premarital sex, Wal-Mart, male kindergarten teachers, those are all ok to fear.  But not the great passing-on.  No, if you’re a person of faith, you’re supposed to welcome it.  Or, at the very least, not have an unnatural paranoia of it.

But I do.  I always have.  Maybe my fear is tied to the fact that death was such a frequent houseguest, growing up.  The church was our family, remember.  Dad was their patriarch, their protector.  I reveled in the marrying, burying, magic-in-a-starched-shirt power he held in their eyes. 

Until, that is, they started to die.  Then the whole holy-power thing started to get really old. 

Family trips to Disney world got canceled if someone died.  If a funeral had to be scheduled during a birthday party, the burying came first, the cake later.  A dying congregant trumped EVERYTHING.     

Then I read The Book that scarred me.  The Book triggered my resentment of the Reaper mating with the vulnerability inherent in all growings-up, and they formed a heavy spectre of fear that hovered around my awkward pre-teen frame.  It caused my shoulders to hunch even more than one would expect.  Where some of my classmates worried about the onset of cramps and acne, I feared diabetes, colon cancer, and something we’d studied in AP Biology called “Sleeping Sickness” (Had Dad been properly vaccinated when he went on all those mission trips?) 

When I was in the sixth grade shortly after I read The Book, my mother bought a copy of the American Medical Association’s home medical encyclopedia.  It quickly became my nighttime, under-the-covers sneak reading.  I drew my finger carefully down the self-diagnostic charts, and felt my heart rate ease a bit or so as I cross ailments off the list:

“Swelling…no…check.”

“Headache…well…maybe…onto the second fork in the diagram…”

“Dizziness…well…I am tired…”

Finally satisfied that I didn’t have pulmonary edema or glaucoma, I turned out the light. 

As I grew older, the fear subsided, but it didn’t come with an attendant ease in reading about the topic of death.  I realize it can’t be avoided, particularly in the memoir genre (seriously, try to think of one good memoir that does not include a death), and, in fact, some of the best writing arises from literary explorations of the grave.  Still, I don’t find it easy to go there.

Probably a hundred times I’ve passed Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking on the table at Barnes and Noble, and I’ve reached toward it, like a dieter confronting her nemesis in the bread aisle.  I want to hold it, to feel it.  But, with the admonition that “I really shouldn’t,” I pull my hand back.

I wonder if all readers have a flaw, that way.  Something they fear hiding in the pages from them, like a land mine.  They don’t want their eyes to trip over it and find themselves felled, emotions exposed where they’d planned to keep them hidden under a warm blanket, safe within the confines of some tome a friend dubbed ”a comfort read.”

Several months ago, a book club I attend read Nando Parrado’s Miracle of the Andes, the only first-hand account from a survivor of the infamous Andes rugby plane crash.  I read it easily because I’d steeled myself beforehand.  I knew the basic story of how many people would die, when, and how.  I’d mapped the landmines and knew how to step around them.  A member of our group didn’t have the same courage.  She admitted that her weakness came from the fact that she had boys of her own, and couldn’t read anything “where boys die.” 

Last month, The Book Therapist recommended Love Is A Mix Tape to me, and it was the same story.  She explained, up front, that the girl dies.  (This isn’t really a spoiler; it’s apparent very early and from the jacket that the death of the author’s wife prompted the book.)  I read it feeling that I controlled the map; the placement of the mines wouldn’t throw me.  I could even keep my eye open for a lesson — the thing the girl did wrong that I would know, from now on, not to do.  Or the thing she did too much of that I could now avoid.  I would grow affection for her, but not attachment.  I would survive to read another day, not fall down that deep rabbit hole where characters leap so passionately off the pages that they invade your thoughts, prompt your tears like the memory of a favorite grandparent, years after the cover is closed. 

I did that once, in fifth grade when our teacher read The Book — Winston Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows. And (as you can tell) the scars still show.  The Medical Encyclopedia episodes came shortly after, as did my hiding of my father’s copy of John Dunne’s Death Be Not Proud, behind a stack of books in the study, where New Testament concordances would muffle the painful reality of a brain tumor.           

Alas, I know it’s a vain exercise.  We have a saying in law that you can’t unring the bell (used to refer to statements, etc., improperly made in front of the jury.  You can demand that the jury “disregard what they’ve just heard,” but the reality is, well, you can’y unring the bell).  And you can’t unread a book.  The scars exist permenantly, whether you like it or not.

I’ll open the comment thread.  Which book has scarred you, and why?

So I grew up convinced that the children of senior Pastors had the hardest time. Guess I forgot about the kids of Ministers of Music. (You’ll need sound for this one; the clip comes about 20 secs after the host’s lead-in, but it’s worth it. Hat tip to E! and The Soup.):

http://vids.eonline.com/services/link/bcpid1396519019/bctid1805534554

I had another book signing yesterday.  Traffic was pretty light.  I blame the economy, the sunny day, Barack Obama, Bristol Palin, global warming, and Red Dye #5. 

In all seriousness, I get tired of hearing writers bemoan light-traffic book signings.  Writing a book, and then having that book published, is very difficult nowadays.  So if you find yourself sitting behind that little table, pen in hand, next to a stack of books with your own picture inside the jacket flap, you’ve pretty much won the lottery.   

That’s how I see it.  Whining and complaining that not enough people have doled out a twenty plus a five (and gotten very little change back, I might add) for your personal opus is like admitting you just won the lottery, but when they threw the ticker-tape parade to congratulate you, not enough people waved as you rode by.  In other words, no sympathy.  Not even for myself, when traffic was as slight as it was yesterday.  Nonetheless, five very special people did stop by my signing table.  Without fail, they always do.  In case you don’t hang around long enough to meet them, let me introduce you to:

The Five People You Meet at Every Book Signing:

The Circler:  You don’t actually meet the circler at your signing, because he won’t come all the way up to the table.  He gets close, though, lurking all around the periphery, examining a copy of your book with one eye while he pretend-reads something from the $5.99 stack with the other.  Eventually, he reaches out with one hand to pick up a copy of Trespassers, drawing it back to him so fast that passers-by might think your immediate vicinity is wired with invicible fencing.  He might even buy it, but he definitely doesn’t want to talk to you about the purchase. 

Is he too shy to meet you?  To scared to ask for an autograph?  In truth, I suspect it’s neither.  You see, I’ve seen the tentative/embarassed look on The Circler’s face before.  I’ve worn it, in fact, many times — every Sunday afternoon when I do my grocery run. 

I’m not the least bit tentative going into Kroger’s for groceries.  I know what I want.  I know what my budget is.  I could do the layout backwards.  I don’t do my hair or makeup before I go.  I wear my husband’s old sweats.  I park at the rear of the lot because it’s faster, and I run to the door.  Nothing, I tell you, NOTHING is more important on Sunday afternoon than getting into and out of Kroger’s in record time.  NASCAR pit crews would fear me if they saw me do this.     

But then…once in awhile I have an unexpected detour.  I don’t know his name, but he’s a little old man in a flannel shirt, stationed behind a card table at the grocery entrance.  Just as I’m gunning into produce, his sweet, arthitic little voice begs, “Miss, would you like to subscribe to the Times-Dispatch, today?”  I swear to goodness, if the local paper stationed a naked Heidi Klum at that table, half-hidden by a stack of to-be-filled subscription cards, they could not have a higher success rate than they do with Lil Old Man.  I am guilted into stopping every time. 

So, while I still find The Circler to be a strange, evasive beast, I think I understand his motives.  Just because a person arrives to buy a book does not mean that he wants to be sold that book.  Writers are storytellers, storytellers are salesmen, and sales take time and energy for everyone involved.  Whatever people say about big bookstores, they are one of the last sanctuaries where you can walk in and not be immediately accosted by armies of large, white teeth; assaulted by thousands of perfume bottles; and tripped head over heels by offers to “help” you.  I don’t want to be the one who changes that.  So carry on, Circler.  You don’t bother me; I won’t bother you. 

The Lingerer.  There are Three Distinct strains of Lingerers; some more virulent than others.  But they are all alike in their nature, which is polar-opposite that of the Circler.  The Circler avoids conact with the writer; the Lingerers seek it.  And then THEY DO NOT LEAVE.  Don’t get me wrong — the Lingerer’s attention is, pre-crossing-that-creepy-line, flattering.  And whatever they say, memoirists love attention (Yes, I know I am incurring the wrath of certain peers of mine, who write final chapters insisting they want nothing more now than a solitary, simple life…you wrote a book all about yourself and gave it to the world in a glossy cover, honey.  The gig is up.) 

But at book signings, writers are given a teeny amount of time and space (usually a table about two or three feet square).  When a fan becomes a Lingerer, blocking both the table and the sign announcning what’s going on, for fifteen to thirty minutes (or even more) at a time, they prevent other customers from approaching the author, or even seeing that there’s a signing happening.  This happened to me twice yesterday, and I returned to an inbox full of emails to the tune of “My friend and I wanted to talk to you about the book, but you were preoccupied with someone and we were in a hurry, so…”  Sigh.  I understand.  I wish I could have spoken to them, too, instead of peering at them over the shoulder of the Lingerer, screaming with my eyes “Waaaaaaaaaaaiiitt!  Come baaaaack!” as their attention drifted to the Dr. Phil display.  But on to the subcategories:

• The Gusher:  The gusher is a well-intentioned, genuine fan.  They loved your book.  They want the world to love your book.  They have pictures to show you, of all their children and grandchildren who are sure to love your book.  

Of course, I LOVE the Gusher.  Who wouldn’t?  The gusher is enough to validate your self-esteem through a whole week of no-sales.  They are the most harmless of the Lingerers, and I am always more than happy to give them my email address so we can correspond further on a personal level, and they can cease and desist with the immediate lingering activity.

• The Barfly:  No one can really figure out what this Lingerer is doing in a bookstore.  They aren’t concerned with any of the the books.  But when you’re doing a signing, they are concerned with you.  They want to know if you are tired, if you are bored.  They tell you that you look tired, that you look bored.  They tell that you look lonely “sitting there all by yourself.”  They come back every ten minutes or so to ask if you are “having fun yet.”  Never once do they ask about your book, nor do they pick it up.  

The Barfly does not appear to understand that, as explained above, a bookstore is one of those last sanctuaries where it is acceptable (if not encouraged) for people to stand or sit alone, absorbed in their own universes, with no pressure to make forced smalltalk.  I blame his persistence on whomever wrote that article in some popular publication about how bookstores are the new singles bars (I have no proof that such an article exists, but I’m sure it does.  I’d like to track down the flittering pop culture reporter who wrote it, and invite the Barfly to follow her around for a few weeks.  The Barfly can linger around her on the subway while she’s trying to read the paper, in the seat next to her on the plane, or in the waiting room of the doctor’s office).      

• The Lecturer:  The Lecturer cares neither about the book nor the author.  They do care about telling the author how much they know about other books, other authors, and the craft of writing, in general.   They haven’t read your book, but they do have some general writing and research suggestions for you.  So you’re a Richmond native?  Spectacular.  They can, and will, tell you every article of trivia they know about the founding of the Confederate states.  Don’t say “Yes, I’ve heard that,” or they’ll be forced to trump your knowledge with two more facts, thus doubly prolonging the lingering.  Don’t bother deterring them by bringing up the most obscure book or awkward topic you cant think of.  They’ve heard of it, they’ve studied it, and if they haven’t they will provide their standard eye-rolling response on why it is a pointless, idiotic thing to read or to study.  The Lecturer is the most persistent of the Lingerers.  You begin to suspect that they are, at heart, offended that someone is here in a bookstore signing books, when they, themselves, are not (whether they’ve written anything or not), and they need to challenge the notion of your existence.  Or, bore you so silly that you give up and pass out, and they can take over your table.             

And finally…

The Critic.  The critic has not read the book.  The critic is not really interested in the book, but picks it up for the sake of finding something to criticize.  Yesterday, the critic had a scraggly gray ponytail and wouldn’t make eye contact.  He picked up a copy of Trespassers and quickly tossed it in my direction, adding, with a very condescending gaze: ”It looks like a Mommy Book to me.  No offense.” 

“Well, interestingly enough, most of the great press I’ve gotten has come from male readers.” [TRUE!]

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.  Still, looks like a Mommy Book.  If you know what I mean.”

And I wanted to say: “Actually, no, what you’ve said is entirely new to me.  I wasn’t aware of this new genre of “Mommy Book.”  Being a new mother myself, I hear you implying that, in addition to giving up all their spare time and a huge chunk of their identities, new mothers have also lost the ability to read.  Or at least to read anything above your condescention.  Thank you for enlightening me, sir.  I did not know that.  Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in the section to the left.  That’s where they keep the “Aging Hippie Trying To Hide His Gut With a Tied Sweater” Books.    

And there you have it.  Most people don’t fall into any of the categories encompassing the special FIve, but I can always count on those visitors. 

Oh, and the guy who bolts up to the table, ignoring the signs, nearly knocking down my neat little display stacks, just to say, “Hey you, where do they keep the J.K. Rowling stuff?”  He usually makes an appearance, too.   

This week, I took my one-year-old to preschool at our church for the first time. (Yes, our church construes the definition “school” liberally. Since our son only recently managed growth of his own eyebrows, I can’t imagine what exquisite lessons in finite mathematics await him. I just hope he’s challenged enough, you know what I mean?)

I’d steeled myself against the expected drama of the whole dropping-off experience. Since before Judd was born, scores of long-drawled Virginia mommas have regaled me with survival stories of the first time they “le-uft their fust born with straaaaange-uhs.” Some of them described a scenario inside the classroom, at the “goodbye” moment, not unlike something out of a bad Lifetime movie about a bitter custody battle, complete with the five deputies and the taser and the “NooooooooOOOOOOOOO!”

After a while, I told them all I planned to get around that whole mess. I’d just leave him in a little basket of reeds in the sanctuary parking lot. Ah, if only church were anything like the Bible…

Judd and I got inside the school without incident, and I put him down on the floor with even less incident. One or two mothers were huddled in the hall with the teachers, handing out “specific” instructions for the handling of their youngsters. The rest of us, who didn’t bring a list and thus fell into the Non-Specific group (Judd does not have any allergies, he is not a vegetarian, and he smokes only socially), were asked to come on inside and individually label each of our child’s spare diapers with a magic marker.

Why? I have no idea. When I was in school, the supply list never said “Please send your child to school with her own toilet seat labeled with her name.”* But, it’s 2008, and heaven forbid we expose a Pampered rear end to cross-contamination from a generic-brand diaper.

Let’s just say any fears I had that this facility might not be overprotective enough were gone. I turned to leave, with a little pride in my step.

I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t fretted. I hadn’t demanded to know what types of detergents were used to clean the classroom carpet, and whether or not they had phosphates. I had graduated, tear-free, and I was off to a little quiet time.

But then I saw this:

That’s when the little lump beneath the ribcage started to form.

Now, those of you who’ve never attended Bible School or Sunday School or any kind of Church/School may not understand the kind of nostalgia this piece of furniture evokes for me. The Communal Highchair/Straightjacket. It’s chic. It’s holy. It’s universal. It says: “Come share the unselfish, bountiful fellowship (from which there is no escape).”

Funny, yes. But in the instant before I walked out the door, I remembered what it was like to sit at that table. I remembered who I was when I sat there.

Though I lived in different towns and went to different churches growing up, one fact was as constant as that table — I usually went to church and to school with the same classmates, but only on Sundays were all those classmates my friends. We began to drift as soon as our eyes opened after the Benediction. Back to the Monday morning cliques, back to the back of the band room or the front of the foul line at varsity team practice.

I was no better than anyone else, and I’m ashamed to admit that, now. Though I tried hard, there were some Sunday Schoolmates I laughed and talked with at church, yet rarely spoke to the rest of the week. There were certain boys for whom I joined in a snickering chorus of “Ewwww!” when their names were mentioned in the seventh grade hallway. But on Sunday morning, I held their hands for prayer circle.

I never gave it a second thought. Church was a calm refuge where everyone was nice to everyone else. No question. It was expected. It was the norm. Grudges begun in locker room fashion wars during the week were put aside. The heartbreak of Friday night’s Couples Spotlight Skate was forgotten, if only temporarily. We wouldn’t have thought of behaving any other way.

But, it didn’t last. We all eventually outgrew Sunday School and Youth Group. Our parents stopped making us come on Sundays, and we quickly forgot what a nice refuge we’d had. We told ourselves that watching Meet the Press in our pajamas was more relaxing that what that little table had provided. We were wrong.

In the end, Judd survived his first day. So did I. The dropping-off part, anyway. Taking him out, taking him back into the world…that was harder.

*I did, however, always have to bring two large boxes of Kleenex. Everyone did. On the first day, you could have built an igloo out of all the boxes. What was up with the Kleenex requirement?

People often ask me what I’ll do if someone says something bad about the book. You know, the inevitable comment on Amazon (by A. Nonymous, of course): “I HAAAAAAAATED… it!!!!! May-be will sell on ebay 2day and make some money back that I spent on it cause was horribel LOLOL.”

(Yes, I am implying that anyone who doesn’t like my book has a poor sense of language. Also, they smell.)

Of course, I’m kidding. I don’t enjoy criticism, but I understand it, particularly because the book I’ve written is a memoir.

Think about what that means.

It means I, like all memoirists, am asking total strangers to get to know me on an intimate level, in a condensed, five-by-seven-inch space. And I’m asking them to pay for that opportunity.

Now I know how all my poor, poor male friends over the years must have felt when I bombarded them with unsolicited blind dates with my female friends. (Ain’t karma a peach?)

The result of such forced romance is inevitable — for many readers, Trespassers will be a soulmate of a book. For others…well…I hope they’ll still be friends, even with no Love Connection. Maybe they’ll pass it along to a buddy who might be a better match.

Today, while I was doing a signing at a local Barnes & Noble, I had a thought — wouldn’t it be fabulous if a true matchmaker service for books and readers existed? Reviews are supposed to facilitate that process, but c’mon. What are the odds that a major publication can pick out the book that is the ideal fit for you? Probably about that same as those of a major television network selecting the ideal Bachelor for…well, for anyone.

I shared this thought with the B&N Community Relations Manager, the fabulous Rebecca Schinsky. (She blogs as The Book Lady, over here.) Rebecca already had a good sense for me as a writer and reader. She’s read Trespassers, she’s visited this blog, and, having met me in person, she’s performed that pre-blind-date crazy assessment every girl has to do before she hooks a friend up with someone (or some book) she holds dear. (”Is she worthy?” “Is she stable” “Can she be trusted — in this world where lazy readers, lied-about-finishing-it readers, and plain old didn’t-really-even-try-to-give-it-a-shot readers, are free to dole out one-stars on Amazon like careless literary litter — with this character that I really love?”)

I asked Rebecca, point blank, to set me up with something new. And she was off.

Literally, with a nod of the head that said “Of course I know the perfect thing out there for you,” (with, might I add, a confidence that the eHarmony actors couldn’t muster if they tried), Rebecca returned with not one, not two, but roughly TEN possibilities in hand. Each had a connection to me, but the right amount of variety was supplied. One was good for a short, light fling; another for a long, post-depression month.

Like a breathless Ingrid Bergman with worn-out Mommy eyes, I could only mutter “How…?”

And the answer was obvious. She has a degree in clinical psychology, and training in sex therapy to boot! Seriously! And she ended up working in a bookstore because, well, as a writer who believes in faith and fate, I can confirm that the store needed her. The readers of America need her. Not a book saleslady. Not a book critic. I have hereby re-christened Mrs. Rebecca Schinsky “The Book Therapist.”

Those of you in the Richmond area who haven’t met her, I demand you make an appointment (or a walk-in) NOW. (9850 Brook Rd., Glen Allen.) I’m sure she’d be willing to do some electronic book therapy via her blog, as well, if you ask nicely.

She can also help you resolve any issues you may be having with your mother. In that case, I hear a phone call, some flowers, and a copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society works wonders.

Stop on by the Barnes & Noble at Virginia Center Commons (9850 Brook Rd., Glen Allen, VA), tomorrow between one and three, to talk Trespassers with me and get a copy signed.  Should be a wonderful time, so I hope I’ll get to meet some of you readers I know only through the blog.  Besides, I have nightmares about having a signing where I just sit at that table forever, staring, and NO ONE COMES.  Flashbacks to the middle school cafeteria.  Shudder.

A few months ago, I sat with my extended family around the television — jaws open, sacred Sunday after-lunch cobbler barely stirred — gawking at one of those Primetime expose shows. (Yes, Jeremiah, there is trash TV in the pastor’s house. How the heck are you going to spot the devil in the world if you don’t know what it’s wearing?) This time, it was a news-ish topic, the fundamentalist Mormon pre-teen brides.

Well, like all y’all, I’m sure, we just couldn’t believe it. We watched in horror at photos of a prebuescent girl in prairie garb, posing next to a conservatively dressed gentleman roughly fifteen years her senior, (who could have been any friendly deacon we’d ever met). Above them, sign proclaimed “Honeymoon Hideaway” in over-froofed, Barbie-like script. The narrator’s voice, hardened into maturity by forces we didn’t dare imagine, conceded that she had no idea what sex was before her wedding night. She was fourteen years old, and she carried her suitcases into a honeymoon retreat, fully and unequivocally believing that infants came “from heaven.”

During the commercial break, the gasps began to circulate.

Can you imagine?!?! To grow up like that! Believing that! To have no idea how people reproduce, even on your own wedding night. How primitive! How shocking! How…

…how exactly like every other Christian church I’ve ever been in in my life. There, I said it.

We can sit in judgment on the more extreme branches of religion all we like. It’s easy to do, since they’re the only ones that make the news. But do mainstream churches handle the topic of sex education any better?

I know, the easy answer is: “Why would you ask such a thing? The topic of sex does not belong in the church at all, and that’s final.”

Well, I could accept that. Lord knows, I’d be perfectly comfortable with that. In fact, I was, for about the first 13 years or so of my life. No one mentioned the “S” word within 500 yards of a steeple.

But once I entered youth group, sex was just about all our youth leaders wanted to talk about. Those of you who are about my age will remember the time well — the Abstinence Era. I realize it’s been going full steam for several years now, but when I was in high school, it was brand new. Literally, one day my friends and I walked into teenage Sunday School to find our leaders — that well meaning, Ned Flanders-ish bunch that just the week before had shown us how to make Noah’s Ark after popsicle sticks and served up Kool-Aid with abandon — suddenly talking about the importance of virginity. Some of them even offered trying-hard-to-be-G-rated anecdotes about how long they “waited,” while giving little winks to their spouses (the ones who bandaged our knees in Vacation Bible School) across the room.

Can you say, “abundant creepy-crawlies”? No, better yet, is there a leprosy-intensified, plague-level of the creepy-crawlies? Because that’s what those talks gave me.

I was lucky, being in church during that extremely awkward period. My parents were always very forthright when I had questions. Meanwhile, I grew up knowing that many of dad’s congregants regularly brought their children to him to give the “birds and bees” talk, because they hadn’t the slightest clue how to do it. Or maybe they just thought they’d spontaneously combust if they did.

Folks, I’m not here to give a sermon on how sex in church can or should be addressed. I don’t have the faintest. I have only one son right now, and he’s lucky if he makes it out the door every day without shoes on his hands and his diaper on the outside of his clothes. But I do know that when we shun any discussion of a topic with our children for the first decade or so of their lives, and then pummel them with sermons that show that “it” is so dangerous and destructive that a “good” Christian child should avoid it at all costs, we shouldn’t be surprised when it becomes a concept shrouded by feelings of guilt, shame, and fear.

You think those will just magically disappear on the wedding night? Yeah, keep prayin’, sister. Meanwhile, keep on treating the idea of human affection like it’s some rabid minotaur that lives under the church basement. It will bite back, eventually.

On a related note, I’m just bursting with pride at a fellow author (and former Miss America contestant), who has taken a positive step towards demystifying sex in an honest, non-agenda-promoting, no pro-abstinence or anti-abstinence card required, way. This year, Nancy Redd released Body Drama. It’s a pictorial guide to the body designed mostly for a female audience, that answers the age old “Am I Normal” query. It’s well written, honest, and a wonderful alternative to certain magazine and internet pictorials children might otherwise be tempted to seek out to satisfy their curiosity. Because it will be satisfied, one way or the other.

And even if you don’t want her book, please, for the love of Jesus, don’t bring your child to my Dad for “that” talk.