Your Uncle Jerry's Blog

What People Want

This: Let me show you what people want from life.

Not this: Let me show you what a cool writer I am.

—My Pal Zan (aka, R.R. Knudson)

Peace and Joy and welcome once again to Uncle Jerry’s Writer’s Corner. Open your notebook to a blank page, Camper, and take down what my pal Zan says at the top of this blog. My pal Zan was the crabbiest, funniest, most irritatingly candid writer Your Uncle Jerry has ever known. She’s deceased now, thank heavens. One can stand only so much good advice.

Zan wrote more than 40 books of YA fiction and nonfiction. She studied constantly, wrote ferociously, and she spoke like she had no time to waste—certainly none to waste on you.

“Okay, this rewrite isn’t terrible,” Zan once said to Uncle Jerry. “But boy does it have Second Book all over it.” She roughed up her own hair and shook her head. “I’ll be so glad when you’re done with it.”

It was actually Uncle Jerry’s fourth book—a fact that I almost wrote to her later, but the nice doctor that Uncle Jerry sees on alternate Thursdays thought it could be a mistake. Never mind about that.

The problem with your writing, Camper, is that you don’t have enough Zan in it. Surely, you know this. Look at it. Why does it take forever to get where it’s going? Why does it lose focus? Most often, because it’s too busy showing off how clever you are.

I know I know I know. That’s NOT what you’re doing. Those lines are not ornamental; they contribute something vital to characterization, plot, exposition. Whatever. Leave them, in that case.

But here’s the deal. Every time you sit down to write, look again at what Zan says in your notebook.

Now write what people want from life.

In chapter eleven, Molly’s relatives are trying to figure this out, too—what they want from life.

Joy and peace.

Such Stuff as Dreams

Take your passion, and make it happen!

—lame old pop song

Joy and peace.

If there’s anything that grieves Your Uncle Jerry’s tender heart, it is the number of young persons who are led astray by believing in their dreams. Pay attention, Camper. Dreams are for bedtime. They are not roadmaps to happiness.

When a pop song, a fortune cookie, a coach, or a movie star says “follow your dream,” the wise young person will do what Your Uncle Jerry does. Deep knee bends repeatedly until you pass out.

Every young person should memorize the words of Fowler, wisest bird in the movie Chicken Run: “Madam, I am a chicken. The British Royal Air Force would never put a chicken behind the controls of an aeroplane!”

See how he did that? Fowler agrees with Uncle Jerry. The only benefit of high-flying dreams is that, sooner or later, they will introduce you to the firm reality of earth. Until you spread your wings, you'll never know how far you can walk.

Which is to say, my friend, you’re just not NBA material. You are not going to be on American Idol. And Hollywood, young person, is not going to give you a shot. Seriously, look at yourself.

Oh, yes, Uncle Jerry knows. You’re awesome. Your friends are awesome. Everybody’s awesome. Now listen up, Camper, I shall say this only once: you are a chicken. You are fat, ignorant, and your wings have been clipped. (It’s a metaphor. Get over it.) A chicken may DREAM all day long, but if you toss one in the air, they will not so much fly as plummet.

Does this mean you’re not awesome? Whatever. Awesomeness does not put a chicken behind the controls of a Learjet. You are probably an awesome chicken. Start there. Get passionate about your chickenhood. About how far you can walk. Later, let's talk about getting airborne.

In chapter ten, Molly begins to show the meaning of clipped wings to her evil Aunt Sonia.

Peace and joy.

Mendacity

Mendacity--ain't that lies and lying?

—Tennessee Williams,

lame old playwright

Peace and joy, Camper.

The world of arts and letters is full of lies and lying, backs stabbed, and hearts broken. Know why? (Arts and letters—that means books, kiddo; movies and books. Look it up.) Why? Because mendacity and other forms of trickery are some of the most fun you can have with your shoes on.

Surely you understand that tricks make the world go around. What if the serpent in the Garden of Eden hadn’t tricked Adam and Eve? Exactly: nothing would have happened! They would have stood around forever, naked and scratching. The world as you know it would not exist. You and I would not exist.

How about Hansel and Gretel? If Gretel hadn’t pretended to be stupid (“But I don’t know HOW to light the oven, Ms. Witch.”), those kids would have been gone. Poof! Crispy critters. Witch dinner. Think about Br’er Rabbit, about Coyote, about Jack and the Beanstalk. About Annie and Johnson in that silly book Entrapment. Without a trickster, the world doesn’t move, Camper. That’s what I’m talking about.

Think about writers. Stay with me now—you need to know this. A novelist is person who lies to tell a truth. It’s a riddle, isn’t it? A real mystery. Novels, of course, are totally made up. Your Uncle Jerry himself is a total fiction. But here I am writing to you. Still, doesn’t a novel sometimes lead you to think something new, something true? So there you go.

Point is, young person, the Good Lord loves a trickster. Those lousy friends of yours, that guy, that girl, who seemed absolutely fascinating—yes, they’re real stinkers. Oh, I hate them. But you and they make a perfect match. Without someone to BE tricked—that’s you, Camper—all tricking would stop, and the world would come to a screeching halt. You want that on your conscience? I don’t think so. So we need you to keep reading, to keep believing in books and friends and lovers and Your Uncle Jerry. At least, try . . . Come on, tricksters are cute; we like them.

But don’t get me wrong. You’re completely right, too. Those friends of yours, they bear watching. Don’t ever take your eye off them.

Your Uncle Jerry watches all his friends very very closely, the little weasels. The more they talk, the more Uncle Jerry just listens. The more they say yes, absolutely, they’ll do something, the more Uncle Jerry knows they absolutely won’t. The more they say “trust me . . .” well, you get the picture. The Good Lord loves a trickster—mostly because they teach us how to protect ourselves.

Because listen, Camper, the one thing tricksters and back-stabbers don’t ever expect is for you to be wise. They never see that coming. Once you start to EXPECT people to let you down, then you can just smile and nod, and make yourself a little backup plan. And when you do that . . . well, you’ve turned the tables, haven’t you? You’ve become the trickster. How cool is that.

And one last thing. There comes a day when you have a friend (or okay, a parent, maybe a lover), and they say “I will never let you down; I got your back; I am true to you forever,” and hey: it turns out they ARE. That’s the best trick of all.

Molly's wondering if she can trust Rhinehart. Chapter nine is ready.

Joy and peace.

Building Character

Yep, Uncle Mike.

He was a real character . . .

—lame old line at any family reunion

Peace and joy, Camper.

Sometimes older relatives are known as “characters.” These relatives carry a wealth of wisdom born of bitter bitter experience, and they often feel a grave responsibility to pass on their wisdom to the young. This is how young campers build their own store of bitter bitter experience. It’s a folkloric process. Left alone, we might listen only to our parents, and thereby miss many mistakes that these family “characters” have found so self-destructive in their own lives.

Your Uncle Jerry’s favorite relative, Great Uncle Jerry, modeled many cheerful bad ideas. It is through following his advice, in fact, that Uncle Jerry developed some of his most resilient “character” flaws.

“But your mom said not to run around naked. She said nothing about riding your bike.”

“What do you mean you’ve never had rum in your milk?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know about women, boy: absolutely zilch.”

“That is no way to roll a joint. Did you learn nothing in eighth grade??”

“If you major in humanities, you'll be fine.”

“Tell her it’s not her fault; it’s yours. Tell her you’re not good enough for her. Yeah, that one always works.”

What a character. It is thanks to him that Your Uncle Jerry hands out cigarettes at Halloween, knows how to make a quiche, and missed any chance at wealth and comfort in retirement. If Great Uncle Jerry were still alive today, Your Uncle Jerry would cheerfully kill him. But we digress.

In chapter eight of our story, Molly begins to absorb some wisdom from the old character in her life.

Joy and peace.

Inheritance

Bank error in your favor:

Collect $200.

—"Chance card" in Monopoly,

lame old board game

Joy and peace, Camper.

Your Uncle Jerry was an adopted child. His birth parents were wealthy, globe-trotting industrialists, who made their primary home in St. Cloud, Minnesota. They were an admirable and glamorous couple, if somewhat distracted. When his parents flew to Paris or Nairobi or Cuenca, as they often did for weeks at a time, they left Uncle Jerry in the care of an elderly matron. A dear old thing, she had the unlikely name of Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy—though everyone called her Buttercup.

Buttercup also tended children for poor families. It was an act of charity on her part, for she surely didn’t need the money, living as she did at the mansion of Uncle Jerry’s parents.

You must be wondering what this has to do with banking, chance cards, and Molly’s inheritance. All in good time, my friend. Your Uncle Jerry is a master storyteller; every detail and hint that he offers is crucial. It’s well-considered and unforgettable. Where were we?

If Buttercup, this saintly woman, had a single flaw, it would be . . . yes, forgetfulness. However could she do it? She mixed up the infant Uncle Jerry with a child belonging to another family—a family, through no fault of their own, substantially below Uncle Jerry’s tax bracket.

The other child was a four-year-old Ojibwe with earrings, a hook, and a Spiderman tattoo. She was a lovely child, bless her heart, and a Spanish speaker.

You exclaim: Spanish-speaking?? Surely Uncle Jerry’s parents should have noticed that right away! So true, and this is a point that Uncle Jerry makes often in his talks with the nice doctor.

In the board game of life, sadly, sometimes you are handed a card from the deck of chance. How rueful was the day, recently, when Uncle Jerry noticed in the news that his real parents had sold yet another patent to Apple. Somewhere, a very wealthy child is sipping a tropical fruit drink with one hand.

Like Your Uncle Jerry, our heroine Molly finds herself unprepared for her inheritance. What's in Grandma Claire’s will is a big surprise to everyone. Here is chapter seven.

Peace and joy.

Giving Season

Ego sum pauper.
Nihil habeo.
Cor meum dabo.

--Lame old Latin canon

Peace and joy, Camper, but beware the SEASON of peace and joy.

The season of giving is the season of anxiety, and it is not to be taken lightly. When the three wise men stumbled into town bearing gifts, they started a tradition that has become a 2000-year burden to campers all over the world.

First of all, when you make it a “season,” you make it an obligation. Did anyone ask you, young person, or did anyone ask Your Uncle Jerry, if we WANTED to have a gift-giving season? I don’t think so. It was simply declared a season by bleeding-heart do-gooders.

“Look,” they said, “Look how the wise men and the shepherds bring gifts. Let us, like them, open the cigar box under the bed where we’ve been keeping our secret stash, and let us squander its contents on the hope that making someone else happy will also make us a better person.” I ask you.

So now we’re obligated to spend a month’s allowance on gifts for relatives and loved ones with no guarantee that we’ll ever see any payback. And that’s not the worst of it. How do we know what to get them? What if they don’t like what we bring? What if they get us something we hate? Uncle Jerry is not comfortable when he can’t control things.

One season, when Uncle Jerry was a just a young whippersnapper like yourself, he bought his mother, Grandma Jerry, a jolly good-looking two-dollar ankle bracelet. It had a “silver” chain and three little stars (one for each wise man, Uncle Jerry thought), which were made of a sturdy plastic substance and only slightly broken. (This breakage might have occurred during the three days it spent in Uncle Jerry’s pocket.)

“Oh,” said Grandma Jerry, smiling as she picked off the pocket fuzz, “you shouldn’t have.”

Uncle Jerry wasn’t quite sure what she meant, until he found the chain and stars in the trash. In the trash—not even the recycling! This later became the subject of one of Uncle Jerry’s talks with the nice doctor.

Never mind about that. Here’s the point: Even the wise men made mistakes with their gifts. I mean: gold, frankincense and myrrh? Not even a dradle?

The gold was okay—always appropriate. But myrrh is about as proper a choice for a child’s present as a can of refried beans, and I don’t mean the lard-free kind. Frankincense? Were they trying to cure bladder cancer? Did they think the holy child had asthma? Had they consulted any gift adviser, these not-so-wise men would have traded in the frankincense and myrrh for at least an iPod, if not a Wii with a light saber app. I mean, come on. It’s Christmas!

So it’s complicated. Your Uncle Jerry, after years of therapy, has learned that the best approach in gift-giving, no matter the occasion, is to go for quantity, preferably in small gifts, and never to store them in your pocket. This brings us inevitably to . . .

Your Uncle Jerry’s Gift-Giving Guidelines

· Do your homework, for once. Listen for hints, and write them down—you know you won’t remember.

· Don’t let it go till the day before, like you did last year; that was a disaster.

· Don’t worry about blowing people away with a huge gift—that’s a strategy that only dads can pull off, and even they mostly get it wrong.

· Important: Give lots of little stuff. This will almost always mean you manage at least one thing right, like the wise men did with the gold.

· One gift that's a little bit funny, every time.

· Something edible, for sure. Cigars count here. Or, for your dad, one of those 24 ounce cans of Australian beer in a festive cozy.

· Never socks. Puleeze. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.

· Yes to a classic toy, like a kaleidoscope, a top, a Jew’s harp or kazoo. (Look it up, boy; look it up.)

· Music only if you have better taste than the recipient, which, from the looks of you, I’m guessing you don’t.

· Never make the gift yourself, unless you have a college degree in it. Just trust me on this, and don't argue.

· Most of all, cor tuum das. Give your heart. A gift without feeling is a kiss without a mustache. (And vice versa, of course.)

None of which has anything to do with chapter six of Molly and Rhinehart. Your Uncle Jerry can't force a connection every time. Gimme a break.

Joy and peace.

Leakage

[Government outrage at] a massive document dump

which WikiLeaks gave to news organizations.

—CNet News

lame old news organization

Joy and peace, Camper.

Your Uncle Jerry noticed recently that some young persons are being pursued by The Authorities for having leaked certain documents to the public. The documents were actually rather embarrassing to The Authorities, so naturally they wanted to keep those documents secret.

At his age, Uncle Jerry is opposed to leakage of any kind. If these documents had dribbled out over a long period of time, they might have gone undetected—at least in crowded places. But, in fact, the leak in this case was more like a gush, so naturally it got noticed right away.

Worse, the name of the crew that had the accident is “Wikileaks.” How silly is that? Why not wear a tee-shirt that says “Oops: My Bad.” Much better to have a name that conceals your problem. One suggestion: “Information Plumbing Solutions.”

Think about it, Camper. Let’s say your posse has an hysterical fear of gay campers, or of campers who don’t believe in the Second Coming. Don’t leak this embarrassing fact by naming your group “American Red Necks” or “Sarah’s Hate Mongers for Jesus.” That’s just asking to be discovered. Instead, think of a friendly, inviting, festive name; call yourselves “The Tea Party,” or maybe “Fair and Balanced.” This way, you can leak when you need to, and maybe no one will notice.

Because Authorities don’t have a sense of humor about leakage—their own or anyone else’s. That’s why they’re called Authorities. If you need to leak, a smart camper will do it discreetly. Which brings us to:

Your Uncle Jerry’s Rules of Leakage:

1. If an old person has been using your laptop, always check the settings.

2. Cross your knees before blogging or sneezing.

3. Sit next to someone you can blame.

Here’s what happens to Molly in chapter five. She knows how to hold out.