#54 “Meet my little friend…”

I don’t get shook. I didn’t when I was seventeen, stupidly came into possession of a .38 revolver and had someone with mental health issues reach into my car while I was parked at an A&W drive-in, grab the gun, point it at my temple and cock its hammer. I didn’t get shook when I was being lowered out of helicopters as a USAF Aerospace Medic and I didn’t get shook when I gave up a cushy job in parent’s clothing business and drove from Chicago to L.A., without knowing a single soul, intent on making a living as a writer.

It’s been my experience that if you stay calm and keep your wits about you, things will turn out a lot better than if you ‘get shook’. I was able to talk the disturbed individual who had a gun at my temple off whatever mental ledge he was standing on. (I turned the gun into our local cops that afternoon.) I chose to admire the view from the helicopters hoists rather than being afraid of it. And as for coming to L.A. without a plan, well, I’ve found taking action beats the hell out of sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Now that I’d taken the leap and bought my first computer, I wasn’t about to “get shook” about it. It’s been said that the last buggy whip manufacturer manufactured the best buggy whip ever made. The IBM Selectric II was surely that. But something told me computers were going to change everything. Something told me I was fortunate to be at this particular place, at this particular time. Something told me to figure out how to use my mysterious ‘little friend’ to write Care Bears story springboards.

So I did.

#53 “There Goes My Baby”

It wasn’t going to be easy. That was why I planned to do it over the weekend.

Already I felt pangs of loss in my belly. By Sunday the die was cast. I’d spent the morning looking at electronics ads and making calls to stores. At last I settled on a Kaypro 2 computer.

My throat felt tight. I was sweating. It wasn’t just because buying a computer that at sixteen hundred dollars ($4,100 in 2022 dollars) meant I would be shelling out five hundred more than I had for my beloved IBM Selectric II typewriter.

No one who didn’t go through the transition from the IBM Selectric I to the Selectric II can begin to appreciate what writers felt for the Selectric II. Released in 1971, with a spinning ball typing element that moved along the paper and (OMG!) magical lift-off tape that spelled the death knell of Wite-Out, it was a quantum leap in typewriters.

Forget about The Jetsons. The Selectric II was going to be the technological state-of-the-art for the next hundred years!

And then my doorbell rang. And then a dad and his eighteen-year-old daughter were walking into my living room. And then the dad was counting out three hundred and fifty bucks.

Minutes later I walked out onto my balcony, looked down, saw them walking to a station wagon with my Selectric II. “There goes my baby…”

I turned, saw Jean out on his balcony. He smiled. I couldn’t bring myself to smile back.

I walked back into my living room. What had I done?

#52 The lifeline comes

Some people mistakenly believe because English isn’t Jean Chalopin’s native tongue that he’s missed something during an interchange, that something has gotten past him, that he doesn’t understand something. Trust me when I say Jean misses nothing. Nothing gets past him. He understands everything. He’s razor sharp.

He just takes his time to process things.

After he surrenders on getting his computer working this evening, we move back to the living room and he abruptly says, “You’re not learning as fast as you would like?”

“About being an assistant story editor? No, I’m not.”

Jean asks, “What is the problem?”

I tell him, “I don’t think the position is real.”

He smiles, then asks, “You have the Care Bears series bible, scripts to read?”

“The series bible only because I asked for it.”

He’s silent for a moment, then says, “Something else. You want to be writing?”

I nod.

Jean says, “Write some story springboards and have Lori get them to me. We’ll assign you an episode.”

I catch my breath, not knowing I was allowed to write episodes if I was on staff.

Seeing my reaction, Jean asks “Sandy didn’t tell you that you could write episodes?”

I shook my head.

Jean was looking to the sliding doors to his balcony. All he said was “Mmmm…”

It struck me that he wanted me to deliver the story springboards to Lori rather than Sandy. I may not have heard the whisper of the ax, but I was pretty sure I heard the guillotine’s blade ratcheting as it was hoisted skyward.