One night last week I took my wife to see my play “All Dressed Up But Going Nowhere,” which was presented as part of The Car Plays. The play concerned a husband and wife broken down in their car, awaiting AAA and reliving arguments past and present. This was probably the first time in 10 years or more that Valorie didn’t like one of my plays. “It wasn’t funny,” she said. On the way home, she added that it wasn’t funny because “I say those things!” Which elicited in my memory the response my writing professor gave me in college when I asked how his wife felt about his nakedly confessional poems:  “She knows how much I fictionalize.” (Later, they divorced.)

Last night we had my son’s (second) 18th birthday party. The time came for cake, and Valorie asked me what kind I wanted. I saw two kinds laid out:  chocolate and carrot. Here was our exchange:

Lee: I’d like chocolate.

Valorie: You’re kidding me.

Lee: What? No. Chocolate.

Valorie: I made this carrot cake from scratch.

Lee: I don’t care for carrot cake.

Valorie: I made it from scratch.

Lee: Sorry, I just don’t like carrot cake.

Valorie: I even made the icing from scratch. I can’t believe you.

Lee: Okay, I’ll have the carrot cake.

Valorie: You can have the chocolate, you know.

Lee: Uh… now I don’t know what to do. What’s the right answer?

I looked down on the plate she handed me and there was her solution:  two slivers of cake, one carrot and one chocolate. Diplomatically, I ate them both. Then she asked me, “How was the carrot cake?”

Lee: Amazing. Incredible. Never have I had cake like that!

Valorie:  I know this is going to wind up in a play some day.

She may be right. Luckily, she knows how much I fictionalize.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Playwriting, Theatre, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.