The Other Me
‘Weird’ iii. My oldest brother John bought a pool table when I was eight. It became the one arena where I could beat my brothers. When you have brothers, you’re competitive about everything: sports, board games, who gets to lie on the couch. When you have three older brothers, you’re also at a physical and intellectual disadvantage in any contest that doesn’t rely on chance. Originally, I played pool for fun. But I was good at it. Once, my brother had a friend over and I beat him game after game. On one occasion, he was ecstatic because he snookered me, but I fluked my way out of it. It…
The Other Me
‘The Other Me’ ii. A manuscript I entered in a competition won one of eight places to fly down to Queensland, and be involved in a Program run by a big publisher that included writing workshops, feedback on the manuscript, and one on one time with the publisher, as well as the invitation to resubmit the manuscript after it had been revised. The moment I learned I’d won, my closest and oldest friend, my anxiety, exploded in my face. Dr Warren had posed I might need surgery to remove the disc in my troublesome neck. As usual, my anxiety played out the worst case scenarios: the disc was just holding…