Amos, I've got a funny one about my relationship with Max Shulman. Several hundred years ago, I was in a high school creative writing class (senior elective). The teacher assigned us a short story and gave us a deadline. I had an idea for a short story: something very "serious and literary." But—I had been reading Barefoot Boy with Cheek, and just for fun and on my own time, I wrote a zany story along that line. Outrageous characters and really dippy humor. I was having so much fun with it, that the deadline crept up on me and suddenly there it was and I hadn't done anything on the serious story I had in mind. So to save my butt, I turned in the Shulman-esque story, fully expecting to get maybe a C-minus and a comment from the teacher, like "Now REALLY, Don!"

She loved it! Normally a somewhat stereotypically stiff high school English teacher, she howled with laughter when she read it—and sent it in to the Atlantic Monthly high school short story contest. It didn't win, but it did get an honorable mention in the humor department, with some very nice, encouraging comments from the judges.

I don't have the story anymore, because the handwritten copy that I turned in (which she sent to AM) was the only one I had. But it did teach me a valuable lesson:   don't knock yourself out trying to be "serious and literary." Just write what you enjoy writing.
###. . . and Don Maquis—

Who among the greatest poets of history can match such marvels as those to be found in works like "archy interviews a pharaoh":

little archy
forty centuries of thirst
look down upon you
oh by isis
and by osiris
says the princely raisin
and by pish and phthush and phthah
by the sacred book perembru
and all the gods
that rule from the upper
cataract of the nile
to the delta of the duodenum
i am dry
i am as dry
as the next morning mouth
of the dissipated desert
as dry as the hoofs
of the camels of timbuctoo
little fussy face
i am as dry as the heart
of a sand storm
at high noon in hell
i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
and gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer

(A moment of silence . . . I am in awe)

Don Firth