Being a writer doesn't always mean you know dem words

That's me pretending to write
but really just playing Bejeweled.

Sometimes I question my life – in particular, my skills as a human being. (I also question other people's lives, but I'll need more time and drive to blog about that.) I get paid to write and edit but, many times, I don't feel like I have a very good grasp of the concept of words and how they should actually mean something that people can comprehend.

Take last night, for example. I was about to step inside an elevator when I saw the doors closing, threatening to harm my overexposed slippered foot. Any other sane person would have chosen to address the sole person inside the elevator using one of many understandable, socially acceptable phrases, such as:

• "Going down!"

• "Hold the doors!"

• "Wait!"

• "Excuse me, kind sir, if you could so graciously take pity on my plight and reopen the doors for me, I would be quite grateful." (Of course, you would be staring at closed elevator doors when you get around to "kind" ... then you'd have to return to your time machine and warp back to London in the 1800s, where you probably belong.)

• "Tekaaa!" (Curse words optional.)

My excuse: I was tired and one blip away from being brainwaveless when it happened. So when I opened my mouth to say something, what came out was:

"Hoo hoo hooooo!!!"

... because apparently yet unbeknownst to me, I am an owl. A really huge featherless and idiotic owl. Who needed the elevator.


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Epilogue: The guy inside the elevator reopened the doors. Maybe my panicked face was enough to get the message across.