The Long Way Home Through Rejection
Rejection can be funny if you let it. When you’re my age, you have experienced more rejection than you ever thought possible in the glory years of vigor, youth, and absolute certainty. Like anyone who has ever submitted their writings (scribblings, nonsense, etc.) to a publication, I recently had an editor reject something I’d written. This rejection would have killed me 30 years ago, but his was so nice--and funnier than he knew--that it triggered my column here. He wrote, “Fun piece (especially when I read in the voice of Andy Rooney) but I”m going to pass on this. It’s a touch too local for us.” I’m guilty of being a curmudgeon, but I’ll never rise to the level of the brilliant Andy Rooney who spent 33 years ending each episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes with "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.” But the 60 Minutes reference returned a funny memory from my days publishing a weekly community newspaper. Our Arts writer was a freelancer who didn’t see me that often. One day, after yours trul