Jaimie and the Not-So-Random Happy Outburst

Jaimie and the Not-So-Random Happy Outburst
By: Jaimie Ann Gross

Once upon a time about a week ago, there was this girl named Jaimie and she was at the technical college on a very boring Wednesday afternoon thinking about how much she liked the fact that the refridgerator was right next to the computer at home and how much she wished she could be at home, digging inside that fridgerator for some not-so-nutritious munchies to eat when she finally said, "Aw crap it, I'm so bored right now that I'm starving, but I'm far too lazy to do anything about it. It's a shame that I am not at home right now. I could have just wheeled the awesome new chair mom and I got for Christmas to the fridgerator and scarfed down some good food."

So instead the very bored young eighteen year old who in fact looked much like a twelve year old decided to go get a snack from the over-priced vending machines in the Commons area of the technical college. She paid $1.25 for 20 fluid ounces of Mountain Dew and then moved over to the food vending machine and paid $0.75 for an understuffed and expensive bag of Fritos before shoving the snacks down her throat and choking them down with a pricy dose of soda. After a quick trip to the bathroom to clean Frito grease from her nose--the messy eater she was--she returned to the library computer she had been previously at to continue working only to find some dodgy fellow in a green striped shirt had taken her seat.

No longer one to make a big deal out of such things as minor as "seat stealing"--it wasn't really her seat in the first place, it belonged to the school and she had not exactly left anything open when she went to get her snacks--she decided to settle down instead at another computer and while away the rest of her self-instated half hour lunch break by browsing the internet. She opened Internet Explorer with a smile and typed "www.google.com" in the web browser. After pressing the delightful button on the keyboard marked "enter" she found the google search engine homepage came up rather quickly and typed in the search engine "prose poetry publishing companies" and pushed "enter" yet again.

She was rather annoyed to find that most of what came up was a load of cock and bull about sex machines and porn web sites and recalled what her teacher Mrs. Krueger had taught her to make a search engine more useful and employed the technique. Typing in "prose poetry publishing companies -sex" and pushing "enter" again helped her sift through and get rid of approximately 300,000 web pages and web sites that were completely and utterly useless to her particular search and she found then that a broad smile crossed her face as she clicked on what looked to be a promising site for publishers of prose poetry.

Jaimie was, unfortunately, thoroughly disappointed yet again as the web site was either down for good or for maintenence, though she did not give up. After five minutes of searching, she was surprised to find a web site entitled "www.writing.com" and she decided to take a peek at it to see how it fared against the things she had recently seen. It passed the test and she was rather happy to find that there were indeed useful things there such as tips to self-publishing and articles about the copyright laws.

Upon further investigation, our heroine of this particular fable found she couldn't keep the excited giggle from bubbling up in her throat and she knew that the old man who sat nearby was sending her nervous glances but that did not in the least make her calm down. It, in fact, made her happier for some distinctly odd reason and she was forced to shove her fist into her mouth as far as she could, which was quite far indeed taking into consideration her extremely large mouth, but nothing would stop those helpless giggles from bursting from her and she had to leave the library until she could calm herself.

When she had finally settled down, Jaimie walked back into the library and sat back at the computer to read more of the seemingly pointless-to-non-writers material, she came upon a small advertisement that read "famouspoets.com submit your work free for the chance to win $50,000 dollars". Deciding that looking couldn't kill her, she clicked on it and found that she indeed could enter, though she was conflicted between entering or not. She was, reasonably, untrustworthy. She had had one of her poems stolen from her before and the student who stole it had submitted it to the teacher claiming it was his own. The mess had been sorted out rather unfairly in her favor, but she knew she could risk one poem.

She printed off the form so that she would remember to look it up when she got home and as she was walking bemusedly along towards that godforsaken math class that she hated so very much she thought about which poem she could submit. Granted, she did not get very much math done that fateful afternoon, but she did decide which poem she wanted to enter.

On the way home that evening with Drew, our heroine's father, she asked him, "What will you say when I get published." She did not say IF because she knew that without a doubt she would be famous someday. The question was WHEN she would be famous.

Her father was silent for a moment before he said in a rather joking tone, "Where's my cut?" With a laugh, she went to staring out the window again, thinking about how much she could do with fifty thousand dollars. She could buy all the Inuyasha she could stand with that money, which was saying quite a lot because she could most certainly stand a great deal of Inuyasha without getting tired of it. She could swear that if she were an Anime character at that moment, her eyes would be big and heart-shaped. Her father interrupted her thoughts to say in a slightly more serious tone, "Naw, I wouldn't say that. But I don't know what I would say. I suppose ask me when you get published."

With a nod, she turned back to her inner thoughts, trying to figure out in her mind where she put the runaway poem. When they got home, she immediately went to search for it and was found to be rather disappointed because she couldn't remember where she put the damnable portfolio that housed the poem she considered to be her best. She was discouraged ever so slightly when she could not find the poem and just when she had given up looking, her eyes spotted a purple folder lying rather askew on a shelf on which she could have sworn she had looked several times.

She was happy to have her portfolio once more and she skimmed the contents, her eyes landing on her poem. She went to enter herself into the contest and afterward she found she could not keep from talking about how proud she was to have entered in her first contest. She boldly pressed that she was going to be famous again and again until she was rather disheartenly told to--in a few blunt words--shut up or be shut up.

Her week after that went accordingly. She did not go to school on Thursdays or Fridays because she did not have class those days, and there was no school for anyone on Saturdays or Sundays, so she gladly took the opportunity to sleep in as long as she dared. Debbie, our heroine's step-mother, was ill that week, so had stayed home on Thursday to catch up on some helpful "z"'s. On Saturday, Jaimie was actually--for once--awake as early as ten in the morning, though she much prefered to lay in her bed like a useless lump of flesh. When she was lying warm under fourteen winter blankets, she could hardly be blamed for not wanting to get up.

Finally, at noon, she got up and was proud to hear Debbie say, "I pulled a Jaimie and slept til noon!"

On Tuesday, though, would be the day to mark history in Jaimie's life. Usually the only thing she got in snail mail was doctor bills from a cold-shouldered man named Doctor Noonan but this time was different. Debbie and Drew had gotten the mail that cold evening and when they called her outside (though admittedly she was annoyed because she hated being outside for any reason whatsoever) Debbie said, "Before you start screaming, Miss I-never-get-mail..."

Jaimie saw the mail sitting on the porch railing and began skimming the names on the letters, though there was nothing there for her. Debbie seemed to grin and so did Drew as Debbie spoke again. "It's in my hand." The older woman remarked wryly.

Jaimie took the offered letter and whooped for joy when she saw the words Famous Poets Society labeled across the front of the envelope. She bounced around, stomping on snow, excited enough to kick the snow a bit. She wasn't even depressed when she found she missed the snow by a mile, but instead continued jumping and hopping and shrieking, "I'm a winner, what did I tell you, I'm a winner! Winner, winner, winner!"

Debbie said, "Don't you think it might be useful if you opened it?"

"That's a good idea!" Our heroine then raced into the house for the letter opener, because she hated to open an envelope any other way. When she started reading it, she was so excited that her breathing became more and more shallow and she had to stop several times and re-read several sentences before she finally understood that her poem, the poem that she had submitted, was going to be entered in the semi-finals of the contest.

She tried to tell Debbie this in one breath, but just couldn't quite make it work. She had to stop several more breaths just to stay conscious and she could quite understand how people fainted out of sheer happiness. She was trying not to be one of the faintable numbers. She hopped about, shrieked some more, tried to keep from fainting, and sucked in her breath sharply as she kept the tears back.

Needless to say, she was very happy.

With a happy ring to her voice, she began to call up her sisters and her birth mother to tell them the good news. It was rare for her to call her birth mother, but she figured the occasion was a special one indeed; she just made sure to call her birth mother LAST. After that, she settled down to type up the entire ordeal, happy as ever, in an email to her big brother.

The truth was, she was awesome, and would most certainly be famous! Our heroine was quickly going from commoner to royalty, just like she promised. The moral of the story was that if you get too happy, you just might faint.