After thirty years of friendship/marriage, my artist husband reveals...

(on this very morn) that a story he wrote in high school showed up one day in a publication his teacher had assembled.

"Excuse me, what?" I said. Across from him. At the kitchen table. Because this man I love is not, shall we mildly say, into the literary arts. He is not inclined to read much of anything (excepting Food and Wine and pottery books and books on the making of things). Certainly not inclined to read his wife.

"Yeah, yeah, well."

"What kind of story?"

"Sort of a horror story. It had no real beginning and no real end."

"Didn't you feel encouraged? As a writer? A published writer?"

"It was a high school publication. And no. Why should being published encourage me? Writing didn't interest me."

"And you never thought I'd find this intriguing?"

"Why would you find this intriguing? It was just a story that I wrote."