by Michael Kun
Or, “Who cares if you exceed or greatly exceed expectations?”
Or, “Your boss didn’t say hello because his father died last night. It was unexpected.”
MAKE SURE QUESTIONS ABOUT CRIMINAL HISTORIES COMPLY WITH THE LAW. I need a drink. Do you need a drink?
You know, I rarely drank before I became a lawyer. Maybe a beer at a ball game or a gin-and-tonic at a summer wedding. Now, I drink every day. Every morning before I drive to work, I take a bottle of Diet Coke and pour half down the sink, then refill it with rum. You can do the same thing with other sodas. Then I keep that bottle of Diet Coke on my desk all day, watching the brown tide go down in the bottle by lunchtime. Then, high tide again! I refill it in the restroom.
Why did I think I could help people?
Why don’t people ever help me?
CHECK TO MAKE SURE THAT YOUR APPLICATION INCLUDES APPROPRIATE AT-WILL LANGUAGE. I’ll bet you had dreams when you were growing up. I’ll bet you wanted to be a dancer or a football player or an astronaut. I’ll bet you didn’t want to be a human resources person. I’ll bet you didn’t dream of spending your days like you do.
I had dreams too. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a world-famous novelist, entertaining people with my wonderful, thought-provoking stories. Here’s the catch. I actually had a couple novels published. Each one I thought was going to be phenomenally successful. Each one was going to be a best seller and let me quit practicing law. Each one failed. Now, I sit in my office and look at the framed covers from each of my failed novels, and I drink my doctored Diet Coke, and I wonder whether it is better to have a dream die early, while you are young, or to have it die a long, slow, tortured death.
Correct answer: not a long, slow, tortured death.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PROPER AUTHORIZATION TO CONDUCT A BACKGROUND CHECK. Do you have a husband or a wife? Do you have children?
I met a smart, funny woman at the newsstand and married her a year later. When I come home at night, I’m tired and bitter, just like my father used to be, as the world kept beating upon him, disappointment after disappointment after disappointment, like a drumbeat to an old song. I come home tired and bitter and a little drunk from my Diet Coke and I wonder, What on earth does this wonderful woman see in me? Most days, I’m surprised to see her still there. She married a writer. She got stuck with a lawyer.
BE CAREFUL ABOUT NOTATIONS YOU MAKE ON A JOB APPLICATION. My father died last year, died in the middle of the night. It was unexpected. I got a call from my mother at three in the morning, the hour when no good news ever passes through the air. She was hysterical. All she could say was, “Your da’s dead. Your da’s dead.” At first, I thought she was saying that my dog was dead, but the dog was fine. It was my dad who had died.
“I need to ask you something,” I said to my mother. “Did Dad know I loved him?”
And she said, “I don’t know.”
Try living with that for a while. Really. Give it a try.
Before I got a flight home, I stopped in the office to pick up a few of my things. Later, one of the young attorneys complained that I had not said hello to her in the hallway that morning. I walked right past her, she complained, and I didn’t even have the common decency to say hello. When our law firm’s human resources person explained that my father had died, the young attorney did not back down. She remained adamant that I still should have said hello to her. “That doesn’t mean that Mike can’t show me the respect of saying hello,” she said. Or so I have been told. She never said a word to me about my father’s death. She never sent a note.
People are terrible.
CHECK TO MAKE SURE YOUR APPLICATION COMPLIES WITH STATE LAWS. My law firm asks me to write these articles because they know I’m a writer. Do they really think it was my dream to write articles about job applications for Human Resources Today? Do they?
We don’t write these articles just for the heck of it. But you knew that. The idea is that you are going to read this article and want to retain our law firm to provide some services or other. You’re going to say, “Boy, that guy really knows his stuff! I’d like to pay him a lot of money to help out our company!”
If you feel like it, go ahead and give me a call. We can go out for dinner or drinks, and we can talk about our spouses or our kids. We can talk about our fathers or about sports or movies. We can talk about our dreams. We can talk about whatever you’d like. I don’t care if you want to retain our law firm or not. I really don’t. I just want someone to talk to.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Okay, enough is enough.
That wasn’t a short story at all. That was an article Michael wrote for some human resources magazine. The magazine refused to publish it. Who could blame them?
You see, Michael is a labor and employment attorney. He represents management and gives advice to companies and their human resources personnel about how to avoid lawsuits. And occasionally, he writes articles about it.
Practicing law is a dreary, soul-sapping profession. It may pay well, but little by little, it leeches the life out of you. That’s what it’s doing to Michael, leeching the life out of him. We’ve watched it happen to him.
Writing novels was going to be Michael’s path to quitting the practice of law. He was going to sell millions of books. Then he was going to live on the beach with his wife and eat cake every day.
But, despite wonderful reviews, his novels haven’t sold at all.
Admit it, you’ve never even heard of him.
So he’s stuck. He’s stuck practicing law. Until his sorry life comes to an end.
Which it will.
A prediction: It will be a heart attack in his office.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The author is a self-pitying fool.
You read that last “Publisher’s Note,” filled with self-pity. It never ends with this guy.
“Why wasn’t The Locklear Letters a hit? That book should have been HUGE! That book was FUNNY!”
“And how about You Poor Monster? Why wasn’t that a best seller? Why? Why?”
“Blah-blah-blah.”
“Bloobedy-bloobedy-bloo.”
Shut up.
Please.
We’ve had it with your whining and your weeping and your tooth-gnashing, Mike.
And it’s “Mike,” not “Michael,” like you make us print on all of your books. No one calls you “Michael.” No one. We know you think it makes you sound more like a “serious writer,” but please cut it out. You’re just Mike, some fat-faced, troubled whiner from some crappy little town in New Jersey, okay?
That’s another thing.
Stop saying you’re from New York.
You’re from New Jersey. New Fucking Jersey.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The publisher wishes to apologize to the author for the inappropriate tone of the last note.
Even if the author wrote it himself.
Please accept our apology, Michael.
Thank you for a wonderful short story collection, Michael.
Thank you for allowing us to publish you, Michael.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
You have just completed the short story collection The Handwriting Patient.
I mean, Corrections to My Memoirs. We changed the title, remember?
Perhaps you skipped a story or two, but, no matter, here you are, at the end.
Here’s proof:
THE END
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Having considered the matter further, we think the author included these “Publisher’s Notes” because of his debilitating self-loathing. We think these notes are his way of letting the readers know that there’s nothing critical anyone can say about him or his writing that he hasn’t said or thought before. But, at the same time that they reveal his self-loathing, the very act of writing notes about himself would seem to be both solipsistic and self-flattering. There’s probably a psychological term to describe this phenomenon. If there isn’t, there should be.
Th
e author would probably suggest that it be named after him. “Kun’s Syndrome,” perhaps. But he’d probably want it misspelled “Kuhn’s Syndrome” or “Kune’s Syndrome” just so he could gripe.
“They misspelled my name in my disease,” he’d cry. “They didn’t misspell Lou Gehrig’s name in Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
Of course, people have actually heard of Lou Gehrig.
No one’s heard of Michael Kun.
Michael Kun, the self-pitying fool.
Who just wrote that last sentence.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Please stop, Mike.
The book is already done.
We already said, “THE END.”
A WORD ABOUT “A WORD ABOUT THE TYPEFACE”
Remember how we said earlier that the author designed the typeface?
Well, the author didn’t design the typeface. The author wouldn’t even know how to start designing a typeface.
The typeface used in this book is actually one known as Blah-Blah-Blabbedly-Blah.
It was designed by Bloobedly-Bloobedy-Bloo.
Don’t pretend you care about the typeface, because you don’t, and neither do we.
A WORD ABOUT THE INK
And no special ink was used to print this book, either. We just used regular, run-of-the-mill ink. In fact, we used the really cheap stuff from Canada. If you lick your fingertips and press them against these words, the ink will probably come off on you. Wipe your fingers on your new white shirt, and you’ll ruin it.
A WORD ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S PHOTO
We didn’t use a special process to print the author’s jacket photo, either. Who cares if it fades or becomes discolored? It’s just a photo of a silly-looking, puffy-cheeked guy who could not be more anonymous if he tried. One day, he will die. The next, he will be forgotten. He will leave no traces of his existence behind, except a couple copies of some books no one ever bothered to read. The spines on the books will be unbroken, the covers blanketed with dust.
He does look a bit like his father in the author’s photo, though, especially the nose and lips.
Come to think of it, the author hasn’t been the same since his father died last year, only weeks before the author’s wedding. His father died while reading a draft of this short story collection, back when it was still called The Handwriting Patient. It was on his nightstand beneath his eyeglasses and a bottle of antacids, beside the author’s wedding invitation. The author’s father never told the author what he thought of this short story collection. He had never met the author’s bride.
Oh, crap. Oh, crap.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Please go back and reread this collection.
It’s a good book, don’t you think?
You’d be proud if your son wrote it, right?
Right?
Go to the author’s house and meet his wife.
She’s pleasant and smart and as pretty as a picture, isn’t she?
You’d be happy if your son married a woman like that, right?
Right?
You’d be happy?
You wouldn’t care if no one had read his books?
You’d still be happy?
