Free Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions by Linda M Au Page B

anyone say or do
anything incriminating on these shows without the wrong person
conveniently standing in an adjacent doorway listening? And
misunderstanding?
    • Why does everyone hang
out at the local hospital as if it were a Starbucks? Isn’t that
just a little creepy?
    • Who would keep living in
a town where there are routine kidnappings and murders by long-lost
siblings or people with multiple personalities and/or adult- onset
amnesia?
    • Why do the middle-aged
people never age, but infants can go from diapers in one episode to
college in another episode a month later?
    • Why is a character being
pregnant a huge deal—fraught with DNA and paternity tests and all
manner of prenatal complications, getting major attention every
second of that character’s existence—but as soon as the baby is
born, the mother is never seen taking care of it or changing a
diaper or being stuck at home with a colicky baby, unable to get
enough sleep or to even shower regularly or eat hot food again? You
know, like the rest of us. . . .
    • And why does that same
baby conveniently disappear from view but yet it shows up again two
years later as a pregnant teen in search of her own real
father? Who does the math on these
shows?
    • Why does nobody work at a
McDonald’s? Or eat at one? Everyone eats at the one restaurant in
town, which is owned by one of the characters, who never has to
actually work there.
    • Why do these people have
way too much time to sit in cafés (and hospitals) talking about
other people’s problems? And why do their schedules conveniently
dovetail with one another just in time to sit around discussing
these problems at the right moments? Doesn’t anybody have a job
with regular hours—except for doctors, who apparently live at the
hospital? Seriously, though, can you blame them? That’s where the
whole town is most of the time anyway.
    • Why do we never see
anyone cleaning the toilet or throwing out moldy food from the
fridge? Or taking out the trash? Or doing the laundry—unless it’s a
suspicious woman who conveniently finds something incriminating in
her husband’s pants pockets while checking them before doing the
laundry?
    • Why does everyone in town
go to the same church, which is incredibly nondenominational to the
point of absurdity and has about three pews? Why is it no bigger
than the hospital chapel, where a character can go to pray and
change the plot so that whatever he or she prays for actually
happens—usually within minutes of praying for it? Does anyone in
real life actually know where their hospital chapel is?
    • Why do none of the other
characters notice when a character leaves the show and comes back
later played by a different actor? Don’t any of them have the urge
to yell, “Good grief, Daphne, what happened to your face? And,
didn’t you used to be a redhead? And a man?”
     
    As I mull over these gross
writing faux pas —with an odd mixture of revulsion and envy—I’m led to believe
that my own novels don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of
publication. And, my daydreams of one day being a successful
television script writer are forever dashed, because there’s no way
I could come up with plot garbage that’s simultaneously that
ridiculous and sublime. I’d have to drink myself into a stupor or
eat a few dozen Krispy Kremes and send myself into a diabetic coma
in order to maintain the heightened sense of awareness necessary to
write episodes to rival what I’ve seen on these shows over the
years.
    But, at least I’ve got something to shoot for as a
writer. It’s good to have goals.
     

Hell on Wheels
     
    It’s a story I’ve told my
kids a hundred times. “Tell us about the skating rink when you were
a kid, Mom!” They’re all grown now, but they still love hearing
about that skating rink. What makes the story so much fun is that
you just can’t make up stuff like this. I swear it’s all true, but
I’m not sure the kids believe me in their