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Write Your Stuff!

Anita G. Gorman

    Herbert had nothing to do that afternoon in June. The garden he had planted was doing what it was supposed to do. His job as an accountant was just fine. He lived a placid, rather humdrum life in the pleasant town of Ashleyville, Ohio. That was the problem: it was all rather ordinary. He decided he needed some zip in his life, something exciting. He turned on his computer.
    Herbert was not a daily user of social media, but he did have an account with Write Your Stuff (writeyourstuff.com) which encouraged its members to tell all about their lives. Write Your Stuff, Herbert knew, would publish whatever was sent to them. Herbert decided to get creative.
    He began typing, and before long he had quite a story: a story about multiple lovers, communications with aliens, engaging in espionage, and earning millions of dollars in secret missions on behalf of foreign powers.
    Herbert had a great time indulging in fantasy and creating for himself a persona diametrically opposed to his real self. Not that he was really sure what his real self was. Deep down, he thought his real self was a mixture of pirate, adventurer, inventor, lover, entrepreneur, and just a decent, law-abiding nice guy.
    Having finished his journey into the improbable and the impossible, Herbert posted his story on the Write Your Stuff website. He used his own name, Herbert Klinkhorn. He didn’t think anyone would even read his post.
    He was wrong. Within minutes, it seemed, he was getting reactions on his page. People in Ashleyville and beyond who knew him made comments:
    “Herb, is that you? Did all this really happen?
    “Mr. Klinkhorn, I am amazed at all that you have done in your life. What a terrific story!”
    An old girlfriend contacted him. “Herb, it’s me, Mabel. This is not the Herb I used to know. You never even made a pass at me during the two months that we dated. Wow!”
    “I’m writing from Australia. Come on down and show us a thing or two, mate!”
    WASY Radio called him the next day. “Hello, Mr. Klinkhorn, this is Rod Ranger at WASY Radio. We’re excited about the post you put on the Write Your Stuff website. We had no idea there was such an exciting man living in little old Ashleyville, Ohio. Mr. Klinkhorn, are you there?”
    “Yes. Yes, I’m here. But I don’t want you or anyone else to get the wrong idea.”
    “Wrong idea? What do you mean?”
    “Well, do you believe everything I wrote, even the stuff about my encounter with aliens?”
    “Of course. It all has the ring of truth. Listen, there have been lots of encounters with aliens around the world, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t happen to someone right here in Ashleyville. I mean, after all, don’t they say that Ohio is the heart of it all?”
    “I guess so. Yes, I’ve heard that. Must be true.” Herbert was beginning to panic. What had he gotten himself into?
    “So can you come on my program tomorrow morning? It starts at 6 a.m., so you’d have plenty of time to get to work.”
    “I’m not usually awake at that time. What’s the name of the show? Pardon me for not knowing.”
    “No problem. I get that all the time from late risers in our community. Some of those people listen later in the day via podcast. The show is Aurora in Ashleyville. Kind of a dumb name, if you ask me. Aurora, from the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn. Every now and then I have to remind my listeners about who Aurora was. Don’t they teach mythology in school anymore? Maybe it violates the separation of church and state.” Rod Ranger gave a hearty laugh. “So, what do you say, Mr. Klinkhorn?”
    Herbert didn’t answer.
    “Mr. Klinkhorn, are you there?”
    “Yes. Yes, sir. I’m thinking. Well, I suppose it would be all right.”
    And so Herbert Klinkhorn was scheduled to appear on WASY the very next morning.
    He couldn’t sleep that night and when he did sleep he dreamed about saying such goofy things on the radio that an ambulance showed up at the radio station to take him away to the Ashleyville Mental Hospital. He woke up in a sweat, happy to remember that Ashleyville had no mental hospital, though he was pretty sure that the town’s general hospital had a psychiatric wing somewhere. Probably in the basement. He shuddered, looked at the clock, and realized that the alarm would soon go off at 5 a.m. It was time to get ready for the radio show.
    Herbert was wearing his navy blue suit and a bowtie when he arrived at WASY. The receptionist seemed to look at him in awe as she buzzed Rod Ranger. Before long he was in the studio wearing earphones and looking across the table at his host.
    “Good morning, Ashleyvillians! It’s another great day to be in our lovely town. We have with us today Mr. Herbert Klinkhorn, who became famous this week by his posting on Write Your Stuff. What a story he had to tell. So tell me, Herb—may I call you Herb—what made you decide to spill the beans, so to speak, after all these years?”
    In a flash, in a twinkling of an eye, Herb thought about coming clean and then rejected that idea. He had to go through with it.
    “Well, I’m getting on in years. I don’t have anything to lose by revealing my checkered past. So I decided to tell all on the Write Your Stuff site. They don’t censor anything, I am told, so I wrote about everything.”
    “That blonde bombshell you met in Singapore must have been something.”
    “Ah, she was, she was, but even more exciting was the redhead, Annette. Met her as I walked down the
Champs-Élysèes. In Paris, of course. Annette. What a woman!”
    “Tell us something about the aliens you said you talked to.”
    Herbert cleared his throat. What to do? “Actually, Rod—may I call you Rod—I am not at liberty to talk about that. Top secret. The people in the CIA know all about it, and they’ve ordered me to be quiet about aliens, at least for the time being.”
    “Oh, I see. Well, Herb, the phones are ringing. Time to take some calls, if that’s all right with you.”
    “Calls? Oh sure. Fine.” But he worried that a caller might ask a question he couldn’t answer.
    “Here’s our first caller, from Paisleyville, Ohio, not that far from here. Good morning!”
    Herbert Klinkhorn heard a familiar voice. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Klinkhorn.”
    “He’s right here. Go ahead, Herb.”
    Herbert answered in a high, squeaky voice. “Hello?”
    The woman on the other end spoke with authority. “Herbert, this is your mother. You have some nerve telling the world that you were a spy, a pirate, a friend of aliens, and a lover of some French woman you met in Paris. You know darn well you’ve never even had a passport!”
    It was, he decided, time for the bluff of a lifetime. “Au contraire, maman,” he began and then began talking French quite rapidly. He was not sure from what part of his brain the French language had emerged, but he was grateful to Mlle. DuPont, his first French teacher at Paisleyville High School.
    The emcee was quick to respond. “Time for a commercial, folks, for Ashleyville’s newest restaurant, La Maison Française. I imagine Monsieur Klinkhorn will be going there soon.”
    Not soon enough, thought Herbert. Then, during the commercial break Rod Ranger shook his hand.

    “Wow! That was some ending. You must come back real soon!”
    Herbert muttered something in French and walked out into the June sunlight. It was a new day, and he had acquired confidence in his ability to conquer the world. He walked with a spring in his step in the general direction of his accounting firm.

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