179 My Big Fat Book of Life: an Autobiography — Part 1

I reach up to the dusty bookshelf in my museum, its dedicated library that has been opened for me, for a special exhibition--"by invitation only."

My Big Fat Book of Life--by me. I don't remember writing it.

A much larger tome than I expected, I place it on the library table with difficulty. I open it to the Table of Contents. The section, "Youth," is much thicker than all of the others. I know why:

Youth reads neither between the lines nor footnotes, and the content swells with both--some in bold font, some written in invisible ink.

There had been more to the truncated plot-line I imagined I was living.

Now that I'm old, I can appreciate the content. There's an index; I can page back to certain parts to re-read. "Arrears" is when things occur to us.

Autobiographies haunt us all, in arrears.

I never read this, since I lived it. Yet, as written, I lived it differently than how what I'd thought. I turn the pages, each year passed. In my youth, I would never have even opened it; I'd just live and live some more. I was never privy to the spoilers within its pages; instead, the spoilers came after, now so tidily explained and catalogued. And the diction, syntax, and exposition make them so obvious now.

I'm intrigued: all the footnotes explaining where I went wrong. Pages often turn and chapters often segue in twists and turns that read so logically now to an old autobiograhpher.

The index is twice as long as the story. A lot of my actions and decisions, not self-explanatory, require in-depth explanations and relevant tangential insights. My God! What was I thinking?

Some writing is choppy with very little continuity. I jump around from desire to desire, thrill to thrill, and even from volition to regret. As pages turn, the regrets begin to dominate most of the footnotes now.

Yea, yea, yea...I get it. Spare me the lecture, so written, in arrears.

Impatient, I skip to the final chapter to see how it all ends, as I've done with many other books before.

Alas, someone has ripped out all of those pages. Who's in charge here?

__________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

For Thursday, June 27, Day 179 of the Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Title-accompaniment photo was AI-generated but final chapters were not!

---

ABOUT THIS STORY

This is a 2-parter, but in keeping with the new story-a-day motif, each can stand alone. Skipping ahead to see how a book ends is cheating, but we've all done it. Yet, we must be extremely careful with our autobiographies! Who will make sure we don't read what we weren't meant to read until it was right? Who is our librarian?

On to See Part 2 My Big Fat Book of Life: an Autobiography — Part 2

---

There are currently three surviving Vocal writers still participating in the insane 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge and approaching only its halfway mark:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

Read them. Support them. Pray for them. Read ahead with them--just be careful which book you choose!"