From mid-April, 2021:
Hey, pack mates. Here’s the question:
Would you rather inhale or exhale? It’s kind of a dumb one, don’t
you think? I mean, it’s not like you have a choice to do one or the other.
But my son asked the question a while back, and I’ve trained
myself over the last twenty-two years to give all his questions careful
consideration and to answer them the best I can. People think you’re a good
parent when you do stuff like that.
It wasn’t hard to answer, either. “Exhale,” I said. “It’s easier.”
“Hah!” he gloated. “I knew it!”
It seems some psychological research suggests the answer to that
question says a lot about your attitude toward life. “I like to inhale,” he
elaborated. “All that fresh air coming in with a deep breath, the energy, the
life. It’s wonderful.”
Seth has an enthusiasm for life that can be infectious…if you’re
into that sort of thing. He did NOT get it from me.
I don’t think he got it from his Mom, either. Which supports the
hypothesis I put forth long ago that he is a changeling, switched at birth by
some demon who considered my spawn to be of greater use to the pantheon of Hell
than the benign creature it left behind.
I find inhaling to be a necessary evil. The air is mostly
nitrogen, anyway, along with any number of carcinogens expelled into it by a
plethora of industries.
I don’t know about you, but I have no use for those. All I want is
the oxygen, of which there is less and less every year. Meaning I have to take
even more breaths to get what I need.
It’s hard. Life is hard. Exhaling is a relief.
I guess it’s obvious what that says about me. I’m definitely a
glass-half-empty kind of guy. And I’ve since noticed that the characters in my
books are always sighing and “blowing long breaths through pursed lips,” a
phrase for which I was berated for overusing in a review of The Cargo.
The reviewer still gave me five stars, but he was right. And now
I’ve had to come up with at least five different ways of saying the same thing,
because - I promise you this - my characters are not going to stop exhaling.
They need to be able to relieve the stress I keep putting them
through - and take a break from all that stuff they have to inhale.
So, what do you think? Would you rather inhale or exhale? Shoot me
an email if you have an opinion. I’ll reprint some of the better responses in a
future update.
This
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