Saturday’s Lemony Snicket event at Wunderlab 826michigan was, by Mr. Snicket’s own peculiar standards, a resounding success; children cried, fortunes fell, parents panicked, and a few cars were ticketed and towed. (Please, friends! Read the signs in the lot!)
What I mean to say is that a kind of melancholy blanketed our writing lab like a musty afghan.
At one point, an elderly woman stopped by to ask for directions to the nearest currency exchange. None of us knew the answer, and as we sent her out into the evening, I couldn’t help but think that she was more lost than ever. When I say that, I’m using flowery language to note that her life seemed to be a bit of a mess. I mean, why would this woman need $12,000 in Bolivian pesos?? And on a Saturday night, no less! She’s in southeastern Michigan! We use the dollar here! (And occasionally those Canadian “loonies” that find their way across the border.) I still think about her. Partially because of the discontent that she inspired, but mostly because she borrowed my pen to write down the directions we gave her (we made something up) and I’m pretty sure that she kept it. We’re on a budget here, lady!
We here at 826michigan offer our sincerest thanks to Mr. Snicket for taking time from his busy schedule to [order one of his subordinates to] spend the afternoon with our students. His unique worldview reminds us that there is power in dour, that mope provides scope, and that rhyming in lieu of conjuring actual descriptions of an event is just plain lazy writing. (I apologize to you all.) Children are wonderfully—beautifully—optimistic by nature, so it falls to men of conscience such as Mr. Snicket to point out that while it is often darkest before the dawn, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the morning won’t bring an overcast day that drizzles freezing rain onto the backs of feral cats and squirrels, matting their fur and something something something something…