Shawn L. Bird

I have just had a shocking epiphany. Once upon a time when I was in elementary school, I had a wild crush on a scrawny, goofy nerd. When I looked back at this memory while I was writing Grace Awakening, I had a sense of moral superiority over my affection for the kid. He had his talents, sure, and a sense of humour to boot, but he wasn’t building his biceps in the gym after school and he wasn’t going to be signed in any model search. In fact, I built the first meeting of Ben and Grace on the foundations of this premise: that her first sight of him has no impact because he’s “just another band dweeb to pass in the halls,” until he starts playing his music and she loses herself in the inexplicable connection as their destinies entwined.  It was important that there was no attraction before that moment.

Well, now I have to re-think everything.

I just saw a photo of said nerdy guy, at just the age when I first saw him.  He’s cute.  Nerdly cute, of course, but most definitely cute. What the heck?! I honestly don’t remember such cuteness!   But there it is.  Plainly, that year at least, if not in the following ones, there was decided cuteness.  It’s kind of a Justin Bieber in Drew Carey’s glasses thing.  Strange.  Cute.

I am agog. I can see that before such cuteness I would obviously have been helpless to resist.  Apparently I am far more shallow than I thought. How humbling.  I may have to re-think that entire first chapter of Grace Awakening.

Or maybe not.  Grace and Ben have their own history that doesn’t have anything to do with my history.  But still.  I built that chapter on a ‘germ of truth’ that turns out to be a ‘germ of untruth.’  It’s quite discombobulated me.  When the germ of truth that became the story is wrong, all that’s left is story.  Grace is once again claiming her own reality and leaving me baffled.

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PS.  I wish I could show you the photo, but that would probably get me into trouble.  So you’re  just going to have to trust me on this one:  cute.

Well.  I might be able to show you the photo.  Email me if you remember the kid in question.  I might share.