Like a lot of pretentious writers, I keep a notebook in my purse for jotting down story ideas and snippets of dialogue and untraceable garbage like this: “Stuck behind the Frito Lay truck/Christmas stocking.” I’m not exactly proud of this notebook, and I’m careful not to write anything down where people can freely wonder what I’m writing. However, a couple weeks ago I went to a family reunion in Vermont and I made the mistake of pulling out my notebook and quoting from it. It was late at night and I was many beers into it and I was with my cousins, who you would expect would comprise a warm crowd. But no. The second I started flipping through the pages, saying “Wait guys – I have something in here that relates to that extemporaneous joke you were just telling,” I did not hear the end of it. When people are riffing and hanging out, do not pull out your notebook, looking for material. It is like getting caught cheating on a test, but at an institution where your peers actually care and will shame you for that sort of thing. But wouldn’t it have been worse if I had memorized the quoted line before I went out that night? If I had thought, “Better learn this line by heart because I might be able to use it at the bar tonight.” Isn’t that so much worse?
The quoted line, spoken by a Mountain-Dew-consuming friend I used to work with who had just come back from her lunch break to Arby’s, delighted that she hadn’t hit much traffic:
“Everybody must didn’t decide to go thatta way.”
And believe me, I humiliated myself further by saying, “But isn’t the syntax incredible? Didn’t you guys notice the syntax?” Shortly thereafter the Murrays called it a night.