Already Written: Absurd Tales of Non-Fiction Volume One

By Joshua Anderson

How does a woman crossing the street get hit by a potato? How can a spiral notebook cause a child lasting mental trauma? What makes a food court so dangerous?

Eight million stories could be told from the residents of New York City, most of which could not be made up even by the best Fiction writer. Nobody has time to listen to all eight million accounts, so Already Written will cover just one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Anderson
• Release date: Jul 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301680597

Book preview

ALREADY WRITTEN – ABSURD TALES OF NON-FICITON

VOLUME ONE

By

Joshua Anderson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Joshua Anderson on Smashwords

Already Written – Absurd Tales of Non-Fiction Volume 1

Copyright © 2013 by Joshua Anderson

Thank you for downloading this ebook. Its contents are the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. No alteration of content is allowed.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

Copyright 2013 Joshua Anderson

*****

Thank you Linda for assuming the role of editor. An additional thank you to the Newsletter subscribers that encouraged me to do this.

Preface

I am not sure how you got here, but welcome! Before venturing any further, there are probably a few things you should know.

Content

This book is actually a compilation of smaller articles that I have been writing since 2004. For some reason that I can no longer remember, around the summer of 2004 I felt the need to divulge some of the details of my life to my friends. To facilitate that need, I began writing Joshua’s Newsletter. I think the first one was sent to 5 or 6 people and at its peak the newsletter was circulated to a whopping 22 people (give or take). Five or six people would probably read them, and I think two people actually enjoyed it. For years, my own father refused to have anything to do with it, perhaps feeling that it was beneath him; he was probably right. After some time, there were mutterings of this is pretty good and maybe you should write a book. The idea of getting something published seemed a bit much, so I never took it too seriously.

There was a time, however, when Nancy assembled all of the newsletters I had written up to that point and bound them. This was the first time that it started to dawn on me just how much I had put into writing. The newsletters gradually got longer and longer. This was in part because they kept coming further and further apart. Initially I would send one a week, then it became one a month. Soon after it fell to one per season. The current timetable for the release of new ones is whenever I feel like it. A short one could be 4 pages; the longest, which was also supposed to be the last, was 55. All of that is to say, I had a lot of material and have finally decided to do something with it.

The articles themselves contain details about some of the funny, odd and sometimes disturbing experiences that I and people close to me have had. I do not anticipate that you will find anything particularly profound or have any eureka moments while reading this. My hope is that, at the very least, you will not get sick to your stomach for having spent hard earned money to purchase this. If somehow you got this as a freebie and you do get sick to your stomach, I will be a bit less sympathetic.

Oddities

For the sake of full transparency, please know that I am not a writer by trade, nor an English or Communications major and as such have little compunction in regards to deviating from the standard format of written publication. If you are an English purest, you should probably keep some Pepto Bismol handy. In fact, I went to school for Civil Engineering, and legend has it that that Engineers do not write very well. I tell you this so that your expectations will be low, and maybe you will be pleasantly surprised with what you find here.

Something else you should know before venturing further: Since this is a compilation of writings that span eight or nine years, there are references to time that may or may not be accurate at the time you read it. In most instances, they will not be accurate. Typically that will not affect your ability to follow what is going on, but I just thought you would like to know.

To a large degree, I have also kept it very close to what the original newsletters were, at least as much as formatting for an e-book would allow. That means that there are tons and tons of SIDENOTES, or derivatives thereof. Historically, sidenotes have come in font colors other than black. The use of colored fonts has been limited for the production of this book, so the beginning of sidenotes will be indicated by ***. In places where there is a sidenote within a sidenote, the second one will be indicated by **. In some cases the sidenotes may provide something pertinent to the story in progress. In other instances it may be a complete digression from the story in progress. Hopefully you will get the hang of them and they will not be too distracting.

Lastly, at least this is the last note before the next one, I recognize that we live in a very litigious society. That being the case, some names have been changed, others have not. Whatever each individual’s case may be, I will keep the names the same throughout so that where it is necessary you can follow characters through different stories. As is the case with Nancy above, I will also put names out there as if you should know these people. I have no real reason for it; it’s just my way.

Lastly again, a brief note on some of the diction you will encounter: I am not very bright (as will become quite clear throughout these writings), but at times I do try to challenge myself by using words that may not be common (for me at least), or that I think can elevate the value of a sentence or paragraph (whatever that means). At other times, I may just completely make words up if I deem it necessary. I ask you to bear with me.

Hopefully this foreword has not worn out my welcome. That would go against an important life lesson I learned in high school. Mr. Natale, a teacher of mine in high school, once gave some very prudent advice that to this day I still try to make good use of. With that said…

A Preview: A Lesson in Vocabulary

Mr. Natale was, and maybe still is, a math teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School. I should add, he was, and maybe still is, a very good math teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School. I had him in tenth grade and then again in twelfth.

On the