Okay, not everything happens. And not all at the same moment or even the same day. But as April comes to an end, there are a lot of things about to happen that have been built up in the news as COMING SOON! or ALMOST HERE! and let us tell you all about what’s going to happen in so much excruciating detail and speculation that the actual happening will be an anticlimax.
To start with, the royal wedding. Friday. Oh, come one, don’t pretend ignorance. Even Americans know that Prince William and Waitie Katie are finally getting hitched. Pageantry and pomp. Signs of another era and hints of fantastic realms that never were.
Next is Canada’s general election. Like the States, it’s the right vs. the left, except that in Canada we actually have three major federal parties (right, left, and center-left), a separatist party (Bloc Quebecois) that shows up in the capital to yell how the country’s stupid, and a minor party that’s trying to concentrate its diffuse popularity (millions of Canadians but not concentrated in any one riding) enough to win its first ever seat. That’s the Green Party, by the way. They want to save the planet. Can you believe it?
Third is income tax day. Up here it’s April 30th.
Fourth is some writing obligations I have that were scheduled months ago.
So what if…the most important thing that could happen to a character was being overshadowed or interfered with by all sort of other important happenings due to occur on the very same day?
Hm. Even as I write it, I realize it’s been done a thousand times before.
Story about a wedding? Lots of zany things happen, way more than would ever happen at your average wedding.
A Bar Mitzvah? A graduation? A death? A funeral? The last day of a job? The first day? Arthur Hailey made a career of doorstop novels that followed a bunch of different lives whose most important events are all realized (usually through some crisis like a crashing plane or elevator) all on the same day.
Still, there’s something about the purity of the simple concept of many big external events upstaging something significant for one small character. And in short story form, you get to work with just the purity of the idea. So take a small character, say, a small, quiet gay man who’s been in the closet his whole life but has decided, after endless agonizing and pressure from his gay friends, maybe from his parents, to come out and announce himself to the world.
He chooses his venue (pathetically small? or somehow hugely symbolic?). He carefully chooses his date. He knows it will change everything about his life and the lives of those around him. But — and here we have to have been careful to layer in hints of the alternative event(s) that are going to upstage him — when he finally steps forth, all these other things happen so no one — not one person — actually hears a thing his says.
Then just find something clever to say that wraps up the moral about the consequential nature of any one person at any given point in time.
And we’re done.
