Friday Surprise

Sometimes I write something and I send to a dozen places and I never hear a word from any of them. Or I do, but it’s all rejection. Sometimes I flog a piece around the globe until I’m tired of it, and a little embarrassed for myself. My Thanksgiving turkey story is an example of this. It did end up being published a few places, but with the marketing effort I gave it, I expected to see it on magazine covers, billboards, milk cartons, and maybe on leaflets dumped out of airplanes over major cities.

And then once in a while there is a day like today: This afternoon I discovered that I’d been included in a book with almost no effort on my part. (Not for writing, though; this was a collection of photographs.)

About two years ago, I emailed a photograph of a silly sign I’d seen in Alameda, CA to Signspotting, a weekly column that usually features an unintentionally funny road sign. I forgot about my submission until about a year later, when I received a check from them out of the blue, and saw my photo in the newspaper the following Sunday.

I figured that was the end of the pleasant Signspotting surprises, but today I received a book from them in the mail that I hadn’t ordered. It turned out to be a complimentary copy of the latest Signspotting anthology. They were sending it to me because my Laundromat photo was on page 96.

So now I’m an even bigger fan of Signspotting than I was before. And I’m enjoying the book, too. There’s a lot of very funny stuff in it. So thank you to the Signspotting folks for a late stocking stuffer!