My brush with country music stardom

I have to admit that I don't know how to write music, but I wrote this, and I think it would make a great country song:

I went to visit Daddy, down at the county jail.
I had to give him bad news -- we couldn't pay his bail.
I left my Daddy crying; it made me feel so bad!
But then I saw you coming in, and I forgot my dad.

Your eyes as blue as M&M's, your hair the hue of beer!
And when you saw me staring, you gave a friendly leer.
I knew you were my true love; I felt you knew it, too.
And right away I knew that I would hear you say, "I do."

 

 Chorus: Now I'm just another road-kill on the highway of your love,

             I'm lyin' here a-cryin' looking at the stars above.

             My friends all tried to tell me, but I felt Cupid's dart.

             Now all that I have left of you are tire tracks on my heart!

 

Our first date at the honky tonk, you didn't see me there.

My heart was overflowing -- I followed everywhere.

That silly sheriff's order, I didn't even look.

I knew I had to be with you no matter what it took.

             Now I'm just another road-kill on the highway of your love,

             I'm lyin' here a-cryin' looking at the stars above.

             My friends all tried to tell me, but I felt Cupid's dart.

             Now all that I have left of you are tire tracks on my heart!

 

Breaking in was easy, and I found you in bed.

I slipped in beside you and stroked your golden head.

You hollered, then you tumbled, I saw your face go pale.

Now here I am with Daddy, down at the county jail.

 

             Now I'm just another road-kill on the highway of your love,

             I'm lyin' here a-cryin' looking at the stars above.

             My friends all tried to tell me, but I felt Cupid's dart.

             Now all that I have left of you are tire tracks on my heart!

The writing life

I can see them now: the pads of white paper my mother gave me to write on.

On their small pages, my childish scrawl ate up the space as I wrote the poems that formed in my brain.

I've loved words and rhyme since I was about 6 years old.

My mother, a voracious reader herself, began reading to me while I was still an infant, wrapping me in a blanket of words.

My childhood poems were mostly about animals -- the "noble deer," "the shy rabbit" or "the wily fox." My reading, too, involved stories about animals and Native Americans (or "Indians," as we still called them then).

In high school, I eagerly embraced the literary magazine, writing more poems, and branching out into short stories. 

College found me on the staff of The Red and Black, the University of Georgia student newspaper.

Since college, my work brought me more into the realm of editing others' writing, but I did my fair share of rewriting.

And, as always, I continue to journal, feeding my need.

Writing: my passion, my addiction.

Responsibility

Whether it's neurosis, being the first-born child, or a combination of the two, I've always had a large sense of responsibility.
When I was in school, if the teacher posed a question to the class -- to which we should have known the answer from yesterday's reading -- I always felt it was up to me to answer.

I felt that I was letting the teacher down if I didn't answer. Someone should sure as heck answer, and if no one else did, it was down to me.

At my last job, I somehow became the one people turned to when the copier was acting up. I like to figure out the way things work, and I pretty much knew that copier inside out.

Even if I saw someone across the room having trouble, I would go over and help them.

I also helped others on the copy desk finish their assignments. No one else seemed disposed to offer any assistance.

At my current job, I've made myself responsible for organizing the large number of faxes that stream into the office every day.

People were going through the pile, looking for something they were expecting. Everything else just got tossed onto the counter.

I also make it a point to postpone my own lunch, because everyone else just streams out of the office around noon, leaving only me to answer the phone.

I'm alone in the office right now, in fact. If more than one person calls at the same time, it's going to be a mess!

Inspiration

I've learned some things, working in a doctors' office.

For one thing, I'm now far more comfortable dealing with the public, both in person and on the telephone.

I hadn't realized how insulated I was while working in a newsroom.

But what has really resonated with me is the nearly daily inspiration this office offers.

Today, a double-amputee wheeled his chair up to the desk to sign in. I asked how he was doing, and he gave me a grin. "I'm just fine," he said. "How are you, young lady?"

A double-amputee is fine? What problems do I have that can compete with that?

My favorite patient, though, is Miss L.

She has severe scoliosis. To walk, she must bend from the waist so much that you could eat lunch on her back.

She uses a walker, and each step causes her excruciating pain.

I have never once seen her without a smile on her face. She is always laughing and joking with the staff.

It's hard to feel blue when someone in such pain shows you the sunshine in her heart.

Blinded by the light

In my mind, I was stuck. Stuck in Atlanta, stuck in my job. Stuck.

It took my friend, Jann, to shake me out of my stupor.

"You know," she said, "you don't have to STAY in Atlanta. Come home to Greenville. Find a job you can love in Greenville."

It was a revelation. I could be happy! What a concept!

So, that's where I am today. Looking for the job of my dreams in the home I love.

Pity party

My inner child was having a doozy of a tantrum: Lying on the floor, she was screaming, kicking, crying.

She wanted her old life back!

Her job intact, just as it was before the first round of layoffs took away her dearest friend, Cheryl.

Those Tuesdays, working on the Tribune-Times (a weekly publication) with Mary, the editor, who loved to laugh as much as she did.

Evenings spent editing, choosing wire stories and photos to go into the paper, designing the open page 2A to her own standards of news judgment, then working and paginating most of the pages herself.

Evenings spent brainstorming, laughing and talking with her colleagues.

Home with the cats, the quiet, the books. Sometimes a fire in the fireplace.

Evenings with cherished friends, some of whom she had known for 33 years.

And, Greenville! She missed Greenville, especially the wonderful downtown, bustling and full of life. Ethnic restaurants springing up all over. Long, tree-lined Main Street, with its boutiques, statues, fountains.

So she raged, screamed and kicked even harder.

What a relief!

The office manager for a doctors' office near my mother's home called me for an interview.

At the newspaper, I was used to dressing in sweatpants and T-shirts, but my fine-tuned jobhunting skills told me that attire would be inappropriate for a job interview.

I pulled out the only decent outfit I could find and showed up.

After a brief conversation, the office manager said they would take me on as a volunteer, and that was it. I could start on Monday.

The next couple of weeks found me mainly stuck in the messiest file room I hope I ever see. Patients' charts were everywhere. You could barely walk without your feet sliding on a pile of charts.

I restored order to the chaos and was offered a fulltime position as an office assistant. My duties would include answering phones, faxing, sending out letters, making appointments and, of course, filing.

There would be no coding or billing involved. The office had contracted out the billing to one person, who didn't need any help. And, as I discovered, most doctors do their own coding.

That paper they give you when you leave the office is basically a sheet of codes. The doctor marks the appropriate codes for your visit.

My life spooled out in front of me, an endless sea of faxes and files, phones and futility.

Georgia on my mind

In addition to the trauma of losing my job and the feeling of shame at having to run home to mama, I had other bumps along the way.

I lost three of my four beloved cats. Teddy. Katie. Nikki. They were gone from my life, from my lap, but never from my heart.

It turned out that my condo would need a lot of work before it could be sold. A LOT of work.

In the end, I lost a ton of money on the sale. But it did sell, and I was free to move to Atlanta.

My mother, dear woman that she is, went out of her way to make me at home in her small condo.

She even went so far as to turn her screened porch into a room for me to use as an office.

I settled in with Clarissa, my remaining cat, and set to work to find work.

It had been 33 years since I had written a resume. After assimilating a mass of info on the Internet, I wrote up a document that I hoped would do the trick.

I pointed out all my "soft skills": glad to come in early and work late; always on time; great relations with co-workers; ability to easily master new computer programs; Internet savvy; etc.

I hauled out the Atlanta business pages (good lord, it sure was bigger than the Greenville version!) and noted the addresses of about 50 doctor's practices in my immediate area. They all received my resume and a cover letter offering to volunteer my services.

And, someone actually bit.

A rough patch

Unemployed.

I was sucked into a giant clothes dryer that tumbled me, tossed me, turned me inside out.

There was rage, bitterness, panic.

I couldn't linger there for long, though. I had to find a new job.

It quickly became apparent that no one in the Upstate was looking for anyone with my particular skill set.

And, as newspapers nationwide continued to slash their staffs, I decided the smart thing to do would be to find another field.

Research indicated that healthcare was the way to go. I settled on billing and coding, because it was taught at Greenville Tech, was a fairly short program, and, best of all, did not involve any bodily fluids.

Alas, one thing my instructors at Tech failed to mention was that you absolutely cannot get a job in the field without a minimum of two years experience.

Volunteer at a doctors' office, I was advised, and see if you can catch on as an employee there.

All very well, but I had a mortgage to pay and food to buy and cats to take care of, and I couldn't manage on unemployment with a volunteer job.

After a lot of agonizing I decided to sell my condo and move in with my Mom in the Atlanta area. I could look for a job there.

God, I was going to really miss Greenville!

Real life, I guess

I took up my working life as a copy editor at the Greenville Piedmont in South Carolina.

The Piedmont was an afternoon paper, the smaller sister of The Greenville News.

I loved it there. I was a good copy editor, and I enjoyed the people I worked with. We hung out together outside work.

It was like the Red and Black, but I got paid for doing something I loved.

Sadly, in time, afternoon newspapers began to die off around the nation.

The Piedmont held out for a time, but there was no turning the tide.

At least, I still had a job. I was absorbed into the copy desk at The News.

I came to love my colleagues, and I continued to love my work. I still missed the Piedmont, but there was no sense dwelling in the past.

Then, something ominous began to happen. Larger morning newspapers began massive layoffs. Some shut down. The bosses at our parent company, Gannett, began to get facial tics and twitching eyes.

There was a round of layoffs at The News. There were furlough days.

It wasn't enough, though. We were hemorrhaging subscribers. People could read The New York Times online for free. Why piddle around with The Greenville News?

The copy desk was outsourced. A large copy editing hub was established at Gannett's largest newspaper in the southern region, The Louisville Courier-Journal.

And, after 33 years of excellent work, I was suddenly out of a job. As one friend put it: "They tossed us aside like pieces of rubbish."

It seriously sucked.

Fond memories

My time at the University of Georgia revolved around two things: Getting good grades and working on the Red and Black (Georgia's only collegiate daily newspaper).

I wanted to get good grades for two reasons: both to satisfy my pride and to be sure my mother's investment in sending me to college paid off. I didn't want to use her money and then disappoint her.

Working on the Red and Black was an amazing experience. It was my first time working with a tight-knit team to achieve a goal. Every day we started with a number of mock-up sheets with ads on them, and we had to fill the empty space.

Somehow, every day, the pages were filled with text, headlines and photos. Amazing!

I've forgotten some of what I learned in my college classes (well, maybe more than "some"), but I've never forgotten the R&B.

The University of Georgia was a huge place with a lot of students. It would be easy to fall through the cracks. But the R&B gave me a home and got me through college.

As editor, I felt drunk with power. I interviewed the University's president. I interviewed members of the Board of Regents. I came up with investigative story ideas. Every day, my opinions on the editorial page went out to the students and professors.

Oh, yes: fond memories.

Getting to know me

Hi. My name is Edie. Not Eddie. It's pronounced "eee-dee".

If I seem a bit defensive about my name, it's because no one seems to be able to get it right.

It's a given that if I go someplace and have to supply my name (say, at a restaurant with a long line of waiting customers), I'll be called as Eddie.

I've thought about using an alias in these circumstances -- something more familiar to people and easier to pronounce. But I expect I would forget the fake name, and then I'd never get any food.

While I was in elementary school, I signed up to go to a 4-H convention, using "Edie" instead of my given name "Edith". I was assigned to the boys' dormitory.

My high school yearbook is filled with entries addressed to Eddie. That seems sad to me. It's as though no one really knew me.

Moving on, at last: I was born and raised in unincorporated DeKalb County, which is part of the Atlanta metro area.

I graduated from high school Summa Cum Gaudy: special silver tassel on my cap indicating my status as second in my class; gold cords hanging around my neck representing my National Honor Society membership; and a purple collar for Beta Club.

I assume you are now waiting breathlessly to read more of my biography. Details will come in my next few posts.