Sir. Mr. King. I am quite sorry. Please accept my apology. My sister is a nice person, not at all the stalker type. She is however, an older sister, and as such, prone to occasions of gleeful torment of her younger brothers, in this case me. But for that character flaw, she is a good person, and a completely harmless fan of yours.
You Sir, may remember her as the “Turtle Patrol” lady you talked to on the beach at your house a time or two. According to her, you also had a brief discussion while you both were walking. She with her dog which you petted, and you with a book, which I hope she did not pet.
One other encounter with her may have been when she nearly crashed her bicycle into you on the street. You were walking, and only had a brief exchange with her which I hope included an apology from her for narrowly missing you.
If she encounters you again, she is likely to engage with you about me. That’s the reason for this apology.
I was discussing your book, On Writing with her and I mentioned the part about the telepathic rabbit. She asked me to describe my rabbit to her which I did; an overweight Flemish Giant, bright white with floppy ears that are pink on the inside. The number eight painted on his back is in Crayola cadet blue. Both spheres of the eight are identical and about half an inch in width. He is a lazy beast, spending his time eating carrots and kale in his extra large Amazon box (not a cage) with newspaper on the bottom.
(For those of you reading along, Mr. King used this tool to explain an excellent point about the reader’s visualization in the aforementioned book.)
Anyway, once I explained this visualization and the point of it to her, my sister got that sinister sisterly look on her face and said to me, “The next time I see Mr. King, I’m going to tell him about your rabbit and show him your web page of stories.”
I enjoy writing stories about simple things I have observed and was persuaded to put them, along with photos I have taken, into a web page.
My sister has encouraged my writing, and says she likes reading my stories. I wonder now if this has been a “long con” on her part to further torment me as only a sister can.
As is the case in the brother/sister relationship universe, the more I objected to this plan that she hatched, the more determined she became to execute it, and likely annoy you. My terminal error was begging her not to do this. The begging sealed my brotherly fate.
So, if you see her again, and if she does follow through with her plan to utterly humiliate me, please know that I am sorry she disturbed you. I want you to know that although it is completely my fault for telling her about my telepathic rabbit, I did not connect the dots in time to stop her from devising this sibling torture.
She really is a nice person. It’s just that I am her brother and as such, subject to her ability to redress childhood slights both real and imagined.
I apologize Sir.
Chuck Choate Words & Pictures 