[stylist] Writing sample

Wed May 5 12:54:03 UTC 2010

Here is the text version of what I wrote.  Please let me know if you have problems with this and I will work with the format.

Shawn

Space Aliens
by Shawn Jacobson
Every office has at least one space alien.  You know, they're the ones that stick out of the office like soar thumbs, the ones that don't fit in, the ones you meet and then you wonder what planet they're from.  
We had two of them where I used to work.  One was Dexter the wall walker.  He always slid along the walls when he walked around the building.  One day, I turned the corner and he jumped across the hall to get away from me.  "Don't look at me!" he exclaimed.  I later learned from a coworker that he thought that blind people could shoot rays from their eyes and make you go blind.
The other was creepy Rita the aura reader.  She always said that she could read auras and would wave her hands around in the air in front of your face to see what your aura was like.  One day she ran into me coming up the elevator and said "Go home Joe, your aura's all wrong today."  I thought she was nuts but I got into a stupid fight with one of the branch managers about who had the meeting room, then I deleted a document I was writing and had to spend three hours re-typing it.  So she may have know something.
Anyway, I met the office alien about two weeks after transferring.  I was eating my lunch and this lady I'd never seen before plots down on the seat next to me.
"How many kids do you have?" she asked.
"Two, a boy and a girl" I replied while the little robot in my head started screaming "WARNING! WARNING!".
We talked a while longer, mostly her asking probing questions, until she found out that both kids were adopted.
"Why can't you have kids of you own?" she asked.
"That's none of your business!" I exclaimed angrily.  She got up in a huff and moved to the other side of the room.  I'd gotten the impression that she was on some sort of a manhunt; I didn't have to worry about that anymore.  I told one of the managers about what happened and mentioned that I felt uncomfortable; he left a thick volume on my chair that explained office HR procedures with a note asking "how uncomfortable are you?"  I let the issue drop.
I forgot all about it until I got pegged to represent our office on a disabilities awareness committee that the agency was putting together.  "Don't obligate us to anything" my boss's boss growled "we don't have any funding for disability awareness.
So I started going to meetings.  It was pretty depressing knowing that my mission was to make sure nothing was done, but with 70% of blind people unemployed, I sure wasn't going to rock the boat.  And most other people seemed to be there for the same reason anyway.  They were people who were just starting out, getting ready to retire, or were the one disabled person in their office.
One was Alex, a deaf guy who always had an attractive female interpreter with him.  He spent the whole summer telling me to look at him and not the interpreter and I spent the whole summer apologizing.
And then there was Jane.  Jane was a real tiny woman who used a motorized wheelchair to get around.  I found out that Jane liked hugs.  We were up in the building's Randolph Shepherd snack-bar and she's giving a hug to the lady who runs it.  I turned to the lady and asked if she thought Jane might want me to give her a hug.
"While don't you ask me?" said Jane.
"Would you like a hug? I asked Jane.
"Sure" she said "if you can get down here".
So I squatted down, bent over and hugged her in her wheelchair.  From then on, I gave her a hug at every meeting we went to.
Finally, the committee's work was done and we had the obligatory coffee and doughnuts wrap-up meeting.  The agency head came and congratulated us for the stellar work of the committee, a 30-page report with lots of high minded goals but no action items.  Then some less important officials came and thanked us for moving the cause of the disabled forward.  I sat next to Alex and Jane; they seemed to be having an animated sign language conversation and I wished I could understand what they were saying.  Then after the last speaker finished people started heading back to their cubes and then there was just us disabled people left in the room.  Jane turned to me and said "Joe, why don't you come over to our office.  We have something to show you."
And that's how I learned about the Intergalactic Federation.  I learned about all sorts of creatures including beings that could read auras and a creature that didn't have eyes and could make you blind as part of its strategy for self defense.
I also learned about races very much like us who had solved their problems with war, greed, and environmental degradation.  I don't know if we will solve our problems, but I believe we can; others have done so.

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Donna Hill
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 4:22 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Writing sample

Hi Shawn,
What type of file is this? I tried opening with Word, Adobe, Firefox, 
IE8 and Thunderbird. None of them worked.
Donna

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Jacobson, Shawn D wrote:
> Attached is the writing sample that I will read at the May meeting.  This is a short 1,000 or so word story which I look foreward to expanding.
>
> Please feel free to send me any comments.
>
> Shawn Jacobson
> Mathematical Statistician
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