"Wrong Exit"

Although upon a subsequent revisiting not really that wrong.

Still, wrong enough to cast a harboring doubt on my personal judgment.

More italics, if you can handle it.

On not infrequent occasions – one most recently occurring just yesterday – I belatedly realize how to write an already published blog post better – sharpening a point, upgrading a turn of phrase – and I go back and I change it.  I, in fact, altered two blog posts yesterday.  I am not clear about why I do that.  It’s cleaning the house after the company’s gone home. 

People have already read those blog posts.  They are unlikely to read them again.  Still, I feel obligated to the point of unnecessary action to go back and improve what I believed was the best I could deliver at the time – and, definitionally, it was.  It just wasn’t “the best” period. 

The reassessment in question involved the ending – the most crucial element of the story.  For days, I’ve had this nagging urgency to replace the once acceptable ending I had written with an alternative I believe now the right one.

I shall end this italical preamble here before it eats up the entire blog post and I have nothing to write normal.  My apologies to dyslexics who can read regular writing but not this kind, an admittedly rare condition but there is no reason you should suffer.  

This may be one of those posts where I am simply talking to myself… although that could possibly be said about all of them.  It involves having second thoughts about a blog post I wrote more than two months ago, those thoughts being troublingly superior to the first ones. 

(Note:  As with the constitution’s First Amendment which was originally the Third Amendment, knowing my proclivity for revision, my aforementioned first thoughts were more likely my fourth thoughts – my first three thoughts having been jettisoned in the process – and the belatedly-discovered superior thought was actually my fifth thought.  Keeping things accurate for the archives.)

In truth, this superior thought did not just pop into my head.  As with most creative accuracies, at least in my experience, it occurred while I was relating the subject of a recent blog post to a friend, emerging with the clarity of a perfectly cut diamond. 

That’s the natural advantage of talking to someone.  Your communications are spontaneous and unforced.  No deadening overworking.  No crippling second – or third or fourth – thoughts.  You just say it without thinking about it and it’s right.

Maybe that’s why people like working with partners.  The “gold” arrives naturally during the exchanges.  As a chronic over-thinker, I might have benefitted from working in a team… if I could swallow the necessity of splitting the money.  (And I am not certain I could have.  Although I did propose partnering with one writer.  He turned me down, possibly not wanting to split the money himself… I like to think, being preferable to the rejecting alterative.)

Anyway…

I wrote a post – which actually ballooned into two posts – about cowboy hats.  (Not everybody can do that.  Although, in all honesty, I imagine few people have tried.)

I crux of this blistering topic was that no matter what activity he engaged in – many of them vigorous – his ubiquitous cowboy hat virtually never fell off of his head.

I concluded the post, dialoguing a heated disagreement between a stagecoach driver whose jeopardized bacon the “Good Guy” HERO had recently pulled out of the fire, defeating a menacing outlaw in a set-to atop the runaway stagecoach, although his hat blew away during the fight.

The dispute turned on the HERO insisting that the stagecoach driver immediately “double back” on the trail to retrieve his hat and the reasonable stagecoach driver responding “Hell, no!”

I came up with this ripsnortin’ “cloud of dust” finale, which may have seemed better than it was because it was “ripsnortin’.”

And here it is.

HERO:  “No way around it.  We just gotta go back for my hat.”

STAGECOACH DRIVER:  “I ain’t gonna do it!”

Jumping down a bit…

TOTALLY “LOSING IT”, THE COWBOY HERO GRABS THE STAGECOACH DRIVER’S HAT, FLINGING IT FURIOUSLY INTO THE UNDERBRUSH.

STAGECOACH DRIVER:  “What are you doin’!?!”

HERO:  “What do you care?  It’s only a hat.”

STAGECOACH DRIVER:  (HALTING THE HORSES)  “Whoahhhh!!! (TO COWBOY HERO)  I’m almost sorry you saved me.  Now I have to go fetch it.”

THE STAGECOACH DRIVER CLIMBS DOWN, HEADING AWAY TO RETRIEVE HIS HAT.  AS HE DOES, THE “GOOD GUY” HERO PICKS UP THE REINS, TURNING THE STAGECOACH IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

STAGECOACH DRIVER:  “Come back here.  Yer stealin’ my stagecoach, consarn ya all to heck!”

THE HERO EXHORTS THE TEAM ONWARD WITH A POWERFUL “HYAH!!!”, RUMBLING TO RECONNECT WITH HIS HAT.

HE MUST HAVE CORRALLED IT, BECAUSE THE HAT HE WORE INTO TOWN…

WAS THE HAT HE WORE OUT.

FADE OUT IN AN EXUBERANT HAT-CHASING CRESCENDO.

THE END.        

The superior ending that occurred to me later?  Picking up at

HERO:  “No way around it.  We just gotta go back for my hat.”

STAGECOACH DRIVER:  “I ain’t gonna do it!” 

Replacement ending…

I do not know what took place after that.  I only know that when they cut back to town, the hero was once again wearing his cowboy hat.

That would have been better – simple, succinct, more comedically direct.

And now, with your permission,

I shall go back to the original and change it.

Promising to try and do better the next time.