Fifteen Titles

And not a story in sight

Recently I read Linda Caroll ‘s great article about titles. (Here) The article has stuck in my craw — which is a sign of a great article.

So I came home from work today utterly and profoundly exhausted. I am not complaining. After all, tomorrow will finally be the final, final, final last day of the job. But I have gotten very little writing done lately. I really felt like I needed to write a story.

But I was just too freaking exhausted tonight — if you’ll excuse my French.

And that is when Linda Caroll ‘s article came floating up to the surface of the cesspool of my noggin. I suddenly realized that maybe I didn’t need to write an article. Maybe I could just write a bunch of titles!

I have always enjoyed writing titles. I wrote titles long before I ever wrote articles. Back when I was in high school, around a hundred years ago, I took a quarter of Journalism. I mostly slept in that class because it came right after Band and Band was exhausting.

I often awoke from my naps to discover that the class was given an assignment of writing an article. And there would be a few classmates who came to me. They knew that my self-perceived forte was title writing. They would show me their half-assed, grammatically incorrect, pointless diatribes and then ask me to come up with a title for them.

I could usually come up with a title in a minute or two. I was paid in various different ways — not all of which were legal.

I was the title guy. I ended up just barely passing Journalism. On the next-to-last day of Journalism class the teacher stood before the class and announced that after 42 years of teaching Journalism she was retiring at the end of the year.

She then pointed directly at me, looked directly at me, and proclaimed, “In my 42 years of teaching Journalism, YOU are the very worst student I have ever had!”

I looked around and quickly realized that the entire class was looking at me. I wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed or filled with pride.

Did I mention that I was exhausted when I came home from work today?

Forget a story! I’m too exhausted. Instead, all I have to offer is 15 titles (and sub-titles) which I came up with just now. There are no stories I have to offer. Just titles. (Could this be a new form of poetry?)

And here they are…

Swimming Through a Field of Wildflowers

And walking through the ocean

The Ballad of Lorenzo Sarcophagus

The tale of a man nobody knew

A Malfunction of His Giddy-Up

The story of a limping cowboy

Pubic Opinion

No, that is not a typo

Random Acts of Laughter

One woman’s quest for vibratory re-calibration

A Wooden Porch Can Be Very Quiet

Until it creaks

An Aquarium Can Be Even Quieter Still

Until it leaks

Naked Man Reveals the Truth

And so much more

The Poet Who Could See in the Dark

And saw rhymes stacked everywhere

The Adventures of Simon Laughingstock

Everyone thought he was just a butcher

How To Exude Confidence

When no one is looking

Napping While Standing Up

The frightening new social epidemic

The Abrasive Scouring of a Kitty Cat’s Tongue

And other things I experienced on Spring Break

How I Became a Billionaire

Then woke up from my nap

The Secret To All Things

Is you!

The astute reader will notice that I do not include a proclamation of copyright at the end of this article like I normally do — and which the United States Copyright Office encourages all writers to do. That is because I hereby offer all of these titles/subtitles to anyone and everyone for free. Please feel free to use any of the above titles and subtitles for your next article. Go ahead. I dare you!

All I ask is that if you earn a million dollars on your article using any of my titles/subtitles that you buy me an up-to-date Ford Explorer big enough to haul lumber in.

Holy crap — if you’ll excuse my American — I just realized that, ‘Ford Explorer Big Enough to Haul Lumber In’ is the perfect sixteenth title! Sorry, but I’m not giving out the subtitle to this one. You’ll have to come up with that on your own.

Maybe I’ll quit writing articles and just write titles.

Yeah, right.

See More of My Recent Blabberings Here

And be sure not to miss my recent secret-revealing article…

And if you’re in the mood for some bizarro flash fiction, try this…