Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Woeful Spotlight: John J. White

So, your wife is your editor. Are you ever forced to sleep on the couch for silly grammar mistakes, such as using a semicolon wrong?
No. The couch is reserved for spelling mistakes. My wife won her fourth grade spelling bee and has been rubbing it in ever since. I can’t spell. I have never used their, there, or they’re properly in a sentence. I also can’t type, which is why St. Pam, as my writing friends call my wife, types my hand written prose, which looks like it was written by an apoplectic chicken on Oxycontin.

Obviously, stealing toilet paper takes the cake of embarrassing college stories, but do you have any others you'd like to share?
The city shut off the water temporarily to my college apartment complex at 4 PM. That didn’t stop me from trying the faucets and leaving them on. I went to work and came home to my second story apartment about 10 PM to hear water pouring into my neighbor’s apartment downstairs. Fortunately, I had no money so they couldn’t sue.
So, you actually met your future mother-in-law before you met your future wife. How did Myrtle react when her daughter brought the infamous Toilet Paper Caper home for the first time?
She raised her eyebrows when she recognized me but never said a thing. Probably because earlier that day I had gone surfing in big waves and the seawater got stuck in my nasal cavity. Hours later it dripped out when I least expected it, right on my porterhouse during dinner. I believe that made Myrtle forget the toilet paper incident.
What's in the works for you right now in the realm of writing?
I am finishing a novel titled Nisei, about a Japanese – American boy in Hawaii and his experiences at Pearl Harbor, in the internment camps, and during his tour of duty with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe after D-Day. It’s not supposed to be funny, but I do have some other humorous short stories and novel excerpts on my website at www.jjwhite.org. 

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