Ghost

Author’s Note:  This post is dedicated to Kevin G.  Thanks for the handsome pen, buddy. But then you always did have great timing.

As usual, Tolstoy said it best.  He said that when he was born, he didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl- but he knew he was a writer.

Me, too.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t doing this.  In fact, when I got my job as humor columnist for the Pioneer Press, when it came to the line marked  “newspaper experience,” I wrote “Feature Editor, The Avoca Parrot.”

That was back in the seventh grade and there has never been a time when I wasn’t writing something.

For somebody.

Early on I was doing my brother Kenny’s homework.  And by the time his high school junior theme rolled around, I had already written so many of my friends’ essays, I was a seasoned pro with a note card and a footnote.

I will not debate the moral implications of cheating here.  It was dead wrong.  I am 100% guilty.  (And if Kenny had to do it all over again, I’m sure that he would still have me step in and ghostwrite his papers all over again.)

Kenny hated to do anything indoors.  He was much happier on a ball field.  It was pure, unadulterated torture for him to sit still and write something.

(Or read something for that matter.  The ONLY book report he had ever handed in was The Hound of the Baskervilles.  And he hadn’t read the book. He had only seen the movie.)

So whenever something big was riding on the outcome, a grade, a college acceptance, something important, I would step in and “help” him.

By the time he went off to college, we had a system and it worked like a charm.  I would write the paper, Mary Lu- his girlfriend since high school junior year- would type it and Kenny would hand it in.

Then Kenny would sit back and relax.  A good grade was guaranteed to be had by all.

(If there had been email and Google doc-sharing back in the day, his hands never would have had to actually touch the finished product.)

I only remember one time when he complained.  I had used the word “vicissitudes” and Kenny freaked out.

“She’s going to know, man,” he moaned.  “The teacher is going to know that I didn’t write this.  Vicissitudes?  Vicissitudes?  Give me a break.”

“Kenny,” I patiently explained.  “If your teacher is so darn dumb that she can’t tell that you didn’t write that paper because it’s beautifully constructed and has a cogent thesis, she is never going to land on the word ‘vicissitudes’ and figure it out.  You’re cool, man.”

Kenny thought this over for a minute.

“I know what I’ll do!  I change it.”

So he got out a thesaurus, looked up the V-word and dumbed it down to “problems.”  And then went out to play a pickup game of soccer.  Happiness reigned once again.

There was one college paper I do remember however that almost got me in a lot of hot water.

I had written a paper that purported to be an interview with a Navajo wind talker named Joe Goes in Center. (Christened in honor of Natalie Goes In Center, a girl in Natasha’s boarding school class.)  No relation because my Mr. Goes in Center was fictional.  (All the wind talkers I needed for the actual report were dead.)  So hence for the assignment, I invented the guy, asked him real historic questions and then answered them myself.

The paper got its owner an A.  And then came the Little Big Horn.  The professor, so impressed with this man’s exploits and war record, wanted  him to lecture to the class.

“What shall we do?” asked the panicked owner of my bogus theme.

No problem.  I just sent Joe to the Happy Hunting Ground.

But there was one other time…

Kenny’s senior year in college.  The book:  The Light in August by William Faulkner.  I hated this mother-f…er.  Couldn’t stand it.  Didn’t understand it.  It was downright painful for me to read, yet alone write about.  But I had promised, and Kenny was busy playing ball, hanging out with his friends, you know, college.

I was married and living in Baltimore at the time.  And  I thought happily.

But I came home from Goucher College one afternoon to find that my husband had taken all my jewelry, sold my car, taken the dogs, cleaned out the bank account and had fled to parts unknown.  My house looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Everything inside it was destroyed.  Even the mattresses had been slashed.

I was in shock.  Utter disbelief at what I was looking at.  Then the phone rang.  It was Kenny calling from college.

“Oh my God, Kenny,” I blurted out.  “You have no idea what’s happened here.  He’s taken off and taken everything I own with him.  The dogs are gone!  Even my typewriter is gone. What am I going to do?”

Kenny was quiet for a minute.  I could feel his worry and concern.  I was touched.

“Does this mean you’re not going to write my Light in August paper?  Because if you’re not, I’ve got to find someone else…”

I wrote the paper.

Luckily for my career,  I now get paid to write book reports.  And for years I have quietly turned my attention to the business and social world -and the need for public speaking they impose on their participants.

And  so I have been ghost-writing business speeches, president-to-president letters, charity “ask” campaigns, college application essays, grad school apps, web site copy and even eulogies for almost forty years.

My slogan is “When you care enough to say the very best.”  And although I honor confidentiality and can’t tell you who my clients are, they are a very happy bunch.

Come hell or high water, I can assure you that your words will be golden, your fund-raising quotas will be met, your business brochure copy will sparkle, you’ll get into that grad school.

In other words, you’ll be pleased with the results.

Just ask Kenny.

(If you can get him in from the ball field.)

And now a word from our sponsors…

Second Author’s Note: This space was reserved for the URL for my hired gun writing site- “Ghost.”  But due to a technical glitch, the site is not live yet.

Since the perpetrator of that technical glitch is my son, Nick, you and I are going to have to suck it up and do without it temporarily.

Our highly-high tech conversation went something like this:

Me: Nick, come on!  I need that site up and running now!  It’s almost time for college and grad school application essays..

Nick:  Chill out, Dude.  I am swamped with work right now.  If you want it done right, you’re going to have to wait until the end of October at the earliest.  Do a soft launch and give me a break.”

(I’m leaving out his actual tone.  It was kind of a cross between a sigh, a snarl, bone-weariness and a warning.)

I got the hint.

So if any of you want something written, punched up, ghosted or looked over, you know where to find me.

As ever, the Gray Ghost