Being a teacher. . .

for 33 years can stunt your growth.  When you teach teenagers everyday, work with them on extra-curricular stuff many nights, and go to their games, and concerts, and things, as often as you can, you may start to view the world from a partially teenage perspective.  Now this doesn't happen to every teacher.  But it happened to me.  I realized that though I enjoyed hanging out with a close circle of adult friends, I enjoyed working, and talking, and hanging out with teenagers as much or more.  At my retirement party, I admitted that teenagers were my favorite people. They had prevented me from growing up, for which I will be eternally gratefully.  Therefore, it only makes sense that my novels and several of my plays were written for young people, although I hope that adults can enjoy them as well.  As SUMMERPLAY progresses through the years, I find myself writing about older folks.  But I don't think I have an adult novel in me yet.  At 61, I'm just not grown-up enough.

And now for something completely different.  Why is my blog entitled THE BLUE MOON GRILLE?  Many of you know the answer to this.  SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE BLUE MOON GRILLE was the title of SUMMERPLAY  2006, one of my favorites of the plays I have written.  The Blue Moon Grille was the setting, a little bar and grille (with an "e" on the end of it to make it classy) in Denton, a town within 800 miles in some direction of Nashville.  Especially on Saturday nights, stories and wisdom were dispensed by the denizens of the Blue Moon.  The wisest of the lot was owner and philosopher Stan Morton, perfectly portrayed by Rick Zuber.  Behind the bar was a wall covered with sayings stuck there by Stan.  He explained to Tuck, a young man just arrived at the Blue Moon, "I'm a collector of words of wisdom.  When someone says something I think is clever or smart, I write it down and stick it to the wall."

So from my Blue Moon Grille, I'm going to tell some stories about my writing and about other things, and I hope to dispense an occasional bit of interest if not of wisdom.  Perhaps, you'd care to post a comment.  Maybe Stan will stick it to the wall!

Tomorrow I think I will deal with memories of the Double X Girls!