Technology changes so quickly. . .

. . .that it really affects the way I write.  I started writing TISHA about 4 or 5 years ago, long before people were texting their fingers off, and long before virtually every teenager had a camera phone.  So during my first draft, the kids used their cells only as calling devices.

     To update the cellphone practices, I have gone back through the manuscript and added a variety of references to texting and even a reference to twitter.  But doing those things was only part of the problem.  

     It was absolutely necessary that the character Becky use one of those little throwaway cameras which used to be so popular.  What to do?  I decided to have her phone stolen while she was off with her friends on a road trip, which, because she is a recorder of such events, forced her to purchase one of those little box Fuji's.  Actually, it worked out well, because I am going to use the pilfered cell later in the story.    

     What also cracks me up is how those 4 or 5 years ago, I made Tisha a blogger before her time.  People didn't even know that blogging, or "web-logging," existed then.  Bloggers just kept personal diaries to share with their friends.  One of the big things was to do Friday Fives.  That involved answering five questions about yourself on your blog each Friday.

      I used a real Friday Five list that I found on-line for Tisha to communicate how she feels about her mom.  It was a better way than simply using exposition.

      I guess it's also rather ironic is that these 5 years later, I've become a blogger, too. 

The following three items came from the Friday Five at the beginning of TISHA AND THE GIANT:

Friday Five--September 8 (The first Friday of my senior year of high school)

1.  Have you ever had braces?  Any other tooth trauma?

I had braces from 7th grade until the end of 10th grade, and I wear my retainer religiously.  My biggest tooth trauma involved my wisdom teeth.  I had to get them extracted last spring because they were threatening to misarrange my teeth that I had just finished having straightened the year before.  I could have waited for summer to have it done, but I liked the idea of missing a few days of school, so I scheduled it for the end of May.  It was pretty traumatic all right.  I had to have an IV and be put out and everything because all four of them were impacted.  So, I was a complete mess for a couple of days, and I looked like a very large, very blonde chipmunk.  Then I got dry sockets, and suffered even more.   My mom was wonderful and so patient with all my moaning and complaining.  She was constantly bringing me soup and ice cream and asking me how I was doing.  Finally, my mouth felt better, and I went back to school.  You probably think my trauma was now over.  Wrong!!  Three days after I went back to school, my mom left my dad and me.  That’s right.  She ran off with some guy whose name is Earl and who lives hundreds of miles away in Philadelphia,  no less, the City of Brotherly Love.  Now that was traumatic.  And here is what I have been thinking about all this time.  If I had waited until the summer or even to the fall to have my wisdom teeth removed, would my mom still have left.  Because it appears to me that she stayed with us until I had recovered from my wisdom tooth trauma, and if I had put off that trauma, I wonder if she would still be here.  Because maybe if she had had a couple of more months to think about it, she would have decided that she and Earl weren’t such a good idea after all.  Is that a stupid thought?  I don’t know.

2.  Ever broken any bones?

No.  Except I almost fractured my skull.  (More about that later!)

3.  Ever had stitches?

Yes.  Besides my wisdom tooth ones, I got stitches just this last July 21st when I was playing soccer on my traveling team.  I might have been playing a little out of control.  We were in the penalty area.  I tried to head the ball, but I ended up heading the keeper’s knee cap, and we were both going about a hundred miles an hour.  Ultimate result:   I was knocked out for three minutes, and when I woke up the keeper was still crying because her knee hurt so much.  I guess I have a hard head.  Not that hard though, because I had a big time concussion and was in the hospital for five days.  The doctors said I was lucky I didn’t fracture my skull.  (See Question #2).   I had to stay in bed for another five days at home.  I mean really in bed.  Bed pan and all.  My grandma came from Cleveland and took care of me when I was home, because my mom was in Hawaii with the ass from Philadelphia.  My mom didn’t even know that I had totally concussed my brain.  In answer to the original question, I had four stitches just in front of my temple on the left side of my head, where my head met her knee.