Sometimes you just forget stuff; that's the way it goes.

Wednesday night I had my writer's group meeting. We meet once a month, and people can put their names on a list to have something they wrote presented to the group. We also try to encourage people to bring something just in case someone doesn't show up who's supposed to be presenting.

I decided to take something to present this time around, though it wasn't my turn. I'm working on a book with someone where I write the stories, or scenarios, and she's supposed to be analyzing them. Course, I've got a feeling that the analyzing part isn't going to happen any time soon, but so be it.

Anyway, two people didn't show who were supposed to present, and only one of the people on the standby list had something, so I got to have my story presented. I asked our group moderator to read it because the story was about a woman who was having a bad day, and I thought it would sound better if she read it. I also wanted to sit back to see what it sounded like, which sometimes helps me figure out if something isn't right.

Well, I forgot two things. One, though there's no bad words in the story, there's a very racy part that, because I wrote it, I just never really thought much about. And two, the woman I asked to read my story out loud is an ordained minister.

So, at a certain point in the story, I'm listening with my eyes closed when the reader stops for some reason, and suddenly everyone is giggling. I open my eyes and she's totally red, and that's what everyone was laughing at. She looks at me and says "Now I know why you wanted me to read it." I laughed, then said no, that wasn't it, but if she could get through that part she'd like how it ends. So she proceeds, but has to get through a second racy part that made her flush a second time, and of course the room was full of giggling and outright laughter, which wasn't really supposed to happen, but hey, circumstances called for it at that moment.

When she finally did make it through to the end she looked at me, said it did resolve itself well, but she wasn't going to trust me to read anything else I came up with. Luckily, they all liked the story, though they said I didn't get her reaction to drinking too much correct (I've never had a drink, so I have nothing to base it on except what I've seen) and some of the language might have been dated (what, young people don't say "man" anymore?).

Still, this shows how you can get so close to something that you forget that others may react to a stimulus differently than you will. C'est la vie!