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Dear Reader,
Tell me a story. Who doesn't love a great story, and today's guest author, J. Ryan Stradal, delivers.
In today's column, author J. Ryan Stradal tells the story about how Millard Fillmore saved him from being beaten up in grade school. Cute story, you won't want to miss.
Welcome to the book club J. Ryan Stradal. Tell us a story...
I have a story about how Millard Fillmore saved me from being beaten up in grade school.
Yes, Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth president, the Whig, and later Know-Nothing, from Buffalo.
It all started in fourth grade, when Pizza Hut introduced a program called BOOK IT! to my grade school in Hastings, Minnesota. They gave you a button, and once you had five stars on that button for reading five books, you earned a free personal pan pizza. They didn't allow me to count the reference volume on U.S. presidents I'd been reading for fun, but I still filled the button in a week.
The problem was, being the first little book nerd with five stars on a BOOK IT! button was not only a little ostentatious, it also attracted the wrong kind of attention. The big, mean fifth graders, the ones with mullets and Metallica shirts--who, let's be honest, had no truck in the BOOK IT! program--viewed my bedazzled button as a Kick Me sign. They stole my backpack and threw it in the street, and took my hat and tossed it into a tree. They promised much worse was to come.
The heavy-metal-loving bullies who lived between my house and the school had paid me no mind before. This was all the fault of the button. I had to do something about it.
So I covered the BOOK IT! button with a picture of Millard Fillmore.
Perhaps Millard wasn't the most time-tested antibullying measure. My reasoning at the time was that the bullies had a problem with BOOK IT!, not with me.
The next day after school, Millard was put to the test. I was barely off school grounds when the big kids got in my face.
"Who the hell is that?" one of them said, pointing at my refurbished pin.
"Oh him," I said, as if he'd been there all along. "That's Millard Fillmore. He was our thirteenth president. He was pretty cool."
"Oh," they said. None of them had yet formed an opinion about Millard Fillmore. I had their attention.
Therefore, I proposed this: "Unless you can tell me who his vice president was, you have to leave me alone."
"Oh, OK, then," they said. They made a few guesses, like Abraham Lincoln, that at least got the time period right. I let them know when they did well.
Ultimately, though, I had to deliver the kicker. "Fillmore didn't have a vice president."
"All right, whatever," the big kids grumbled, and walked away, back to whatever they did in the three o'clock hour before I started wearing buttons.
It somehow worked. Millard had won.
Although stopping bullies cold with presidential trivia didn't work nearly as well two years later in middle school, at a crucial time, Millard Fillmore did a bang-up job.
And I will always be grateful to him for not having a vice president.
--J. Ryan Stradal
About Today's Guest Author: J. Ryan Stradal is the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest. Born and raised in Minnesota, he remained in the Midwest to attend Northwestern University before moving to California, where he works as an editor at Unnamed Press and The Nervous Breakdown. His debut novel is the story of an orphaned Midwestern girl with an amazing palate who grows up to become the mysterious chef behind an incredibly popular and extravagant pop-up restaurant. Each chapter focuses on an ingredient and the person who introduced it to her, with all of the ingredients, and some of the people, combining in the final chapter at a moving and cathartic feast in the wilds of South Dakota.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: WHEN IRISH EYES ARE HAUNTING (Fiction) by Heather Graham
Devin Lyle and Craig Rockwell are back, this time to a haunted castle in Ireland where a banshee may have gone wild--or maybe there's a much more rational explanation--one that involves a disgruntled heir, murder, and mayhem, all with that sexy light touch Heather Graham has turned into her trademark style.
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on WHEN IRISH EYES ARE HAUNTING to read more and to email author Heather Graham, you'll get a reply.
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