You’re probably too young to remember the A Team show on TV. I’ve only seen it reruns, so I’m not THAT old…
The A Team was a bunch of rough-and-tumble-misfit Vietnam veterans who banded together to help out those folks that had nowhere else to turn – usually the fathers of cute girls.
Now, this was the late 80’s, and TV producers were under pressure to reduce the amount of gun violence in their shows.
So, the A Team fired 50 caliber machine guns and recoilless rifles and threw hand grenades and set off land mines and fired off all sorts of weapons, but never hit anybody. Never. Oh, they blew up cars and trucks and buildings and shot the heck out of everything. Everything but people. Oh, if only the real world was like that…
Hannibal, the brains of the outfit, was played by George Peppard. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recognize him from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Blue Max, among others. His catch phrase on the A Team was “I love it when a plan comes together…”
Okay, how about this: The Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader is laser-swording it out with Luke Skywalker, and suddenly says “Sistuh…” in that weird almost-but not-quite-British Mid-Atlantic dialect used by actors of a certain genre, like Katherine Hepburn, you ooollld poooop or Mr. Howell, heavens, a Yale man! You and I would say “sister,” but Darth Vader was more like “SIStuhhhhh” with a long, drawn out “uh” at the end.
What are you rambling about now, you ask? Howzabout this:
My wonderful wife has a wonderful sister who is herself a writer, a published author. Said sister has graciously agreed to read my book.
Whaaat? Say it ain’t true!
Oh, but it is! Think about this: said sister reads the book in lieu of my darling wife, and totally digs it. She tells said wife it’s great, the heavens open up and I ship the thing off to find a literary agent with the darling wife’s approval!
Oh, I love it when a plan comes together.
That is, of course, if said sister likes the book. I just read it through once more to see if there was anything missing. At just 50,000 words, it doesn’t take very long.
Nope, nothing missing. In fact, I like it better than the last time I read it. It’s as snug as a, well, tight as a, well, dark as a well-digger’s… no, none of those work. No stupid aphorisms. It’s good and done, and I think she’ll like it.
Can you imagine my excitement? Well? Can you? I know I can!
All the wonderful sistuh has to do is like it…
John D Reinhart 