Me at 30's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The fifteen dollars from the newspaper sat in my wallet for two days before I spent it on groceries. But the idea didn't leave. If one story could earn fifteen dollars, more stories could earn more. I started writing every night after the kids went to bed, filling pages with new adventures for Racum Raccoon and his friends. The stories piled up on the picnic table. But handwriting wasn't fast enough. The newspaper wanted typed submissions. At work I could only use the computer during lunch, and that wasn't my time to take. I needed one at home. The cheapest model I found cost eight hundred dollars. I had sixty-three dollars in my account after rent. Everyone I mentioned it to said the same thing. Too expensive. Not practical. Wait until you can afford it. I stopped mentioning it. I opened a credit card I'd been avoiding for two years. The limit was exactly one thousand dollars. I drove to the store on Saturday morning and bought the computer before I could talk myself out of it. The box barely fit in the back seat. The kids asked what it was. I said it was for writing stories. They wanted to see it right away. That night I set it up on the picnic table and typed my first story straight from my head. A young bull named Spot who got separated from his herd and had to find his way home. The keys clacked under my fingers. The words appeared on the screen faster than I could ever write by hand. I saved the file and turned off the machine. The payment would be due in thirty days. I'd figure it out the same way I always did. But now I had what I needed to try.