I wrote this one about 30 years ago, Jill, on a lark. OK — there was this contest. Here’s an embarrassing little tale of how I learned I’d WON the contest (in both short story AND poetry) — I got a call from the Junior College English department offering me a scholarship. I already had a B.A. in English from the university. I tried to give back the prize (I’d entered for the cash, which was $100 plus publication in each category). I BEGGED them to take it all away and award it to some worthy student. I only qualified because I’d enrolled in two programming classes I thought might help me on the job. ;) They refused, and insisted I attend the awards banquet. (They did give the scholarship to the 2nd prize-winner.)

To further add to my humiliation, when the manuscript was returned, one of the judges had written a little lesson on it that I’ll never forget: “I could have rejected this without reading a single word of it, but you grabbed my attention and held it from the start, so I read it and even gave it highest marks. But NEVER, EVER submit a manuscript single spaced! Follow the instructions!” LOL Whooooooops.

I will have to find and post, here, the prize-winning poem. Both of these have won cash awards at least twice. But I think I’ve wrung as much as I’m likely to out of them. Time to write more new material!

Oh, and you are NOT alone — the major criticism absolutely every reader (no, all but two, which makes them the outliers, for sure) has said that the opening is too slow. I don’t change it because it’s been published and it’s won awards and we should all have early work to gauge our later efforts by. But you hit the nail on the head.