Maybe you heard it...  a cannon-shot kind of sound that echoed for some distance.  You might have thought it was thunder out over Lake Erie from one of those storms that never come ashore, or the celebratory boom of victory fireworks at Jacob’s Field.  It could have been that  – the Indians seem to be doing really well – but it wasn’t.

No, it wasn’t thunder or fireworks, nor a gunshot, not even the hatch of a 5,850 pound Hummer H3 being slammed with vigor.  No, it was the sound of my little life getting even smaller, the inexorable shrinking of my personal vocational options, the death rattle of one of my fondest dreams.  It was...  the sound of the last issue of the Weekly World News hitting the stands.

You know the Weekly World News.  Everybody read it, even you, at least in the supermarket checkout line, but it seems not enough people bought it – the paper, that is, not the stories.  Nobody I know, at least nobody I know who should remain at large, bought the stories published in it.  Still, I mourn the fact that I never got to write one.

“World War II bombers found on the moon.”

“Giant porcupine kills twelve in India.”

“40-pound baby born to seven-year-old Guatemalan nun.”

“Ronald Reagan meets with aliens in Oval Office.”

Ok, so maybe that last one is not so fantastic, but I am sad that my chances of ever adding any of those headlines to my clip file are gone forever.

One of my long-held career goals was to work for the Weekly World News.  I was hoping for a six-month contract, preferably November through April since the offices were in Florida.  Imagine steady paychecks for fiction and a beach nearby.  Virgin births, sea monsters, Big Foot, Michael Jackson, living mummies, weight-loss secrets of the Aztecs and, of course, regular Elvis sightings.  And not one picky fact-checker in sight.  What’s not to love?

I am able to accept the fact that there are some rivers I will never raft.  I’m probably never going to win a Pulitzer Prize, let alone a Nobel Prize.  I’m not really counting on a MacArthur genius grant, either.

I will not in this lifetime become a world-renowned sculptor, identify a new plant species, isolate a compound that cures Alzheimer’s or learn to fly a jet, though I might get licensed for helicopters if I really work at it.  I’m never going to sail my own yacht around the globe or, sad to say, be asked to sing back-up for Emmy Lou.  But never to write for the Weekly World News?  That always seemed, if not likely, at least possible.

I’m doing my best to make lemonade out of this particular lemon.  I’m taking to heart the old saying that when God closes a door, she opens a window.  But I need a new writerly goal, one to take the place of my lost, last chance with the Weekly World News.  I’ve thought it through, and I believe my new goal as a professional wordsmith should be to get a job with Fox News.  I’m pretty sure I have the appropriate qualifications.  Some say I am more than fairly unbalanced.