Pacers free to tell their tale

“I’ve been in jail cells smaller than this.”

I didn’t, um, what?

I hadn’t asked him anything, didn’t say a second word to him beyond “howdy.” He waited until the lady left and we were alone to tell me.

I’m in a parking lot elevator larger than some jail cells and about to go cover a basketball game and I’m beside myself, so excited to hear those eight words and wonder what came before and after them, mostly before, happy this man shared these words with me, Game 3 hasn’t even started yet and I know one guy in attendance has been in some jail cells, small ones.

“That’s a great second verse,” is my reply, reaching to sound as cool as someone who could credibly swap jail stories, jail-size stories. I could tell him about the size of the jail cell I was once in, pretty large, but the point of jail-size stories is never to actually talk about the size of the jail cell, it’s to compare charges. And my charge, a piddling possession count, is nothing compared to whatever put this guy in a jail cell to not rival the size of an elevator.

“I bet the third verse is great but the first one is amazing.” I’m rolling now. Game 3 is about to start but I’m trading fours with this Richard Farnsworth stand-in. Nothing he could say could shut me up.

“I’m writing a novel.”

I’m shut up.

Small Jail Cell Guy is writing a novel, I’m not writing a novel, I haven’t even started yet. Pages and pages for another book, sure, plus all this basketball stuff on record, but no novel, and no bio. You’ve got to write the novel before you write the bio, nobody wants to hear a bio from a guy who’s never thought of novels.

So I felt bad, as they introduced the basketball players, that I hadn’t begun writing a novel. Then Game 3 started. Who, needs, reading.