Publish and Perish, part 15: A Letter to a Distant Son

[Context: read the previous part or start from the beginning. TW: bad amateur fiction!]

Gerald rubbed his eyes. It felt late, though it was only 8:30pm.

He looked at his screen and tried to resume an overdue manuscript review he had promised to Advances in Parasite Biochemistry. The paper characterized an enzyme he didn’t know in a species he hadn’t heard of, probably representing the work of a couple of undergraduate students and their faculty mentor at a small school like his.

“The authors’ writing is lucid and precise,” he typed, “and I have no major concerns about their methods or results per se. I would only ask that they try a bit harder to ‘sell’ the study to readers. As it stands, the Introduction boils down to ‘nobody has studied ornithine decarboxylase in this species,’ and the Discussion boils down to ‘ornithine decarboxylase behaved about as we would expect from previous research on the enzyme in other species.’ I’m not asking for a murder mystery, but, intrigue-wise, can’t we do better than this?”

Gerald rubbed his eyes again. He was trying to be helpful, but the words weren’t coming out right. Time to call it a night, maybe? He saved the file in his Drafts folder and closed it. Oh, wait — he still had to finish preparing his soon-to-be-9-year-old son’s birthday present.

Sighing, Gerald created a new file and typed:

January 15, 2013

Dear Jimmy,

Happy birthday! Please use the enclosed check to acquire some Legos, home chemistry sets, or other items of your choosing.

I hear from your mom that you are continuing to make great progress in reading, and that you are about to try reading the first Harry Potter book. That’s great — let me know what you think of it!

I also hear that the piano lessons have stopped, at least for now. Do you think you might prefer a different instrument? Is it finally time to try the accordion? Just kidding, unless you actually want to give that a shot…..

It sure was fun to have you up here this past summer (see enclosed picture from Mount Appendix, which I finally made copies of), and somewhat less fun, but great in a different way, to see you in the hospital after my fall in the fall (as I have taken to calling it). Perhaps we can return to the spirit of the summer visit during spring break.

I look forward to talking with you on your official birthday. In the meantime, enjoy your final days as an 8-year-old!

It wasn’t a great letter, Gerald thought. Maybe he would eventually get the hang of long-distance parenting, or maybe Jimmy would grow up before he figured it out. There would be, at a minimum, six or seven more years of awkwardness before Jimmy approximated the college students he was used to interacting with.

He printed the letter, wrote “Love, Dad” at the bottom, stuck the letter in a birthday card (possibly too childish — did 9-year-old boys still like Toy Story?), put the card in an envelope, and added an incongruous Halloween-themed postage stamp.

[Update: the story continues with part 16.]