Challenge 466 Response

“Secret Pal”

with Karen B. Kaplan

“Secret Pal” appears in issue 466.
Who should speak first: Gabe or the narrator?

[Karen]: The answer is that Gabe has already “spoken” first through his and Lisa’s patently obvious body language.

[Don Webb]: Heh... The narrator — who desperately needs a name — can draw the obvious conclusion, can’t she? But Gabe must speak for himself rather than let Lisa do it for him.

Jane Narrator may speak first, of course. What can she say but: “I see what you’re up to, you two-timing so-and-so. Well, hah! I beat you to it with your best friend. So there!” But that closes out her options.

Who knows: if she waits, Gabe might say, “First this Elvis doll and now Lisa. I am besieged. I want only you, Narrator dearest!” That’s quite unlikely in view of the circumstances, but Jane Narrator should at least hear him out rather than jump to conclusions.

[Karen]: If I want to see other readers’ answers to challenges, how do I do that?

[Don]: Responses come by fits and starts. Mostly we don’t get any; occasionally we get a lot. Any I do receive I put into a regular issue.

BwS is not a blog. We used to have a forum, but it got lost in a migration between servers a while back. We might have a new one if we could get it for free and had a full-time moderator to fend off spam.

We do have a Facebook page, though. I’m thinking of putting the link into the header of regular pages, under the menu bar.

[Karen]: The info page on challenges, by the way, stops before the text ends, so maybe I am missing the explanation you already have about that.

[Don]: The page has been given smaller dimensions than normal because it’s an auxiliary. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Try reducing the font size and see if that helps.