Cranky Old Man, or Guest Post by my Writing Partner.

Pixies are little nags. I’m reminded of Dickensonian style, and must preface this by saying something such as: “Having been persuaded by a guest-post hungry pixie that my duty rests in assuaging her earnest desire for space-filling comments on her blog, I have assented to write what follows.” On second thought, that doesn’t resemble Dickens’ style at all. Maybe it resembles Thorstein Veblen or some such person’s style.

My introduction to pixies really precedes her birth. Her great grandmother, whom she resembles, was a pixie. Now that Rachael has so clearly defined what Pixies are, I’m convinced of it. When I first saw her, Rachael was a bright-eyed bundle wrapped in a baby-blanked and uttering short phrases. She started talking at six months. If I were unkind enough to quote her father, I would add here, “and she hasn’t shut up since.” I’m not that unkind. So I will leave that unsaid.

She is a very opinionated little thing. She settles her opinions quickly and seldom changes them. The exception is with her research. Research is a series of guesses and eureka moments. Good research is plodding work, driven by flashes of insight. I know of no one more adept than the Pixie.

She was a pest when she was little, insisting on sitting on someone’s lap and talking. It didn’t matter what the topic was. She just wanted to talk. She self-edited her speech. When she was two she would begin and then restart a story over and over until she said it to her satisfaction. I learned patience from listening to a two year old. Or, I should say, I learned as much patience as I have from a two year old.

She picks at my theology. We debate. She goes for the jugular. If age expects mercy, it is an expectation without warrant. It’s not the rarified, esoteric point she attacks, but the practical use of belief. She has little patience for the hypocrisy that seems part of the human condition. I confess to sharing her feelings, even if I see human frailties and human willingness to believe the irrational in a different light. If you decide to debate her, wear armor.

Having a Pixie for a writing partner is like eating curried chicken. Curry gives me indigestion, but I like the chicken. She challenges everything. One of the reasons our writing is as detailed as it is – aside from my own love of detail – is her demand for greater proof. She is an excellent check to any tendency to speculate. I sympathize with the approach. I’d like to think I taught it to her. If I did, I taught her well.

She has a very subtle humor system. That may come from her husband. Her childhood jokes sometimes made absolutely no sense. She mangled stories. I think the first joke she told that worked was when she asked her aunt if she believed in “pre-marital inter-digitation.” I think she was eight or nine. Her aunt, who was suitably shocked, said, “NO! … What IS that?” She’s gotten better since.

She’s inherited the family tendency to replace English sentence structure with that of another language. I think it’s an inherited defect. She accuses me of that bad practice daily, sending along some rude comment or another with edits.

I suppose one last observation is in order. She’s very bossy. She would have been the world’s absolute monarch at age seven if she could have pulled off the job. Oddly, she accuses various of her children of the same fault.