I know people who want to be left alone but, at the same time, want to be included in all activities. Big Lee would say they want to be “intimately out of sight and out of mind.” Or they want to be left alone while reserving the right to get mad at you for leaving them alone.

“Games People Play” was a popular song as well as a popular book when I was growing up. The songwriter and author couldn’t both be wrong.

A shrink named Dr. Eric Berne wrote the book. He called one chapter, “Now I’ve got you, you Son Of A Bitch!” (See paragraph one of this blog.)

Also, when I was growing up, I noticed that an author could use the word “bitch” but a singer (Johnny Cash, in “A Boy Named Sue”) could not.

And that’s why I became a writer and not a singer.

True story.

I asked my prof at USC, Stephen Longstreet, why he became a writer and he told me: “I was an artist, working for the New York Times in Paris in the 1920’s. Then I found out that the Times was paying more for articles than it was paying for drawings. And that’s how I became a writer.”

Touching, eh? Longstreet told me he went to Gertrude Stein’s parties for the food and drink, not necessarily to chat with Ernest Hemingway. He said Hemingway had no sense left at the end of his life. In fact, when Mother Hemingway sent Ernest a gun that Ernest’s father had used to blow his brains out, the famous writer said, “Hey, thanks, Ma,” and used to gun to blow his brains out.

Why was Hemingway out of his head at the end? According to Longstreet, Ernest had been hit a few times too often, you guessed it, in the head. Once, while in Paris, a ceiling caved in on him. Thousands of times, he picked fights with someone tougher than him. And, he was in a plane crash and landed on his head.

I was thinking, “So what?” when Longstreet told me that in 1978. Every retired NFL player has had at least 12 concussions. Hockey players get that many in a month. Bullfighters, whom Hemingway admired, get roughed up from time to time (thus the name “bullfighters”). It’s no big deal.

“Besides,” I told Longstreet, “when Hemingway’s plane crashed, his managers must have sent out a rescue plane in minutes.

“They did,” Longstreet explained, “and it crashed, too!”

I can’t tell my university students any fun stories like the double plane crash. I didn’t hang out with any legends. (Longstreet said his job in Los Angeles after WWII was to keep William Faulkner sober!) OK, I’ll try to keep up. The boys from Van Halen sat at my table once at the Rainbow in Hollywood. And I did go to parties with my USC classmate, Rex Pickett, who later wrote the novel which became the film, “Sideways.” All I can say about Rex is … Hey, Rex, if you’re reading this, you owe me 200 bucks. And about 50 dinners.

Re college profs … I enjoyed the movie “Wonder Boys,” with Michael Douglas as the teacher and Toby Macguire as his wacky student who knew all about Gig Young's suicide. (Gig Young took his name from a Longstreet novel. If you ever hear about that in movie dialogue … most likely, I wrote the screenplay.)

All of those Douglas-type characters slash burned-out writers (Hank Moody in "Californication" fits here) have one thing in common. They've made it big at one point … before the slide to oblivion slash fall from grace. I, on the other hand, have never been successful enough to miss my friends in the big time or notice any slippage in my career. Slip from where?

BTW, when you’re on the bottom and you slip, you haven’t lost any ground. Bob Dylan wrote, “You’ll find out when you’ve reached the top, you’re on the bottom.” So, win or lose, you can’t win, so there’s never any real pressure. It’s all imagined. The good news, from my POV here in this exec-o-tron chair from Wal-Mart, is that I’ve always had freedom to create what I want in the format I want.

Anyway, college students, once I tell them to not hold back, and when they’re not playing poker on the Internet, go “all-in” writing their papers for me. Many of them are from middle-class neighborhoods and have had lower and upper class problems. Almost no one was raised by a mom and dad. About 20% of their friends have died already! The neighborhood is killing the kids, they tell me. And I don't have any inordinately “tough” kids. My students (more young ladies than young men) treat me like I’m their well-meaning uncle who can be fun in short bursts. (One girl did call me “Worse than Attila the Hun” last year but I was glad because that

meant she had read the assignment.)

For those of you wondering, “What does a struggling writer eat late at night?” I’ll reveal that my next meal is going to be oatmeal. I have to eat like a baby late at night or risk getting a food migraine. The good news, from my POV here in this exec-o-tron chair from Wal-Mart, is that I’ve always had a tender tummy so I don't even notice as my taste buds slide to oblivion slash fall from grace.

-- Don Rutberg