Have you ever made a mistake?
Submissions for Issue #3, "Mistakes", open October 1
Have you ever made a mistake?
Have you ever thought you made a mistake, a serious one, a career-ending or life-changing mistake, an error so gross that would make the people you love or respect change their fundamental opinions of you, and then, at last, upon realizing you hadn’t made that mistake after all, had to physically sit down and weep with the relief you experienced?
Have you ever watched someone make a mistake, slowly and relentlessly, and stood by helplessly as they did so, knowing that, inevitably, you’d have to be the one to come to the rescue?
Are you still living today with the consequences of a mistake you made years ago?
Are you in the process of making a mistake right now, and don’t know how to get out of it?
Are you starting to think it was a mistake to start reading this?
Have you ever imagined a world, maybe this world, or perhaps another, where people (of any species!) make little mistakes of no import, but then, after all, there do turn out to be consequences, in ways that we never would have thought possible?
Have you ever made a tiny mistake, one that isn’t meaningful in any way to your future, but by God, it still bothers you like hell when you wake up unexpectedly at 3am?
Have you, or someone you know, or someone you heard of once, ever made a mistake that turned out to have an utterly joyful result? Perhaps it was a mistaken encounter, the wrong person, the wrong address, the wrong day, the wrong outfit. But somehow, amazingly, wonderfully, the result was true love.
Have you ever meditated on the saddest words in the English language, “If only!”?
Have you ever spent money on the wrong thing, only to find out, later, that it was the right thing to spend money on, after all?
Have you ever wondered why you are the one to make all the mistakes, and nobody else seems to make as many mistakes as you do?
Have you ever written any of this down or typed any of this up? Or have you been thinking about doing so? Or would you like to do so?
If so, we want to see it.
The theme for Issue #3 of The Apostrophe is “Mistakes”, and submissions will be open from October 1 - October 31, 2023. Find out more here.