The Things They Queried

Q: ok to have pedophile joke in a reference book for teens? note: the editor was fine with it, even a little pissed to have to change it.

query: r u sure you want to compare Sherlock Holmes’s pipe to a pacifier in a children’s book?

query: "Are you sure you want to tell a kid to call up a hospital and ask if they have any extra petri dishes they can share, just so they can do your bacteria growing activity?" kid: Um hello-- hospital: You have reached blah blah blah Hospital. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911. For directions, press 1. For-- kid: Um, can I speak to--? hospital: I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that. Please enter or speak the number again. Press 1 for-- Kid hangs up. Then remembers her parents during the rare phone calls to credit card company or bank or insurance, their crazed expressions and rude gestures and repeats of "Operator" "I want to speak to the operator" "I want a real person," so she presses 0 and repeats "operator" until she gets a real person. Who transfers her to someone else. Who transfers her to someone else. Then she's placed on hold. Then the call gets "dropped." Then she tries all over again and gets put on hold twice until she reaches someone who listens to her request for free petri dishes and responds: "You're fucking kidding me, right," and hangs up. The kid will remember this years later when she's wheeled into emergency and waits and waits for a nurse, a doctor. She sees hospital employees running around. More people cram into the waiting area. The pain escalates, perhaps it's whatever it is that brought her into ER, perhaps it's brought on by the anxiety of waiting and the very real smells of fear and pain...and blood...and worse. The reception phones ring and ring and ring.

query for ED: "The author says 'All lives matter' apropos of nothing on page ---. Do you have any thoughts on this? Leading question, because I definitely have thoughts on this."

query: "ok or fix? misogyny?" If you have to ask...