Imagine How Good to Kill a Mocking Bird Would Have Been with Pictures

“Damn it, Harper,” Don’t you see that your little story could have been that much better had you included a photo of a bird, a kid, a lawyer, almost anything?”

Harper looked at me as if my temperature was well above 100 degrees. In a soft grandmotherly voice she responded, “I thought the ‘little story’ was just fine.” Then she added quickly, “Even if it didn’t have pictures.”

I shook my head in disgust, “Honestly, you don’t have any idea what it takes to get traffic to look at your articles these days, do you?” If she was going to act like a child, I was going to treat her like one.

She pursed her lips and squinted her eyes, but did not speak.

God, she could get under my skin. “Harper, If you want to sell a story today, you have to have pictures and key words, back-links, and know all about search engine optimization.”

“Search engine optimization?” she repeated slowly, though correctly. “Back-links? Keywords? Pictures? I am not sure they would matter, even today,” she said.

I threw up a little in my mouth. “Of course it matters. Anybody writer who is worth his salt uses photos and images to supplement his story. Imagine how good your story would have been if you had a picture of the characters Scout, Atticus, or Tom Robinson. It would have been a better read for your audience, and I am sure you would have sold more copies.

She spoke calmly and with perfect meter,”I always felt the story was the canvas and the reader was the brush, filling in the details with their own memories and imaginations.”

Harper is an old friend, but honestly she knew just how to push my buttons. I lost it, “Are you serious? Tell me you’re not serious, Harper. You wrote that book when? In the Sixties?”

She nodded calmly.

I knew she was mocking me. “Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that To Kill a Mockingbird was bad. I am just saying that it would not be as good if you wrote it today, because you don’t have any fitting pictures or images in it. You would want to make money wouldn’t you?” my voice shook the windows. I could feel my vocal cords splitting.

She smiled back at me.

I felt the blood filling my skull. My hands were curled into gnarly little balls. My jaw was clinched. I could not remember the last time I was this angry…that’s a lie. It was when Harper and I were discussing how Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, could have been improved with pictures and images. Of course she disagreed then too. Mentally, I was resigned to just “agreeing to disagree”, but emotionally I was considering whether or not yelling louder would make a difference to this 85 year-old bat. I bit my tongue hard. Tasting my blood initiated my last rant. “You have to admit that To Kill a Mockingbird would sell more copies today if it had some pictures.” My vocal gave way with pictures. I was mute, but this did not stop me from trying to burn two holes in Harper Lee’s head with my glare.

She tilted her head to the side as she considered a response. She widened her eyes and tilted her head to the other side and then at a barely audible level she said, “Well, maybe one picture.” Her head lilted to the other side and she added, “one small picture.”

And that is how I won the argument with Harper Lee that To Kill a Mockingbird, would have been a better seller and had more traffic in this day and age if it had pictures, or a picture, with it. I wanted to tell her about computer to mobile device texting services like Textingly , but that argument was going to wait another two months until my vocal cords healed again.

Thanks for Reading,


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