The pandemic prompted many people to reflect on their lives as they quarantined at home. Author Walter Meyer did that and ended up with a book, "If You Weren't Here, This Would Not Be Happening: plogs from my life."
When COVID-19 forced a lockdown, Meyer was frustrated like so many people and looked to ways to fill his time while staying at home and happened on something almost by accident.
"Somebody had posted something on their Facebook page about Charlton Heston. And I responded with a comment about my brief encounter with Charlton Heston, which led to me posting the story of my meeting, Shirley Jones from 'The Partridge Family,' which led to another story which led to another story," Meyer said. "And each day for over 250 days last year, I posted a story on Facebook, one 'plog' at a time as I was calling them, plog being my own invention for a post that became so long it was long enough to be a blog. And it just was one story after another. Random moments from my life, everything from my childhood to weird jobs I've had to celebrity encounters, people I've interviewed for my writing, all sorts of stuff."
So everything from working as a production assistant on a TV show George A. Romero was producing to doing comedy traffic school to witnessing key moments at sporting events.
Listen to a sample reading of his book.
The title of his book comes from an incident in his life.
"I was in the middle of a shootout in Washington, D.C." Meyer recalled. "I was visiting a friend in D.C. and we got caught in the crossfire between a liquor store owner, the would be liquor store robber and the D.C. police. And we couldn't go anywhere. So we just fell to the floor of the car covering our heads. And he looked at me and said, 'if you weren't here, this would not be happening.' And that seems to be the case. Weird stuff happens when I'm around all the time. So I have numerous examples of that in the book of just random things. And people who know me well after a while say, 'you know, if you weren't here, this wouldn't be happening. This is on you.'"
Meyer, who left his job as manager of the Lambda Archives during the pandemic, will be doing a special Zoom presentation about his book on June 30 at 4 p.m. It is a free event produced by his hometown library Bethel Park Library in Pennsylvania.
Registration is required and you can find more information at the Facebook event.
And here is one more reading from his book.
