Here’s an idea

Over four slices of pizza and a 20-ounce bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi soda, there is a weekly informal editorial meeting of my husband and I, sitting at a high top table against the picture window of a local pizzeria and it’s as elegant and as formal a meeting as the plastic forks and one-ply napkins we use.

In order to determine a topic for this feature in the East Meadow Herald, my husband brings a small crib sheet of ideas, timely topics based on current events and annual celebrations. I refer to a small memo pad squeezed between my wallet and cell phone with phrases that have intrigued or enlightened me recently.

He pitches ideas and I chew my pizza. Then the reverse. Unlike a civil brainstorming of concepts, no idea is free of ridicule or humiliation. He is the arbiter of good taste and appropriateness. I am the dissident of outrage and envelope pushing, unlike my day-to-day approach to life. And I try unsuccessfully to keep contempt off my face as I sip two hundred calories primed with high fructose corn syrup and carbonated water and hope I will have 350 words by Sunday night.

This is serious business — what are people thinking about, what can be said to my neighbors without disrespect, divisiveness and with a takeaway, core meaning. I’m eating the crust before the rest of the pizza that is covered in sauce and cheese — analogous to the thoughts I describe, many of which are half-baked.

Some weeks, the idea is right in front of me. Other times I procrastinate, hoping I see or hear between our “meeting” and my computer that will spark the concept. No matter the upfront, there is a final Lev review — the task most often given to Howard. His read of my proposed article is the longest three minutes of my life. Every week.

It would be great to say it is always a “thumbs up,” so I may email the article in a nanosecond to savor the rest of my evening. But the memories that linger are when my partner tells me, “It’s not working”, “I don’t get it” or the absolute kindest version of “So what, who cares?” I know the drill all too well. Back to the desktop computer. Shoo family members out of the room and work in silence. Get it right, letter perfect and be grateful for the opportunity to bring it to print.

A contributing writer to the Herald since 2012, Lauren Lev is an East Meadow resident and a direct marketing/advertising executive who teaches advertising and marketing communications courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology/SUNY, LIU Post and SUNY Old Westbury.