Although she describes herself as “shy,” Barbara Rein was always an entertainer and all-round funny person – even as a youngster.
“My father said that my position on the neighborhood baseball team was ‘left out’ because I wasn’t a good player,” she says, adding that she was a tap dancer and organizer. “I gave the routines and songs to my friends and we’d put on shows.”
While her mother was a woman of few words, Barbara’s father was a man of action.
“I remember them coming home from a New Year’s Eve party and my mother said to my father, “Everyone knows who brought the whoopie cushion!’” she says.
Since her brother was five years older, Barbara grew up like an “only child.”
“I always felt that I had to entertain myself,” she says.
Now, she writes award-winning humor.
“I don’t write anything bad or controversial,” she noted. “I found that people appreciate me when I’m humorous.”
It started in second grade in her hometown of Fairlawn, N.J. She wrote a poem and story that sparked the attention of one teacher. Then the work, credited to Barbara, appeared in Junior Scholastic magazine. However, the teacher had edited the piece and changed many of the words.
“I was mortified,” Barbara says. “It was horrible.”
She haunted the school library.
“It was pretty much a converted janitor’s closet, so I’d soon read everything in there,” she says.
She eventually started writing and illustrating (stick figures were her specialty) her own books.
“I was a fan of ‘I love Lucy.’ Her maiden name was McGillicuddy. I created ‘The Adventures of Cassandra McGillicuddy in Outer Space series,’” she says.
In fourth grade, when it came time to write book reports, Barbara decided that her McGillicuddy series would be her choice.
“One day when I got my graded book report back there was a note from the teacher saying that some of the students were complaining because I wasn’t reading “real books,’” she says.
Barbara picked up creative writing again in college, but it was not until her daughter was getting married that the creative surprise hit her. For years Barbara had told bedtime stories about a Charlie Chaplin-like cat.
“My daughter, Stephanie, was home collecting some personal things and I hear upstairs, ‘Mom! Mom! Where are my books about the cat you used to read to me in bed?’ She didn’t realize that I made up the stories sitting by her bed in the dark,” Barbara says.
“At dinnertime, I would get my son, Alex, laughing so hard that my husband would get angry,” she added. “‘He’s going to choke to death on his food,’ Rich would say.”
These incidents gave Barbara more confidence in herself as a writer. In The Villages, she joined a writer’s group led by veteran writer Mark Newhouse, where her work was critiqued by other members and she began writing personal essays.
“That’s where my humor comes out,” she says. “I look at things a little crooked.”
Word came around that a local publication was looking for stories and Barbara responded.
“We talked and I sent in my ‘toilet paper’ story, which got good feedback and a request to reprint,” she says.
Then, a friend had a middle-of-the-night thought. Publish the stories on Amazon as 99-cent eBooks. Soon, Barbara had “Bug Off,” “Mascara” and other essays on Amazon.
“There were five of them and I was shocked when all five were in the top-10 all at the same time,” she says.
Then, a small disaster happened. Through a series of internal miscues, Amazon lost her account and essays. Although she got her account back after a struggle with Amazon techs, the Number One banner has been more elusive.
During her working life, Barbara was the supervisor of Meals on Wheels for Rockland County, N.Y.
“My job was living Groundhog Day,” she laughs. “Every day, when you have 500 volunteers, somebody’s not going to make it. But I learned that the worse things got, the cooler I got.”
After 15 years, she retired. But a few years later she got a call from the person who had replaced her.
“I’m leaving and we wondered if you’d come back?” she was asked.
So, Barbara went back for another couple of years.
“I loved it,” she admits. “I met so many nice people who thanked me for doing this.”
Like many Villagers, getting here was a long story.
“Friends came and brought back the video. Not for me, I decided. We visited on the preview program six years ago and ended up loving it,” she says, adding that three years ago, they bought their home in the Village of Mallory Square.
Besides humor, Barbara also writes dark stories. It all goes back to her father, she says.
“When I was a kid, my father would tuck me into bed and tell long, weird, never-ending stories,” she says.
One of his favorites was the Polish “Pinsk from Minsk” series. Pinsk, a trapper, was on his way into town to sell his furs when a wolf started chasing him. So, Pinsk cut off a hand and threw it to the wolf, who gobbled it up and continued the chase. Then another hand. Soon Pinsk was down to a few organs.
“But Daddy,” Barbara would ask, “How can he keep going?”
“Ah,” her father would say, “You interrupted. We’ll have to start again tomorrow.”
Barbara also loved to read fairy tales.
“Grimm’s Tales were good,” she recalls. “But Andersen’s Fairy Tales were grim. And those were the ones I gravitated to.”
Her next project, “Tales from the Erie Canal,” a book of dark short stories of many genres, is nearing the end. Halloween is her deadline.
Barbara’s writing process for the weird stories is structured.
“I’ll come up with a title and an ending,” she says. “I just have to come up with the middle.”
Her personal essays are different.
“They’re just stories from my life that I expand on,” she says.
The hard work has been paying off in awards. Last year, she submitted three stories for the Florida Writers Association Royal Palm Literary Award (RPLA) competition. All three were chosen as finalists.
Barbara believes the rubrics the judges provide are very beneficial in helping her become a better writer. For the past two years, she also has been an RPLA judge. Recently she learned one story, “Canceled,” has been chosen for the Top 10 in the 2020 RPLA collection book, which is published annually.
John Prince is a Villager and writer/publisher. Contact him at John@HallardPress.com.
