When Vocal Removes Your Story From A Challenge

I submitted to the (Un)Common Knowledge challenge but had my story removed by Vocal because "it did not meet the requirements," per the email they sent me. Vague. I responded with an inquiry asking specifically how my story violated the guidelines and while I await Vocal's response let me submit my rejection as the factoid most of you contributing creators may not know: the selection process is subjective as quite possibly is the discretion for what stories do not meet the requirement.

Naturally, one would expect a charge of violation of the rules of any organized entity to come with a citation, evident that some stipulation was not met or some rule was violated. I did not get that. And while I understand that I chose to join and play by the rules as anyone else, I can not help but wonder if contributors have any say beyond relinquishing the intellectual property of their creations. I understand no one is forced to stay but are we at the judges' or administrators' mercy?

Do contributors have the minimal right to defend their stories or challenge an erroneous label attributed to their work? For now, I do not have the answer and while awaiting a response to my email, until it arrives, I guess the answer is no! Now let me discuss the work that was rejected. It is titled, Aging Is Poetic, and in it, I postulated that though we generally accept the effects of aging, it is unique per individual and it is one of those things that creep up on the individual in almost unnoticeable increments that we just wake up one day and find ourselves smack dab in the middle of it... and that is because we are always in the middle of it.

If we paid attention to every minutiae of life then we should not be surprised but we don't, thus we do. Here it is below for your entertainment:

'If you are fortunate to live into old age, no matter how much knowledge or preparation you arm yourself with, there will always be a few surprises about the deterioration of your wellbeing even if the surprise is that it is happening to you. Time is a one trick pony, it only just passes. However, this only trick ensures that nothing happens all of a sudden or out of the blue, as is often said of things that had not been paid attention to until they occurred. In fact time is what prevents everything from happening at once and if enough attention were paid to everything, then there won't be any surprises!

'Easier said than done. It is impossible to pay attention to everything, besides, some things happen much faster or slower than others to an extent not discernable by the naked eye and then there is distraction that takes away focus from noticeable changes. Aging happens to be one of those processes much slower than drying paint. It creeps up on you in almost unnoticeable increments and then you just wake up one day after your thirty eighth birthday to find a few strands of gray hair on your goatie!

'While we all experience the passage of time, the culmination of its effects are unique to the individual in timing, gravity and combination. I was play wrestling with my wife for less than a minute, one day after I turned forty, when she reached for my groin then suddenly shoved me and let out the universal sound of disgust, ew! Flabbergasted, I observed: With the hand that reached for me, she rubbed her thumb against the tips of the other fingers as if gesturing for cash. However she did it with the curiosity of a mechanic investigating the viscosity of fluid, trying to determine what it was, naturally preceding the quick sniff.

'"Did you just pee your pants?"

'Aghast, I proceeded with the same exploratory test but came up with the exact same conclusion the moment I touched the front of my pants. There was no need for further investigation and my wife was in stitches! I had used the restroom about five minutes prior but from childhood, I had mastered the proper hygienic protocols to ensure that such embarrassment would never happen, and there was never a situation like this when I would be forced to review that process. But it was at that moment that I recognized the quip from an old friend from a couple of decades ago.

'Tom was in his late seventies when we'd made acquaintance. Whenever we happened to share a public restroom, I mocked how long it took to ease himself. The very first times, he'd offered explanation and even sage advice but it just prolonged the jokes I would fire back so he'd reduced his response to the simple phrase, "You just wait..." I looked up at the heavens, finally acknowledging what a great come-back that was and said out loud, touché, my friend!

'For a while, my wife could not extricate herself from the laughing hysterics and verbal jabs like, "I've birthed three kids, what is your excuse?!" All I could do was join in at this point. I took quick stock of events. When I was young it was like a fire hydrant: water would come gushing out with volume and vigor to turn a turbine and generate electricity for a small village. When it is shut off, not a drop of water leaks from the hydrant. Now it's like a garden hose. When shut off, the water slowly comes to a stop but when you go to put it away more water just trickles out of the hose. I had to make the adjustment now that I became the guy at the urinal experiencing a couple of false stops as more urine come trickling out.

'And my poor wife found the humor in that but there were other transitions that were not as humorous from her perspective. She'd told me she was glad I wasn't as gassy or played the "stupid fart jokes" her friends significant others subjected them to. She'd even floated the expression, more mature, when discussing this appreciation with me. It was true. My daily routine of morning and evening bowel movements from my structured childhood ensured that even on the not so frequent, occasion outside of those times, when I did pass gas, it was "mild" enough in potency to warrant a euphemism.

'Then I turned forty-two and one night while we were asleep I felt one brewing in gut. Unbothered I readied myself for release. It sounded like the tearing of a very large and cheap fabric. My wife stirred from the noise. Then a few seconds later the thick air of unfamiliar pungency, engulfed us. And I realized that what I had reaped was very likely the space-time fabric that landed us in this other dimension where I was having difficulty opening my eyes because of fumes I had let escape my own body. It smelled more rancid than a decaying carcass and finally awoke my sleeping wife who could barely ask what it was as she gasped in disbelief and turned on the light. Did I just fart myself into a divorce? The fact that my sole response was an impish grin sealed the reap and trapped us in this new reality where I was just as disgusting as my male counterparts and those fart jokes and games would be the crutch that would help me cope with my rotting insides!

'Yes, aging is poetic in that no two people would experience it the same in spite of the general similarities. Ye might have strong feelings about waking up to a couple of gray strands of hair in your goatie, but I can assure you the shock is even greater when you'd been oblivious, your whole life, hitherto, to having a goatie in the first place. Ask my mother!'

I hope I don't get tossed out of the platform because that too could be discretionary and might be accompanied by an email telling me I violated some policy without citation when I just barely signed up a month ago.