“So why 82?” Asked John
“What do ya mean? " Replied Andy.
“Why 82 stories? Seems like quite a random number to me, why not 80, or round it up to 100 like you planned?”
This put Andy on the defensive.
“You can’t just write 100 stories like that you know. It’s not that easy.”
“But I thought your book was meant to be called 100 short stories?”
“Well I changed it, 82 is a very special number for me, it was the year I was born, it’s a happy number, plus everyone does 100. I wanted to be different!”
Andy noticed he was raising his voice. He took a deep breath, calmed himself and finished his explanation.
“It’s a great number, it’s the amount of stories I wanted to write, so it’s the amount of stores in the book. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing wrong with that mate, I was only asking, calm down.”
Andy let it go and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon with his friend.
Later that day he returned home, turned on his computer and started looking through the 18 rejected stories.