What is satire if not a desperate cry for attention? That sweet, sweet attention I crave because as a child I was told I was great at everything, only to become a malnourished ball of alcohol dependence and wasted potential.

I joined The Lemon Press in September 2024 in an attempt to have someone laugh at the things I say, which I always consider to be hilarious. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to have a few of my signature below-average-quality articles featured in Issue 62. This is not important though, what’s relevant is my family’s reaction to this whole writing for a magazine deal.

I come from a little city in Argentina, a country in which universities don’t have societies or student media, so for all my parents know, I’m a published author (perhaps due to the ambiguous nature of my text messages).

Also, because of how fast news spreads in a small  town, there are now a bunch of people back home that think I’m a relatively successful writer and the best part is that they’re not going to check. Most of them don’t even speak English or have any idea of what “a Charlie Jeffery” is (apparently like a lot of people at this University).

Some people even think that I am an editor-in-chief of something (which I am definitely not) and it’s pretty nice to be the boy that made it in the first world. Now my friends respect me and my grandparents think I am developing my intellectual and creative side, when in reality I wrote an article about an old man’s pubes.

The moral of this story? Join TLP, it has the lowest entry requirements and now I’m so high on validation that I might accept that I probably need therapy.

First published in Issue 63