I love to write. It’s probably the one thing that I actually love to do. Ever since Mrs. Lovich’s 5th grade reading class when, for the first time in my school career, I was the over achiever on an assignment. From what I recall of the assignment, and bare in mind this was circa 1993/1994, we had to write an ending for a short story we read. The boy in the story was given wings as a secret gift, and the bratty girl next door threaten to spill the beans unless he took her on his flying adventures. We had to write the ending, would he give into her blackmail, or would he refuse her? (Trust me when I say I’m annoyed at the gender stereotyping, but it’s besides the point at this time).
Anyway, we had two choices in this assignment; 1.) we could write/draw it as a comic strip that had to be so many frames; 2.) or we could write a paragraph. I mean a WHOLE paragraph. Like a minimum of five sentences, people! To a fifth grader, this tasking option is the equivalent of telling high school seniors they have to write a five page research paper, or college freshman they have to write a ten page one. Mind boggling!
dant dant DAAAA!!!!!!!
This was the first homework assignment I remember being excited about. And the first assignment I knew I’d get an “A” before even starting it. Everything formulated in my head before I even got home. I sat down right after school, which was a first, to write down work on this assignment. Sitting at our massive, wormy chestnut hutch, closest thing to a desk we had back then, and played a Johann Strauss CD to help the creative juices flow. I found out something about myself, I really enjoyed writing. Not only did I enjoy it, but it felt like a natural thing to do. And considering I had always had a lot of trouble reading and spelling (as I still do today), the focus and ability to complete this assignment was euphoric.
About an hour or so later, not only had I formulated five AMAZING coherent sentences, I wrote about two and a half pages of sentences! That’s about four whole paragraphs! That’s right paragraph in the plural! Strauss’s face paced, “Eljen a Magyar!” providing the perfect soundtrack for the moment. I couldn’t say, “fuck yeah!”, back then to celebrate so I’ll needlessly add it now, fuck yeah! No wonder overachievers are so damn bubbly! The feeling of accomplishment, and being proud of it, is like being jacked-up on Jolt cola while riding a giant roller coaster.
The following day, I gave Mrs. Lovich my assignment in the morning, way before reading class. She was so impressed with the effort and outcome of my assignment that instead of making me do the scheduled lesson in the computer lab, she let me type out my story. When I was finished typing, which took FOREVER!, I had a full page (plus one sentence on the back) double-spaced, in print. PRINT! I know it is hard to contemplate now, but back the (about 18 years ago oh-my-god-I-just-gave-myself-a-gaint-reality-check!) having computer access was a privilege, not a necessity. When the page come out the printer and I held it in my hand, I was proud of myself for the first time in my life. I overachieved and easily aced an assignment and loved every minute of it!
.....And then reading class started. Mrs. Lovich said we had to share our assignments with the class. I almost crapped myself. Another of life’s firsts.
I’d rather not recall the feeling of everyone staring at me while I read. Blood rushes to my cheeks just thinking about it. ..... *shudder*. Of course, Mrs. Lovich started at one side of the room, while I was on the other side. Meaning, I was one of the last people to share my assignment. And I realized another thing about myself from this experience, I sweat and blush profusely when I’m nervous.
As everyone began to share, certain things started to jump out at me. The first thing was, almost everyone did the comic drawing with the minimal frame requirement. Of course, there were a few who did above and beyond for this choice. It was the kids who showed exceptional talent in drawling at an early age. I’ve always been jealous of people with this talent. Most of these kids live in New York now, and have really awesome creative jobs that pay well. I’m still jealous of these people. The few who did the paragraph option only wrote a single paragraph. The exception was one boy who wrote two. He didn’t look happy when he saw my filled page that was typed on fancy computer paper.
And the second thing that jumped out at me was that everyone wrote the scenario of our protagonist boy with wings giving into the bratty girl’s blackmail. I was the only one who chose to explore the “tell the bitch to shove it” scenario. I don’t really remember how I worked the story out, but I know I didn’t give the brat hat she wanted. Foreshadowing of my personality.
When it was finally my turn to share, I had to read the whole page. That’s a lot for a fifth grader! And the sweating was now accompanied by dry mouth! But when I finally finished, I got a hardy round of applause. And I actually felt good about myself.
I want to find that proud feeling of accomplishment again. I haven’t written anything in over a year. The last thing I wrote was describing in detail what work I did during my graduate internship and a giant research paper for 19th century British Literature (the last piece of writing I did, two years ago, that I was proud of). I haven’t written anything creative in almost three years. In that time, I’ve worked as a waitress in a sports bar that was a small step above a honkey tonk (which I’ll be writing a lot about, I know it), a tutoring job that I loved but was sent to hell in a hand basket due to corporate greed and idiocy, and another waitressing job and a bartending job that recently came to an end (fortunately, I wasn’t sadden for long, nor surprised by this outcome).
A former professor of mine once said about blogging, “One day we woke up and became interesting. And felt the need to share it with the world.” He was right in a way. A lot of bloggers are really self absorbed or shallow entertainment that allow us to forget our own problems for ten minutes. Of course we all know that ten minutes on a single blog, easily turns into three or four hours of internet surfing. But i want to use the blog tool to accomplish two things in my life; the first is to write everyday. Write about anything that comes to mind and get back into the hobby of writing. To find the excited fifth grader who was so excited to write a story down on a piece of paper; and the second is to get over the fear of allowing others to read and judge my writing.
So far I’m off to a great start. This entry is almost two pages, single-spaced this time, long. I haven’t quit found that fifth grade girl yet, but at least I’m now looking for her.
Word count 1254
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