Reasons for Writing

I started writing for two reasons. The first was spite.

I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. My childhood was less than stable and for that year I was living with my mother and sister on a farm in Elk River. We didn't own the farm. There was some arrangement between my mother and the wealthy family employing her. She took care of the farm while they were gone for a year, and so we lived there. Moving wasn't really a shock for me at that point. By the time I was in the fourth grade,I had already been in at least 5 different schools.

I loved to read, though. Maybe because books were constant when nothing else was. When I very young, we had a collection of books from the '50s that I would "read" which mostly meant looking at the pictures or memorizing words to pretend I could read. I even had the old Dick and Jane primers, and eventually I did actually learn to read that way. I was a bit of a puzzle in kindergarten, or so I was told. The teachers felt I was academically advanced but socially delayed. This, the reoccurring theme of my life.

I digress, I was speaking of spite and the fourth grade. Mostly, I am talking about my language arts teacher whose name I honestly don't remember. I think, in my youth, I blotted her out of my memory in a fit of righteous anger. I am many things, but I am certainly no saint. My public school career is spotty in many ways, and my hatred of busy work and pointless home work was evident from my earliest days. I don't cheat, though.

Actually, I cheated once. I cheated on a science test in the second grade. I kept transposing the numbers in the temperature of a normal human body, 98.6 become 96.8 over and over. I became paranoid I was going to get it wrong, so I wrote
the number on a piece of paper and put it in my desk in such a way that I could see it when I dropped a pencil. I then dropped my pencil and checked my answer. I didn't even need the paper. This was my one transgression.

Don't get me wrong. There was plenty of work I didn't do. There was plenty of times that teachers and I did not see eye-to-eye, but I didn't cheat. To be honest, I didn't really care enough to cheat. I let others cheat off me all the time. If it made their lives easier, why not? I wasn't invested in their learning. I wasn't there to get good grades. I wasn't even there to make friends. I liked school for the libraries and the computers. I liked the clean halls and silent spaces that were escapes from my daily life. I wasn't there for them. I was there for me.

I was nine years old, and I was excited. I wrote a story for school. I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure story. I had been telling stories my entire life, but until then the stories had been for me. My imaginary worlds were internal creations. I had never thought or considered that I could write them down like others did. It was a sort of magic, and I was so proud of what I written. I wish I still had that story, but she never gave it back. That language arts teacher with the smug smile, the hair that reeked of perm solution, and makeup that was out of date before the dawn of the Korean war, looked down at me and told me that I must have copied the story. I didn't even know how to react to the accusation. I was angry, but not in a way that made sense to me then. I didn't understand what it meant to mourn. She took my creation and she killed it, but I was still too young to have a way to express that. I did eventually cry at home in my room. I sobbed until I was sick. I was
crying and angry, and I still couldn't make sense of it. She called me a liar and cheat and threw it away. I learned my lesson. I never gave her anything I cared about again. I remember nothing of her class. I will never forget that moment, though.

I kept writing. I kept writing because fuck her. These were my words and my stories. I didn't need her to tell me I could write them. I didn't need her to approve or pat me on the head. She may have thrown that story away, but I would write ten thousand more. I would revel in them, and so I did. Never underestimate the righteous rage of a child with stories dancing in his head. And to my false accuser, the nemesis of my nine-year-old self, who is probably long dead and gone, I offer nothing.

I don't even remember your name.