Say Goodbye to Writing?

Me saying goodbye to writing should have taken place in high school. The class that would have made any ordinary student wish they had dropped out of school and joined the military was American Literature. Thank God it was not a required class for graduation, just like the English class we had to attend during our four years. In our not-so-favorite class, we had to learn spelling, grammar, punctuation, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, blah blah, well, you get the picture. I remember my English teacher, Ms. Blue; I called her because her hair was blue, which was way out of the ordinary when I attended King High School in the 80s. She would come by our desks in nice, neat rows about seven deep and six across. She would present us with a laminated card that looked like it was done cheaply at the local Staples, UPS, or with a home kit and say, “Go ahead and read the third paragraph and tell me all the mistakes you find.” Of course, there was the obvious, such as the missing capital letters at the beginning of a sentence or on important nouns, such as the name of a person or place. Also, we did not capitalize the months of June and August. Easy, peasy. There was also the end of sentences that did have punctuation marks such as period, question marks, or exclamation marks. I did not forget the quotation marks around phrases when a subject spoke and the occasional commas sprinkled here and there. I even made a good guess about the semi-colon. Ms. Blue would assess your responses and explain why you thought the paragraph was wrong and why it was terrible. She will then assign a numeric grade that corresponds with the knowledge level of English grammar you have at the present moment. 

Now, someone would think that if I were at a high level of English grammar comprehension, I could skip class for the next semester and do something far more interesting, such as gym, lunch, woodworking, or driver’s education. Well, that is partially true. Even though my grammar level was pretty high, I was not given a choice to join a class that I thought would be an hour off of my busy schedule for the next semester, such as basic computer the previous year. No, I was placed in the American Literature class, where we get to write stories about Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Emily Dickinson, among others. Yes, I know what you all think, especially as a creative writer and storyteller: “I would be in writer heaven if I were attending this class.” However, as a high school student whose biggest goal was to sleep, play outside, work at a side job, and have a girlfriend, American Literature did not rank up there on my fun meter. 

                  Stepping into the American Literature class, I found myself surrounded by all the other students who were, as we say, not the most sports-thinking minds in the world. One of the things I love to do during class time is talk about sports to the person next to me. I remember in Anatomy class, I had a friend named Shane, and we would talk baseball for the whole year straight. Whether the season was in session or off-season, we would have great discussions on the winter meetings, trades, free agencies, and roster moves. However, the most exciting time of the season is when spring training hits. “Pitchers and Catchers report” was my favorite phrase of the year. These discussions were a thrill, especially in 1984 when my favorite baseball team, the Detroit Tigers, started the season with 35 wins and only five losses. The Tigers ace pitcher, Jack Morris, threw a no-hitter, a pitching masterpiece, in the first two weeks of the season against the Chicago White Sox. The team was able to ride that momentum to the World Series and won it all. Those were great conversations, and it was the best part of Anatomy class, besides tearing apart the frog during dissection week. 

                  Back to the boring American Literature class and the non-sports-minded classmates I had around me. I knew it would not be a breeze in the class when our first assignment was to write about our favorite part of the summer in 100 words or more. What, are you kidding? First, I never wrote 100 works in my life in a single sitting, except for the book report on Abraham Lincoln that I did in fifth grade. I waited until the last possible second to complete the project before turning it in to Mr. Campus. Of course, my rush to complete the report showed, and Mr. Campus was not thrilled. I received a D- for my lack of effort. When I got my report back and looked at my grade, I felt like Peppermint Patty of the Peanuts, which we all know and love from the comic strips and the holiday specials. She would get a D- no matter what from the teacher. Second,  my favorite part of the summer. I never really had a favorite part of the summer. The only thing I recall was mowing the grass at my house and my grandparent’s hacienda once a week. I barely held on to a summer job at Naugles, an upgraded Taco Bell that would make the most oversized burritos known to mankind, and hanging out by my dad’s brown Ford pickup truck surrounded by friends talking about whatever came across our minds. We also had the occasional games of hide and seek, tag, stickball, and red light, green light. We did not shoot each other with paintballs, just like “Squid Games.” Our red light/green light took place many years before “Squid Games” became famous worldwide. 

                  Struggling to finish the paper in the 45 minutes allotted, I turned in my mini masterpiece with just over 100 words, 103 to be exact, to the teacher, Ms. Jules. What I did not count on was that my paper fell way short of the mark, not by creativity but by the number of words. I thought 100 words were 100 words; what needed to be explained, or I chose not to hear, was that the 100 words had to be creative, not words such as and, but, if, it, is, and blah. The descriptive words, explained at the beginning of the class, make the story more attractive to the readers, which, of course, are your classmates and teacher. Looking closely at my paper, I can see where she came from. “Dang, she is right.” Half of my 103 mini-masterpiece were full of words such as and, if, it, is, but, and blah. Also, the content or the lack of creativity could make my dog wish he left home for the army. My non-sports-minded classmates would take this paper and post it to the “Writing Hall of Shame” bulletin board, which was located next to the door of the class where everyone from the school could read it and have a good laugh. Luckily, Ms. Jules spared me the embarrassment and told me to rewrite the paper as a homework assignment. However, the caveat was that the new mini-masterpiece had to be at least 150 words, and I could only use simple words such as and, but blah less than ten times throughout the story.  

That night, I spent two hours coming up with a great story encompassing my adventure of mowing my grandparents' grass on a hot and humid day while I watched the Seacoast Freight train and the Amtrak passenger train take their freight and passengers to their destinations. The best part of the adventure was the joy of drinking an icy glass bottle of Coca-Cola after I finished mowing the grass and cleaning out my grandmother’s flower bed, which looked like it had not been touched in two years. 

                  I turned in the paper to Ms. Jules the following day. It was much better, she said. The paper you gave me is what a story should look like. Even though I did not receive an “A” because it was my second attempt, I could appreciate what goes into writing something beautiful to the author and joy to the readers.