When I got to grade school, I was asked to write a story
about spring. The Easter bunny seemed a likely subject, but most of my other
classmates where already writing about him. So I penned the story of the little
known Easter Worm. He wanted it more and worked harder than the bunny because
of his disability – what with having no limbs and all. My carefully handwritten
story had the honor of being stuck to the fridge with magnets for all to see -
alongside my recipe for homemade pizza dough that included detailed directions to
‘pinch the crust as high as mountains’. My mom loved both these stories so much.
Although I wrote them over 35 years ago, we were talking about them as recently
as 2 months ago.
When I was older, I was prone to ear infections and missed a
lot of school. During one of my prolonged absences, I decided to write a story and
took a legal –sized pad of paper and pencil with me everywhere I went. The story was about a runaway girl and her
pony, and they are stranded in high tide against the bluffs of a beach. Riveting,
right? I guess I have a story after all.
My best friend and I were totally horse crazy, and to that
end I spent hours of time playing with model horses, playing ‘horse’ at school
– which involved lots of galloping around and whinnying, and endless road trips
imagining a wild, black stallion running alongside our car, trying to catch a
glimpse of the small girl in the back seat. I had an ongoing dialogue in my
head about the fantasy horses that I owned and the wacky situations we got
ourselves in, while I drove our neighbors crazy as I played hand ball against
the side of their apartment for hours: ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung.
I’ll end my qualification with two short anecdotes from high
school. I’ll elaborate in greater detail later but when I was 16, I got sober.
I had an English class where we were required to keep a journal. Our teacher
would scan the journals, just to ensure we were actually writing and not just
repeating a single word over and over: bewbs, bewbs, bewbs, bewbs.
Obviously, I love writing - so this was a fun, easy
requirement. I also found that journaling was very cathartic and I wrote out my
beginning experiences as a sober alcoholic. I took the teacher at his word, and
also figured no one would be interested in what I wrote anyway. That is, until
he returned disclosed that he’d read every
word. I was more than a little sketched out – but also flattered…in a
creepy way. He’d been touched by my experience and told me that he was rooting
for my recovery.
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