Take One

It was a large, urban middle school tucked away in the corners of St. Paul, Minnesota. I say "middle school," but it was a junior high. It was my junior high, but it was also yours.

And my hair was greasy because showers had not occured to me as a possible solution to loneliness yet. My cheeks were chubby because sufficient exercise seemed foreign and my legs were not yet agreeing to the final battle with gravity. And, believe it or not, I had not friends.

The solution was simple. Coming from the popular boy in elementary school, I knew how to change my status now that I was among a new crowd. I joined the chess club. And then the math team. And soon, I was well established with the other low-level social parasites of an already bitter junior high school stratusphere (spelled, to wit, with a "u").

It was at this state that I entered 7th Grade English class. The teacher was young, beautiful, and on the minds of most of my male comrades in class. She made us laugh, she asked us to think, and she even embarrased herself on occasion for our amusement. I cherished her class, sitting there, learning about commas, adverbs, only halfly listening to the intricacies of writing and spelling I would rarely remember and only recently care that I had forgotten. But I was not there for the commas or comas or whatever other trinkets she was selling. I was there for inspiration.

It came in the form of a Halloween Story. And only after writing "Halloween Story" can I remember when, in this first year, this change happened. I'm guessing around Halloween.

You agree.

It started innocently enough. I actually remember the Little House on the Prairie episode where teacher Laura goes to the well around the back of the school. Or maybe schoolgirl Laura does this. Or Ma, or Michael Landon, or someone for sure went to the damn well behind the damn school and my 7th grade mind went click.

What clicks a mind? I had never read a book. Never. I had seen books. I had pretended to read books. Hardy Boys and ... other books that you wouldn't be able to remember the names of if you hadn't actually read the books, either. I was bad at words. I was a late reader who gave up early and just put on a show later on. I was easier to work with if I put on a show. You are, too, just so you know.

But something clicked and the idea was born. Born for a television set, a television show, and a school girl in the pioneer days. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit it -- every single other damn idea in the Halloween Story I will write (later on in this story) came from some image in some movie or television show. These images, the screenwriters and screenplay writers of the early, mid, and late 80's, did not shape my mind, they created it.

I apologize ahead of time for this.

I could probably find the story. I used to be like that -- the one that saved his homework from 7th grade. I've improved, but give me a couple days and we'll prove or disprove that statement. Stay tuned.

Two boys misbehave. The tension.

Two boys lure their teacher from the one-room school house out back. The plot line.

Two boys trick the teacher to look over the edge. The climax.

Two boys push the teacher into the well. The end.

It was (and is) not a work of literary genius. I can never claim I was a born writer. I'm okay with that. To be fair, however, it ended with a clever flair. What? How the heck should I know. But I know it was there, something that guided the reader to the edge of the well, suspected but did not assume the worst, and then with a subtle inuendo, let the reader presume the worst. In essence, the story ended with the reader feeling like HE or SHE was the one that decided to murder the teacher. In summary, YOU.

And in her beautiful voice, in front of all the other assholes that wrote notes about my ugliness, that laughed at the lunch table one over from mine about my clothes, my hair, the people I sat with, Ms. Wonderful English Teacher praised openly my story. I remember where she was standing in the room. I remember where I was sitting in the room. Like when the Challenger exploded, this moment would act as a landmark in my memory lane. (and you and I BOTH know that line had to have been used somewhere else by some other writer during some other time)

Then she read it.

I can't remember what the others' did. Laugh? Mock? Sit in awed silence? In truth, they weren't there. None of them. My memory has me at the desk two rows back, three in from the right, in that fake, plasticy type of wood desk that obese kids had to squeeze into and always felt too tall for me. The ones with metal baskets underneath the seat. Then my memory has Her, standing to the right of the blackboard, in front of the door as if to insist that no one leave before this story is complete. The clock ticking above her. And no one else. Empty. She read me my story and I listened, as if a new story had been created, that if for the first time I was actually listening to a story, understanding a novel, actually reading.

A writer was not born that day. For heaven's sake, I don't know when this writer will be born.

But that unedited piece of garbage with a hint of something special...

The inspiration that a disgusting boy could do something good, and maybe even with words...that was the birth occuring this day.

And because of her and because of that story, we now have this blog. There will be unedited pieces here. There will be garbage here. But hopefully, with inappropriate adverbs, poor spelling, and a plethera of commas, there will hide hints of something special...

Welcome.