“Go. Go write a blog post. I’ll do the dishes,” my wife said. “When’s the last time you wrote one?”
“Late September.”
“Oh, and the last one you wrote is the one I tore apart. I remember now. What a softy you are.”
“Yup.”
So I’m out of practice. “I don’t know what to write,” I said.
“Just write something.”
There. My job is now done. The word “something” appears in that last sentence (you saw it, didn’t you?). I have a long history of attempting to duck writing assignments through wiseguy methods:
In my college days, I snootily refused to write anything my teachers wanted me to. For my college English term paper at the end of my first and only semester at NYU, instead of digesting and regurgitating three months’ worth of Herr Professor’s grievously mind-numbing rants on how every atom of reality is part of a great, spiraling dance of life exemplified by Breugel’s painting the Kermesse, I handed in a book of total doggerel and aggressively minimalistic poetry, some only one word in length. Example:
TITLE
Poem.
He wasn’t pleased, amused or impressed, and I received no credit for the class whatsoever. And this from a kid who, at age ten, once wrote with absolute conviction, in nice cursive script that this middle-aged incarnation can’t even begin to imitate today, that he would one day be a writer. I still have that book of poetry, though, along with its cartoon illustrations done by my roommate. And I still have my solemn declaration of career destiny.
A few weeks ago, my mom gave me a box containing every report card the North Syracuse Central School System ever gave me. My grades were usually pretty high, but reading some of the comments I’d received really depressed me. They were from some of my favorite teachers, too, the ones I thought I had a real rapport with. I remembered joking around with them a lot and hanging out after class. One even let me borrow her Peter, Paul and Mary albums during my hippie folkie phase. “Work often incomplete or poorly done,” read one comment. “Writing skills weak,” said another. I had let them down.
Whatever my sieve-like memory had to say about how much I entertained them, when it came down to actual performance, I was a disappointment (except maybe for one total piece of B.S. I actually got an “A+” for, Eating Habits of the Iroquois).
I know they’re probably not reading this. They might not even remember making those comments to my much younger self, who had a different name than the one I’m known by now anyway. They might not even think they’d ever find any evidence of my continued existence in the form of a single publicly written word, but if you’re there, Ruth R., Debbie W., I’m sorry. I’ll try and make it up to you. See? At least I wrote something today. Twice.
What a frickin wiseguy. Let me tell you “something.” You’re lucky that routine capital punishment in schools was phased out by the time you arrived. Or maybe not.
It’s “corporal,” not “capital,” punishment, unless you’re teachers wanted to kill you. Lucky for you that mistake was in the comments and not in the blog post proper, otherwise it would have knocked your grade down.
That’s “your teachers,” not “you’re teachers.” This blog is a bad influence on me.
living up to potential (some elusive internal metric they declined to share to us)…. is what i think Ruth et al were always worried about. in retrospect perhaps it was code for “develop sufficient willingness to apply oneself so as to be able to leave this place”
E. D.
I enjoy your writing and I appreciate your encouragement regarding my writing. With that encouragement and other experiential moments, I have been writing…not finishing, but writing.
With Love,
C.D.