quietlyradical

I love writing.  I’ve loved it since I wrote my first serious essay at age 13, a logical, reasoned treatise on the injustice imposed by my 8th grade substitute social studies teacher.  Our regular teacher was on maternity leave and our class had the misfortune of inheriting a portly, balding, social studies zealot who inexplicably managed to have gigantic perspiration stains spreading from the armpits of his usually orange or lime green oxford cloth shirts every morning by 9:00 AM, even in the dead of Indiana winters.

His name escapes me now (our unhappy acquaintance does date back to 1976, after all) but not his incredibly uninspired teaching style, which consisted mainly of scrawling nearly illegible “bullet points” on the board which we were expected to copy and recreate, in exact detail on the “essay” tests that he gave us after the completion of each chapter.  This wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that our regular teacher, a dynamic woman, with porcelain skin, piercing blue eyes, and flaming red hair (sort of a 1970s version of modern-day actress Julianne Moore) was an incredible teacher.  In those “pre-Internet” days she worked hard to capture our imaginations, using everything from international students from the local university as guest speakers to talk about their native countries, to showing vacation slides from her own extensive world-wide travels to teach us about the world.  Mrs. M. had encouraged us to question and discuss the topics at hand; “Mr. Sweatstains”, on the other hand, employed a “shut up and copy this down” attitude that, even as adolescents, most of us found insulting.

Consequently, a few of our classroom compatriots launched an open rebellion, carrying on full conversations and passing notes with no pretense of paying attention.  I realize that this seems tame, even quaint when compared to the often criminal forms of misbehavior that might occur in a similarly situated (aka “lower socio-economic neighborhood”) middle school today, nevertheless, “Sweatstains” wasn’t having it.  And so, one day he bellowed that “since our classmates wouldn’t stop talking, our entire class would have to stay after school.”

I was normally a quiet, bookish kid, one of only two African-American students in my school’s gifted and talented program.  As a result there was intense pressure from parents and grandparents to avoid drawing negative attention.  “Be a credit to your race,” had been my grandmother’s genteel mantra before her death during my 6^th grade year.  My mother, a bit more “real” in her approach, often issued the stern warning, “Don’t be ‘niggerish’!” which I very much took to heart.

But a detention!  Especially when I (and the vast majority of the class) had not been talking was the last straw.  This injustice could not go unanswered.  The most “civil” form of disobedience that I could think of was to write an essay about the inadvisability of “punishing the masses for the sins of a few”, which is exactly what I did.  My literary masterpiece has, unfortunately been lost over time.  It was probably unceremoniously tossed out by my mom (along with my Barbie paraphernalia and my Ripley’s Believe It or Not board game).  But somehow, in my hormone driven indignation, I apparently showed some promise as an actual writer.  I shared it first with the girls with whom I carpooled to school and one of them read it out loud to her mother (the driver that day).  Emboldened by the high praise my friend’s mother gave me on my “mature and intelligent writing style” I surreptitiously began to circulate the work among the rest of the class.  Remember, this was 1976, the “Dark Ages” before email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. In those days a “blog post” consisted of writing on lined notebook paper, with a 99 cent Bic© pen, folding the paper into an intricate “packet” and sliding into your friends’ lockers and under the milk cartons on their cafeteria trays.  Despite ( or perhaps because of)  this archaic “publishing” method,  eventually, “Mr. Sweatstains” got hold of it, and while it unfortunately did not save our class from the group detention, we did notice a subtle change in his attitude after that (as in less copying from the board and more actual class discussion).

I think that it was then that I came to realize the power of the well-written word.  Writing served me somewhat well in the ensuing years in the form of college scholarships, solid grades, and a respectable pace of career advancement during my years in corporate America.  However, I was always far too practical to consider writing as a full-time career.  But five years ago, having had enough of the politeness-filled snake pit that is the corporate world, I took a major leap, returning to school for a Master’s degree in Education and a new career teaching English to adult immigrants at a community college for a fraction of the pay.

Three years ago, I made a tentative effort to pursue writing in a more serious way by starting this blog.  Unfortunately, a “series of very unfortunate events” (to quote the masterful Lemony Snicket) occurred soon after, which rendered my writing dream, while not quite dead, definitely in a sorrow-induced coma.  But tragedies often provide the raw material for the most compelling stories and so I return for another go at following the “call” that I discovered in 8^th grade social studies all those years ago.   While I may never make my living as a writer I realize that I have missed the calming effect that it seems to have upon me.  British novelist, Graham Greene said it best, “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” Writing is less dangerous than drugs and alcohol (although for those who love it, I’m not sure that it is any less addictive) and far less expensive than years of therapy.  So I begin again…to write and to experience the soothing power of words.