Rummaging through the old files

One of the things about moving back home is that it gets you in close proximity to childhood memories, mementos and other items. Recently, as I was cleaning up my room, I dug up several file folders of papers from my high school years, and gripped by a nostalgia kick, I went through them. Which led to two different conclusions:

First, I can’t believe some of the stuff I was allowed to get away with.

And two, for someone who wasn’t thought of as the writer in the family, I sure did a hell of a lot of writing.

In hindsight, I realize I was very, very lucky. My brother’s reputation for his writing skills had preceded me, as he was a couple of years older and already making himself known as a young playwright of note. So it was to be expected that I should be compared to him, especially in English class. But even though we shared many of the same teachers, the comparisons weren’t so direct. One of his teachers, Mrs. Webb, was mine for three consecutive years. And even though I wouldn’t say she was an inspiration to our entire class — her background was history and it often seemed like she was teaching the English curriculum a bit by rote — she had one knack: if a student was smart, wrote good essays and obviously had ideas, she knew enough to leave them alone to do their thing. Probably because she was, secretly, very amused by what people like myself came up with.

As I leafed through those old papers, all the things I’d learned in those formative years came back to me. I’m still mortally offended by comma splices. Learning how to write a precis of an essay, I’m sure, indirectly influenced my ability to review books in a concise fashion. But most of all, I was allowed to be fairly creative, and since I never took an English class during my university years, it was an instinct that, while not stifled, was quite muted.

Of course, there was crap. Lots of it. Bad poetry, horribly insular short stories that had no plot, bad jokes, or were thinly-veiled versions of my Tortured Life at the time. But then again, I’ll look back at some of the stuff I’m writing now with the same sort of disdain. But there was, to my surprise, enough that I’m still oddly proud of. Like my senior history paper on Crime in the 1920s where, in discussing a particular pet case, I reasoned that it would never be solved because “all the suspects are dead anyway.”

Or the senior English essay exam, where the night before I’d dreamed that I’d written a brilliant piece comparing the Great Gatsby to 19th century Italian Opera (of Puccini, Leoncavello and Mascagni type.) I woke up the next morning and hoped like hell I’d be able to use it because, dammit, this was brilliant and original. I got to the exam room, looked at the question, which was so vague that I could have written about anything I damn well wanted, and went to work. The logic looks more muddled now, but then again, I doubt it’s a comparison anyone had made up till then.

But two pieces still linger in my mind, one for sheer audacity, and one that still holds up. The first was a short compare/contrast essay where the students were asked to find five poems that had something in common — a theme, a setting, whatever. I cannot for the life of me remember what possessed me to do this, but I decided to look at five poems by one of the most prolific, popular and enduring writers of our time: Anonymous. With perfect seriousness I chose five poems with little in common except their byline, although I think I argued that hiding your name allowed you particular freedoms, and suggested (without much proof, of course) that many women used this byline as a means to make their voices heard.

Not only was I not laughed out of class, I got an A- on the paper. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Webb rolled her eyes when I told her what I planned to do, but she said as long as I made my case, I was welcome to try.

The second piece was written for a junior year class focusing solely on creative writing. Oddly — or not — I didn’t think I was all that successful in the course, probably because I knew I was writing useless crap for the most part (though I still got decent marks.) But in keeping with the class, we were asked to do some kind of piece about creativity and its importance. So I came up with a story in the style of a children’s fable where creativity was invented by a bored caveman who was sick of looking up at the clouds and only seeing certain images: horses, cows and elephants. But his friend didn’t get it, and was not “burdened” with the gift of creativity. I even threw in a moral, since it was a fable after all. And even though I wrote it more than 10 years ago, I’m still fond of that sucker.

So that brings me to my question: what was the first piece of writing you did that you’re still proud of? What is it, and why?