where the fuck've you been?
Mar 16, 2011 In their last visit to Chicago, my Mom and Dad brought me up a box of old "stuff" ... papers from high school, playbills from various productions I had either acted or directed in, copies of the school newspaper I used to write for and eventually became editor of. Yesterday, I opened it up and was looking through some of it, surprised at how much writing there was in there. I had a letter from twenty years ago (almost to the day) from the superintendent of our school system, commending me for my "insightful and respectful" writing on some subject I had long forgotten about.
What struck me the most was nothing individual. But the whole of it overwhelmed me. It was a lot of writing, and it was probably only a smattering of what I had written since I was old enough to put pen to paper. I used to type up articles that I made up on this old Smith Corona, cut them out, and carefully glue them onto a larger piece of paper, so that my dad could take them to work and copy them for me. I passed them out to everyone I knew, which in my small world at that time consisted of a circle of maybe 15 people, most of them related to me.
Since as far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to be A Writer.
What I didn't realize until right this moment is that I have always been a writer. So, I will do as writers do, and I will write.
I'm back, baby.
Reader Comments (2)
Welcome back, HCG!
How nice that they kept all that for you! Did you see anything that your teenage self wrote that is contrary to what your...ahem.."adult" self would scribe?