The reason I want to share
this with you now is that it was certainly a turning point moment in my life,
but also, more importantly, because I am finally and utterly over it.
Okay, so the words…
I got hooked on writing when
I was pretty young. I mean, I loved to perform and direct and had huge plans
for local theatre shows or fairs that my friends would help me organize for
weeks and which then kinda fizzled out (I guess follow-through was not my
strongest suit back then). But, more than that, my precious secret was that I
was actually a writer. Scribbling
first draft work into a notepad and then meticulously transcribing the story
through my little portable typewriter. I amused myself by calling the typed
version of my work my “copyright” (copy/write… get it??? Unfortunately, when my
parents patronized me with delighted laughter about this malapropism—like I
didn’t know what I was saying!—man, was I pissed. And embarrassed.) My coup was
when I wrote a 60page novel at 13. No matter that it was a blatant rip-off of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, it was my own
beautiful creation.
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| Barbara at 10 |
Two years later, I had high
hopes for my English class. We were finally attempting creative writing and I
was sure I was a shoe-in to ace it. I would finally bring my little secret to
the light. I would be recognized. I would be renowned.
But the teacher had other
ideas in mind. She took it upon herself to stand in front of the class one day
and list all the people she believed to have genuine talent. As she pronounced
the names, I nodded in recognition—yes, she was a great storyteller; yes, he
had such a way with words—and waited with bated breath for my own name to be called.
But she continued with her list, her eyes scanning the classroom, several times
holding on me and then passing on, announcing on and on, name after name, until
the names began to lose value—what? him??? He doesn’t know a simile from a
metaphor!—until she was finished and ready to direct our attention to other English
matters.
But wait! It doesn’t end
there. As hurt and humiliated as I was (why are we humiliated by omissions that
no one else would even notice?), I swallowed past it and carried on. Until a
few days later, this same teacher called me into her office and told
me—unbidden, mind—in a calm, clear voice that she understood that when she’d
made her “talented writers” pronouncement, she’d noticed that I might have
hoped that my own name would be called, but that she was sorry she just
couldn’t do it. My memory after that is a blur: I think I nodded and kind of
wandered out into the hall, trying desperately to hold it together.
I’m pretty sure, in the end,
I kicked some creative writing butt in that class, earning high marks on all my
pieces. But I let those strangely pointed words become the mantra to which I
pursued (or didn’t) all my writing in all the years after that. I let those
words sit on my shoulder and become my cross for so many years that it finally
had no other choice but to decay and disintegrate. It wasn’t until the cross
was gone that I realized that it was gone.
(I will also allow that years
and years of writing practice—and now blogging—has helped to erase the onus.)
And I know we will all be
outraged at this teacher’s cruelty (or at least that is the most common
response when I share this story—which isn’t often), and we will wag our
fingers at her casual damage, and we will pat my back (appreciated but truly
not necessary) and comfort me. But I wanted to share this with you because I think,
in many ways and in ongoing ways, we are always
talking to our 12-year-old selves. Or at least we are trying to. And we ARE
changing our personal histories by listening to our older, more mature selves
and … well, getting over it.
Revenge is a dish best … left
in the kitchen.
Deb: Barb, this is so poignant. I agree that we are always talking
to our 12-year-old selves and I love this story. I certainly don’t love it for
the pain it caused you, but rather for the lesson it taught you. You did it.
You kept doing it!!! Do you know how many people would have never put pen to
paper again? In this instance, you do not need to go back and talk to your
12-year-old self. Your 12-year-old self got it, I think. It just took some
years of maturing to set it in stone. Well done. You should lay your head on
the pillow and say Mrs. (insert teachers name), today I am a writer.
