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Misadventures in Learning to Write

llehnerz

Over a beer, a new friend asked me when I had learned to write so well (that he thought I write well is an indication that his one drink probably hit him harder than expected). I mumbled something but it wasn’t until later that I sorted it out. That’s how it goes for me. My best answer comes long after the question is forgotten.


On my own, I tried to trace the roots of my writing practice. Where did I learn to write stories? It certainly didn’t start in grade school. My third-grade teacher, kindly, old Mrs. Rondesvedt, told me that my cursive was too sloppy to make out. When I told her I was printing, she returned to her desk to sign her retirement papers.


In fourth grade, Miss Carter, made me stay late to practice my letters on the blackboard but then shooed me away because the screeching turned her hair blue. No kidding. Ask Ron Shelton who had wonderful handwriting but was held after school on account of his limited multiplication skills. The blackboard screeching made his hair fall into a flattop and stay that way until high school.


Sweet Miss Hahn in fifth grade took a different tact when she saw my writing. “Maybe you could be a crosswalk patrol. There’s no writing and you can’t get into trouble.” I’ll disprove her theory in another post.


It didn’t get better the rest of the way. Miss Mong, my first Nelsen Junior High language arts teacher, said each of us had to read six library books during the quarter, and write book reports to qualify for an A. I read 26. I should have gotten an A+. Problem is, I barely squeaked out 3 reports. Who could write with all that reading to do?


Mrs. Treffinger, in eighth grade, was too wise to even assign me a writing project. Instead, she promised an A if I’d take the lead in a play. I was all for that until told I’d be required to kiss the co-star in front of an audience, a girl named Kathy.


I remembered Kathy as the smallest girl back in Miss Hahn’s class. For a science project about fulcrums, good hearted Miss Hahn had Kathy and me stand at different ends of a wood plank set up like a teeter totter to see who was heavier while the whole class took bets. She didn’t even suspect that a duel to be the smallest kid in class was the most painful gravity experiment since Isaac Newton got bonked on the head with a falling brick from that famous apple tree.


Kathy and I were mortified, but we bravely faced off, teeth clenched, fists pushing down against air, knees bent, doing everything we could to be second lightest kid in class. In the end, my side dipped slightly lower. I leapt in the air bouncing Kathy on top of one of the desks. She grabbed a fifth-year grammar book and fired it at me like a dangling participle. I’ll tell you one thing, if I met Kathy today, my waistline would be enough to prove gravity has, in the long run, firmly pinned the blue ribbon on my behind.


Anyway, kissing Kathy three years later was out of the question even if acting. A kiss is a kiss. I passed the lead role to my friend, John Lastala, who was no more than a pound heavier than me but a smidge smarter. He quickly agreed with Kathy to substitute an awkward handshake for a terrifying kiss. They walked away with A’s while I sat in the back of class identifying sentence fragments on sheets of mimeographed paragraphs.


My writing career might have taken off at Renton High School had I not been unfairly tossed from Mrs. Guillory’s writing class. I recently came across a handwritten note to my parents by the mistaken Madam Guillory herself (I actually liked her). “Skipped four classes. Kicked out for five days. Generally disruptive and troublesome. None too bright.” What kind of grammar is that?


Plus, it wasn’t even me, the quietest kid in the entire school that caused the trouble. Oh, she might have been referring to the time I tossed a small pebble from our second-story window at the toughest kid in school who was walking below, a linebacker named Steve Lammons. Sure, it was disruptive when he burst into the room as Mrs. Guillory called the class to order and proceeded to chase me like a bull after a squirrel around the room. But that was his doing not mine.


Or she might have considered it wrong when I cleaned a blackboard eraser all over the chair used by a kid who was wearing a suit jacket. What was he doing wearing a black suit to a public school anyway?


Or she might have thought it my fault when my friend, Mike Hughes, (Sadly, I’ve just learned we’ve lost him) went to sharpen a pencil after Mrs. Guillory passed around test papers, and I ripped his test into puzzle shaped shreds before rearranging it on his desk. I mean, he was just as likely to get true or false correct when the questions were separated from the choice of guesses. There was no excuse for him hootin’ and hollering like he was bucking a bronco, even though that was his favorite pastime.


Did I mention that school wasn’t really my cup of malarkey?


After graduation, I did take thirty-six credits at Green River Community College, earning eleven credits for my trouble. That percentage, just over .300, may not sound like much but it would earn me a gazillion dollars if I hit that well while playing major league baseball.


It wasn’t until I was in my mid-thirties that I began to take learning seriously. I enrolled in a class called Death and Living at Highline Community College during the last month of my mother’s life. The instructor, Bob Baugher, gave us an assignment of writing three pages in a journal for extra credit. I wrote daily, far more than asked, and turned it all in. Bob had lost his mother just six years earlier. He later told me he saved my journal to read before going to bed, often wiping his eyes at the too familiar emotional roller coaster I was riding.

As Mom grew weaker, I feared that I would lose my memories of her when she was gone. In addition to the journal writing, I started writing some of my favorite stories about her, mostly humorous, always bringing tears.


Mom died during the last week of that class. More than three decades later, I still think of her every day. Those healing stories were the first I ever wrote without an English teacher twisting an arm. After all these years, I still write stories to remember and smile and always to thank God for all life’s experiences and Mom for something warm and comforting to put down on paper.

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