Things didn’t get any better once you got up and moving.

My God it's windy. I was walking back from the Willis Library and my jean jacket was all blown open like I was challenging someone to punch me in the chest. No one did thankfully, and I made it home with my Health class notes.

I was thinking about the very first story I ever wrote, the beginning of my career. I was in sixth grade, and found myself in school during the summer for some discouraging report cards. I failed math, so I was put in summer school with the summer classes featuring children from sixth grade and below. I was the tallest.

Accelerated Reader. The program designed to force kids to read in some cereal prize box, Chuck E. Cheese way. If your class gets a certain number of points, something crazy happens in your class. Pizza in school! Soda! What, the teacher is also enjoying a slice of pepperoni! Topsy-turvy world it is. While in summer school though, we did it invidually. Everyone thought it was an alright idea, and read dinky kids books for about 2 pts. apiece. They were flipping through books on motorcross races or Moviebooks (Books that came after the movie depicting the main aspects, i.e. I read Mac and Me.)

I read Greek and Norse Mythology. Points assigned each book: 10. By the end of the sessions, I was in the lead with over 100 points.

Well, as a challenge we had to write about the books we read. I had just read a book on Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in ancient Italy. I wrote a story about a man named Locrates (cleverly changing the S to an L because of my pedestrian greek name knowledge) the man frozen in time a la' molten rock. He made baskets and had a son (who had no name) and a wife that worked in another town. I wrote about how sad he was that all he made was baskets, and that he wanted his wife back so they could make more baskets and they'd be rich. It was an awesome story, a great basic plotline, and I even wrote after he died, that he was really surprised that he was killed.

I got an award for it, and all the teachers got a copy of it. I wish I could find it to re-write it, but I don't know which box at home it's in. I just really liked that story.