I don't really think about any of the time I spent living in Big Lake when I was younger. Big Lake, Texas. It was named during a wild rain storm that filled a huge land depression in which dried up not too long after. They got stuck with a name and nothing to really show for it, forcing a lot of people to move away. We moved there in the eighties. We lived there for quite a while, I went to school there for several years, Seth was born in San Angelo. I thought we'd live there forever, and I was happy about it. My dad was offered a job eventually and it was to two different places: Big Spring, TX to continue working for Champion Technologies or to Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. Apparently we chose the former.
Having to move was really traumatic for me, becuase my world was confined to those streets and my only friend Chad who had a treehouse in a land that practically had no trees. This not only just made him my friend, but the most popular kid in fifth grade and I was his best friend. I had commodity. Value. My parents taking that away has pretty much left a permanent scar on me. Still, I miss Chad, and that treehouse.
We moved without any fanfare or sobbing, we just left one morning and the next week I was in a new school in a different town with different kids who all seemed smaller than me and all had acne. Where had my youth gone? I spent the next few years wearing my jacket year round and drawing Wolverine and Spiderman on every available space I had. I was pretty good, except I couldn't draw hands. Still can't. All those drawing so Cyclops and Storm and Venom, they all have their hands clasped behind their backs in the most unassuming attack position.
It was after a stint in the seventh grade and failing a class I can't recall (probably something to do with Science, as my Dad, Super-Chemist, shakes his head) I ended up in Summer School. I was lumped in with fifth, six, seventh and eighth graders so that made me older yet without the air of an eighth grader, who all seem to wear their pants a little longer.
I guess this is leading up to my introduction into wanting to be a writer. We had a class loosely based around English fundamentals (i before e and whatnot) that offered a "creative writing group". I joined becuase I just wanted to sit closer to the window so I could watch the birds(!). We had to write a short story based on something historical, my foray into historic fiction. Everyone wrote about WWII or something like that. I wrote about Mt. Vesuvius and a pottery maker that thought he could make it by hiding in one of his big vases. I'll spoil the ending for you, he didn't make it.
Well, my teacher read it, and then for some reason shared it with the other summer faculty while probably smoking outside or considering a career change. They all liked it, so much that I had to read it aloud to them. What fun! The teacher, a humdrum Mrs. Bost with apples and rulers on her vest, typed it out and gave a copy to my parents who promptly put it away somewhere without glancing at it. I think then I knew I wanted to dedicate more time to writing. I'm not going to be cheesy and say I want to be a writer so my parents notice me, that's only 96% of it. I just want to do it. I feel compelled to do it, a hidden force pushing me. I remember writing that, and everyone noticing that it was good, typed up good, and that didn't make me wear my jacket as much, or draw comics alone in my room as much.
Although I still don't take my jacket off while in class and I still want to draw superheroes when I see fresh white sheets of paper, I still want someone else to type for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment