I can’t decide if it’s a miracle I became a writer, or if I was destined to become one.
After all, I had plenty of practice when I was a kid growing up in Elmwood Park and had to go home after school at John Mills Grammar School to write 500 times on sheets of lined paper: “I promise I will never throw snowballs on the playground ever again.”
By the time I had written the sentence 40 or 50 times, my hand was cramping. I hated writing those sentences — but I was quickly learning the value of editing.
Writing “never…ever again” seemed redundant. I was sure Mrs. Grothen would appreciate my careful attention to good composition, so now I was writing: “I promise I’ll never throw snowballs on the playground.” I didn’t think she’d begrudge me that contraction, either.
Oh, and it meant I had to write fewer words? Huh, how about that!
For that matter, I probably owed Mrs. Grothen thanks for taking such a vested interest in my self-improvement. After all, I had been a terror on the playground, and she only had everyone’s safety at heart. If anything, she had taken it easy on me by banning my terror spree only from the playground. I felt I owed her a deeper pledge of a lesson well learned.
Now I was writing: “I promise never to throw snowballs anywhere.” That lasted only a few sentences, before I dropped the “anywhere” altogether. After all, the “never” pretty much covered it, right? Again, away with the dreaded redundancy.
Halfway home now, and getting there pretty fast!
It occurred to me that if I taped two pencils together, I could write two sentences at the same time! They didn’t match the space between the lines exactly, but Mrs. Grothen seemed more interested in word count than in layout and design. It was a little awkward at first, but I was thrilled to see my work appear twice for a single effort!
I had become syndicated!
Still, by the time I hit sentence 400, my right hand had cramped into a fist. I switched the pencil to my left hand, which was about as nimble as a toilet brush.
Clearly more editing would be necessary, so I searched my soul to see how profoundly I had learned my lesson.
It occurred to me that snow hurled in any form — balled or otherwise — could be lethal, or at least eye-threatening, so now I was writing: “I promise never to throw snow.” It only saved me five letters to drop “balls,” but by now I was desperate.
And then at last, in a final draft after many revisions, I squeaked my little double-stub of pencil to an end with: “I won’t throw snow.”
When I handed the papers to Mrs. Grothen the next day, she took only a cursory glance at the sheets, flipping through them to the end before dropping them into the trashcan next to her desk. As it turned out, I didn’t have to unleash my carefully-rehearsed arguments defending the revisions, in the event that she challenged them in a spirited debate on literary style.
Then again, I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t offer any praise for finding my own voice as a young writer with my amendments in those wee sentences at the end. But that was fine with me, because good editing should never call attention to itself. She just nodded and said, “So, did you learn a lesson from this?”
I assured her that I had. She would never see me throw a snowball ever again on the playground — or anywhere else, for that matter. (Well, at least not until next winter, because now it was raining, the snow was almost gone, and it was nearly spring.)
“Well, that’s good,” she said. “Now, tonight please write: ‘I promise in the future that I will always do my assignments exactly as they are assigned to me.’”
I groaned, but I brightened up a bit when she said, “I don’t think it will take more than a hundred times for you to learn that lesson, do you?”
“No ma’am,” I said. “Thank you, ma’am.” And I was grateful to her, because how can any writer begrudge a reader for being hungry to see more and more from him? Even if it’s only a hundred sentences long.
I skipped home, anxious to see if six pencils could be taped together to increase my syndication exposure.
Besides, if this whole writer business didn’t pan out, I could always be an inventor.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
