Two Pages

This morning I was talking to my mother when my blog came up in the discussion. She told me my fourth grade teacher would be happy about my blog because it is just like writing in my 'Two Pages' notebook. I thought about it for a second, and realized she was completely right. 

In fourth grade we were required to have a notebook to be used only for writing assignments. We were asked simply to fill two pages in the notebook with creative writing every week. You could write anything you wanted. It could be a story that you made up, or just random thoughts or ideas, or as I found out, even just write a bunch of jokes to amuse the teacher. At first glance it seems fairly easy. Just write something, and you get a week to do it. Well, when you are a fourth grade slacker prone to procrastination those writing deadlines seem to come up really quickly. I'm not sure how, but it seemed to me that every time the day arrived to turn in the notebook, I had not yet started writing. 

Fourth grade seems a bit premature to have come down with writer's block, so I'm guessing it was panic that made the job so difficult to accomplish under such impossible time constraints. Week after week I was forced to write two pages of material early in the morning, before the school bell rang. Desperately trying to come up with something to get down on the paper I tried everything I could think of. Being class clown seemed to be my role, so I tried writing jokes. You wouldn't think that coming up with original jokes could be so hard, but it seriously is. (Except for those darn sitcom writers who seem to do it week after week. God bless them for helping to make me less productive even as an adult.)

I wrote lame jokes, stories with endings that oddly concluded exactly on the last line of the second page, humorous poetry, even long winded two page excuses for why I didn't have anything to write about that week. Through it all, week after week Mr. Andrews made sure I turned in that notebook. Looking back at it now, I see how important that notebook was. It forced me to think creatively, to work under pressure, to complete a task, to practice my writing skills, and to learn that even under pressure I could do it. 

It was, at the time a silly fourth grade notebook. As I got older I thought about it quite often. I don't know how many college papers were put off until the last minute and I would remember that notebook and think,"It's Two Pages all over again". I always knew that I would get it done. I even started to enjoy the pressure of time. I remember several times, most likely in an alcohol induced stupor, that I actually thought to myself,"I don't need to do it today, I work better under pressure". Somehow, just thinking it seemed to make it come true. 

As I got older, and yet older still, I realize that I have always loved writing. I have some type of need to express things in writing and I wonder if that weekly assignment wasn't somehow the cause of it. When I got a motorcycle in my late thirties, one of the first things I did was start a blog to express what I was feeling and seeing and experiencing. It is almost as if it doesn't really count if you don't write about it and share it. I know that is strange, but there is something about writing it down that I love. The line from Socrates that says, "an unexamined life is not worth living" may express it better. Writing just helps me take a look at what I have done, and then as you write about it you have a chance to examine it and see who you are a little better. 

So here I am with yet another milestone in my life, raising children, and soon after the urge to write comes back. It is something I should learn about myself I guess. I like to write. I may as well face it, it is my therapy and my memory aid at the same time. Thank you Mr. Andrews for encouraging that with that crazy two pages assignment week after week. Thank you to all my other teachers along the way who pushed me, and forced me to write down my ideas and thoughts. Now when people say my posts are too long, I can always point the finger to all of you and say, "It's their fault." Now, on the other hand, the people who want to know why I didn't actually learn how to write well, that's my fault. Ill keep trying, and maybe someday I'll get a whole blog post without a dangling participle, run on sentence, or even a single split infinitive.