SAY THANKS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

SAY THANKS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

I started this blog because I like to write and sometimes I actually have something to say.  I’ve read other writer’s blogs and they talk a lot about writing but they also put in recipes, stories about their kids, their dogs and what they had for lunch and with whom.  I didn’t know you could do all that.  I thought a writing blog was supposed to be about writing and to get people to buy your books.  Maybe I had the wrong idea to begin with, so today I want to say a very belated THANK YOU” to the person who started all of this.  Not my mother but my English Teacher, Miss Boone.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but unless you’re family or have attended a book signing where I told the story, you can keep reading.

I was not a good student in high school.  My report cards which I did not realize my mother saved and showed to my two daughters proved it.  When she passed away, I found them in her effects and now my grandchildren have seen them.  As a friend of mine says, no one is ever a failure.  At your lowest point you can always serve as a good bad example.

When I was in the 10^th grade my option was not renewed at my high school and I was “advised” to find another place to go the following year.  That’s how I wound up in Miss Boone’s English class.  On the first day, she said we had studied enough nouns and pronouns and verbs and other things that we probably would never use again, so we were going to put them to use and WRITE.

A little background is needed here.  I was fortunate enough to get a job one summer with a traveling carnival of sorts.  It was billed as the Jack Joyce Jungle Caravan and it went from shopping center parking lot to another with animal rides, a snake show and a little petting zoo.  I traveled with the show for two summers when they were in the state of GA.  Back to English class….

Our first assignment was to write a short story.  It could be made up, based on facts or any combination thereof.  I wrote about my time with the carnival the previous summer.  Stories were turned in, graded and one day she pulled out a couple and explained she was going to read the best and worst of the group.  As I recall the worst one was really bad.  Then she said she wanted to read the best one.  She read a few lines and stopped and asked the class who they thought wrote it.  Guesses were Johnny Football, Suzi Cheerleader, Norman Nerd etc.  I knew who it was because she was reading my story.

My first thought was that she was going to have to walk home that day because my plan was to slice her tires on the way out of school.  Instead as I slid lower and lower into my seat she gushed over how good it was and when she handed it back to me it had a very large A+ on it.  The first one I had ever gotten.  (I also found it with my report cards as my mother had saved it as well.)

Each week we were required to write a story.  I continued to write and get very good graded and soon some of less scrupulous friends noticed and asked me to write one for them.  I readily agreed…for a fee of three dollars each.  My first paid writing assignment.  This lasted several weeks and a handful of short stories until Miss Boone caught on and busted me/us.  My afterschool counselling session with her consisted of her telling me I had a gift and not to waste it.  Keep writing.  I did but it took several years and a stint in an Army hospital in a war zone for me to try it again.  When I found out she was right and I had made a few sales I made an effort to find her.  Unfortunately, she had passed away by then and I never got to thank her.

Don’t let that happen to you.  If you need to thank someone, do it now while both of you are still able to understand the reasons.

Next week I’ll talk about cooking, or gardening, or my dog Teddy or the carnival or taking a box of KFC to a black tie catered lunch at Robert E. Lee’s mansion at Arlington national Cemetery on the 4^th of July…or something. Who knows.