Sixth grade. There was this time my teacher (and I already know I’m going to butcher the spelling on her name, but we’ll pretend its accurate for the remainder of this post because its not like she’s going to come out here and correct me), Mrs. Monie, out of the Carolina blue called me up to her desk for a little chat. As just a sort of quick history lesson to put the context of this story in a better perspective, there were three different stages in my relationship with my sixth-grade teacher. First stage was first impressions, so it was rather polite and respectful. Second stage was rebellion. This story takes place in the third stage, which was basically tense, antagonistic. Endgame. Germany was still divided by a wall back in those days, but the people collectively still called themselves “Germans”.
Anyway, she asked me up to her desk and I immediately started thinking about all the bad stuff I had done recently. I was still pretty sharp back then, I remember the entire stroll from my desk to hers I was able to think about four or five specific things she could have been about to confront me on. But instead, she made it very clear right at the beginning that she wanted my advice. Maybe this was the olive branch, maybe she was bored, or maybe she was actually trying to engage me as an equal instead of something to fix. Whatever it was, this morning I thought back to what I felt when she asked me advice on how to write this story she wanted to tell.
Advice? From lil’ole me? Man, I must have really carried myself like I knew what the hell I was talking about. That has to be part of it because my whole world was only a little bit bigger than my entire elementary school back then. I must have been confident. I must have been single-minded, focused. And all of that just sorta made me chuckle this morning because the truth was, I wasn’t any good. Not a lick. I could regurgitate craptastic sf/fantasy like my bowels were forever full; it would plop out of me like I had just eaten enough fiber for three people. Why the hell was she asking me how to get started on a story?
She took the time to tell me her plot. She said it was about this lake (or pond?) she had seen on a mountain hike. I remember her saying it was crystal clear, that she could see all the odd colored fish swimming about just looking down into it. I also remember her saying it was perfectly still, that it almost seemed like the ground had been broken in that one area to reveal it had been sitting on a greater plane of glass. I remember all that, and I also remember not “getting it”. Like, were the fish something no one had every seen before? Did she hurt herself at all during her hike? Where was the adventure? Where was the imagination (ie. the magic, the fantastical bestiary, the diabolic evil and the fearless hero?) Why bother to sit and write a story about something so mundane?
I guess I was more amused at myself this morning than the actual scene. Stories are everywhere. I wonder how different things would be had I listened to that wisdom instead of brushing it off superficially. Perhaps this wasn’t advice Mrs. Monie was seeking; more advice she was looking to impart.
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