Off and On Track

I was not articulate in my youth. My speech when I spoke at all was mostly monosyllabic. My penmanship too lacked finesse. It resembled scratches rendered by a sharpened stick in the sun baked earth. So I was not all that surprised when I was informed that I would be undergoing testing for my handwriting. This was in 7th grade. I was led into a small room in the suite of offices used by our guidance councilor, nurse, and principal. To my surprise two other kids were already in the room. I knew them both. They were retarded.

Looking at the test I knew right away that something wasn't right. If they were testing my handwriting why was I about to take a fill in the bubble quiz? I read the first question: You are seated at a table. In front of you is a plate with a fork and knife. Laid out on the table is a cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and butter. Are you about to A. wash your hands, B. watch television, C. eat a thanksgiving meal, or D. fly a kite? They weren't checking my penmanship. They were trying to see how retarded I was. Fuck that. I got up from the table without answering one question and went into a bathroom and had a smoke. Later that night I told my parents all about the test and my refusal to take part in it. They told me not to worry about it, and that was the end of my testing.

But it was not the end of pegging me. In the school system of our town at that time, as I understand it, they used a tracking system. Each student was assessed and assigned a track. There was the college track; the blue collar track; the dummy track; and the retard track. The one I was on was the dummy track. And it was the track I wanted to stay on. Thank you very much, retard track. Not much was expected of me. I was expendable. And I probably proved the system correct when I jumped the rails and dropped out of school in the spring of my tenth year.

Regardless of my derailment or the earlier testing that had assigned me my track I had within me a notion that I could write. This was due in large extent to praise I'd earlier received in the sixth grade for a poem I'd written about a lion. It was with echos of that acclaim that upon my dropping out of school I set out my portable Olivetti typewriter and hunkered down with thoughts of writing poetry. Within no time at all I had a couple poems, one of which compared rain on a windshield with poor wipers to vaseline smeared against glass by a seated elephant's ass. I promptly sent off my poems to Rolling Stone magazine along with a note informing them that I had set out to live my life as a poet. For some reason they neither published my poems or wrote back to me.

Daunted and crestfallen I returned to school the following September. In the course of an assignment that year I wrote a poem with a deftness not associated with my track. This led to my home room teacher mentoring me for several months the year after my schooling came to an end. Her freely given attention would lead me in time to brave a destination that was for me heretofore without rail service. College.

With skills that were rudimentary at best my initial course within those semi hallowed halls of community college was fortuitously English Composition. Our first assignment in that class, which I found in a box of school memorabilia years later, was to write a paragraph on any subject. My efforts resulted in one run on sentence and two fragments with no discernible subject. I had far to go.

After a foolish year pursuing a management degree I set my sights on creative endeavors and my writing flourished. It turned out I had raw talent. The truth of this came to the surface the more I wrote and augmented my skills through avid reading. The results drew praise from my instructors. They encouraged me to pursue writing as a career move. And off I went with a desire born in my sixteenth year to write a novel. No longer did such an aspiration seem so farfetched. I ventured on to Emerson College in pursuit of a BFA degree in Creative Writing.

Twenty years later I finally sat down and wrote that (first) novel. That it was turned down by every literary agent I approached for representation was I'll admit frustrating. But it did not diminish the joy of my accomplishment. Hot damn; I wrote a novel. And now I'm a 1/4 way into novel number two. I have also found in blogging a realm of writing rewarding to me. So I write. And as my experience has shown there's just no telling where these long traveled rails might lead me.