Nostalgia

I was recently at my parents' house and looking over some old writing assignments I did as a kid. It was pretty awesome, to be honest. I wanted to share some gems.

This was a description I wrote of a character. The year was 1988:

Stephanie is cool. She has darkish golden blond shoulder length hair. Bangs too. It kind of curly, but not very curly. Her clothes are awesome! Today she was wearing a button-up shirt falling just above her knees, blue. Blue stretch pants. White high-tops. Push-down purple socks. It was cool.

Don't you love the totally horrible 80s outfit being described as cool?

A biography:

I’m Fizzy. I am 8 years old and my hair is dirty blond. My favorite sport is basket ball. I like to listen to the piano. My favorite food is a strawberrys. I like mystery stories and funny ones. I like lots of movies, especially funny ones. I don’t have any pets. I have a brother. My eyes are blue. My height is 4 feet and 6 inches. I like apples. I hate olives. My parents are both doctors. I like Spelling and math in school.

Also, for those of you who were wondering, I knew I wanted to be a doctor even when I was eight years old:

I want to be a doctor because I like when poeple are cured from a disease and if I become a doctor the population of sick people will go down a little bit more.

Aw. Hopefully, the population of sick people is going down a little bit more.

Also, I wrote a thriller:

I am a bus. I was made in 19--. I’m blue and silver. Sometimes people write on me. I can hold 50 passengers. I bus 203. I go up 3rd avenue and down 2nd. I have flashy lights, that are red. I have windows. I have doors. I have poles. I have wheels. I can make turns. I bump sometimes. My tires break sometimes, I have to get new ones. I have a driver. I ride up and down the streets. I enjoy being a bus. I enjoy the people who ride on me.

One day, my driver on vacation. My doors were open. Someone came in, he was dressed in black. He started driveing me. I went strate very fast, and then I made a turn, he fell out because the door was open. I was a hero.

I'm not totally sure, but I think that last paragraph referred to the bus getting highjacked. The comment from my teacher was "what a bus you are, and hero to boot!"

Also, a book report I wrote on a book called The Cay. The last paragraph had me laughing to the point of tears:

Write a short summary of the book.
Phillip was stranded on an island with an old black man called Timothy and Stew cat. The Phillip becomes blind. They have to servive the Cay all alone. Timothy is worried he will die. Then he does and Phillip is all alone. In the end they get rescued and Phillip can see again.

What would have been the hardest aspect of Phillip’s struggle for survival for you?
Trying to get used to being blind. If you could see all your life and then one day you became blind it would be scary.

Have you ever thought about being stranded on an island?
I once thought about being stranded on an island after I read this book, except I don’t remember it because it was a dream.

Why did Phillip and Timothy have some difficulty getting along at first?
Because Timothy was black and Phillip was white.

Think of another character that could fit into the story.
I wonder what would happen if they had a baby on board. They could make the baby in it’s terrible twos and wants to get into everything!

The comments from my teacher were "A+, Again, excellent report!"

Seriously, what do you have to do to get a 3rd grade teacher to tell you that you did a bad job? Do you need to crap on a piece of paper and hand in the excrement as your assignment? I honestly think that's what you would need to do.

Reading over my stories and papers, a few things occurred to me:

1) I wrote a LOT my whole life. Like an abnormal, crazy amount for a kid.

2) Around age 13, my writing suddenly improved dramatically. It suddenly went from stupid to halfway decent. Even my husband noticed from the things I gave him to read. He told me (of my 8th grade writing): "It was actually readable. I didn't want to keep reading it, but it wasn't hilariously bad anymore." Actually, there was one story I wrote that was a biography of my great-grandmother that totally blew me away.

3) I suddenly got sarcastic around age 13 too.

I could probably spend like a week going through all the stacks of crap in my old room, but I don't think it's worth my time even though I'd have tons of things to make fun of, such as the above.