Writing Assignment one
Dan Feuerbach
English 354
4-13-2006
Writing Assignment One Final Draft
Who is Dan Feuerbach? This question followed me for years. Going from the pre-packaged identity of middle-school to the relative freedom of high school was difficult for me. When I entered Skutt Catholic High School I was terrified. All around me I watched as my friends from eighth grade expand their own identities while I was lost.
I started at the simplest point: jock. I joined the football team because it seemed like the cool thing to do. The football players seemed to have it all. While I laid my head in my arms and pretended to sleep after teachers finished a lecture, the football players would banter with the teacher and flirt with girls. However, this didn’t really work. Weighing one-hundred and forty-five pounds and the coordination of drunken hobo it was only a matter of time until I proved useless to the team. The majority just pretended like I didn’t exist. A few of the other bad players managed to form a superficial bond with me that carried on after the season did.
After two years of failing as an effective football player slipped by and I decided to switch identities. The summer between my sophomore and junior years I started playing drums, the second simplest point in my angst-ridden mind. I figured if I couldn’t be the popular jock I could be the mysterious musician. This didn’t go too bad. I wasn’t great but it was closer to who I was then football player. I trained myself thirty minutes each day in the style of Lars Ulrich of Metallica. He became my idol. I downloaded all his drum tabs and all the Metallica albums. I stayed up late in between shifts at my job trying to pin down his technique. Although the songs were long at first, I became addicted to the crunching guitars and threatening vocals.
One night I was listening to the song “One.” The sublime guitar rifts and restrained power intrigued me. There was something different about this song. I picked up the album insert and read the lyrics. From the first word to the last goose bumps raised on my arms. The story was completely different than anything else I ever heard.
It was the story of a man in a war who stepped on a land mine. His arms and legs were amputated and his ears, nose, eyes and mouth were rendered useless. The song consisted of him begging to be killed. I had never heard of such a thing. I didn’t think there could be a good reason to beg for death, but there it was.
The next two days only escalated my fascination with this story. I downloaded the video. I needed to see how these (at the time) brilliant men would portray this visually. When the video made its way from the web to my computer I felt the same feeling creep over me as I did when I realized what the song was about in the first place. The next six minutes changed my life.
The man with no senses came on screen. He consisted of nothing but a torso and a surgical mask draped over his face to hide the wounds. The lyrics faded and all I heard was the voiceover from the man on the hospital bed. As the song reached its horrifying crescendo the man tapped out “S.O.S. Kill me.” in Morris Code on his pillow. The nurse called in a translator and they pulled the plug. The last scene was the man dying on a pillow while the nurses celebrated New Year’s Eve with champagne.
The image replaced with black, the guitars faded and I stared. I couldn’t look anywhere. All I could think about was what I just saw. I didn’t know what to do. My hands clicked on Google and typed in “One” Metallica.” I searched for what inspired that song and I found it: Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
I drove to Barnes and Nobel immediately. My mind craved this book. I thought there was a secret of some kind waiting inside. There was an answer to my identity dilemma that Trumbo knew and wanted to give me if I just read the book. I got home and dived straight into the book. In five hours I had finished it.
Joe Bonham’s problem was identical to mine. The particulars varied but the idea was the same. He was trapped in his own body; I was trapped in my own role. He wanted the escape of death and I wanted to kill off all the failed versions of myself to escape. We both felt alone and trapped. I could identify with everything he said. After a few weeks of intense contemplation, I put the book aside and went back to drumming.
The summer ended and school started again. Still hell bent on being the musician I came up with the idea to blend metal and grunge. Although I only had the vaguest notion what either of those two genres was about, I dressed in flannel and muttered “Enter Sandman” to myself in class. My junior year was not what I would call pleasant.
Although I pushed myself into the musician thing it was starting to push me back out. I wasn’t hearing any new music. My friends, mostly the very few leftover from my football days, refused to go to the Ranch Bowl with me and I was afraid to go alone. With my new identity dying away I began to act out in frustration. I was morphing my identity again, this time I chose to go for something negative.
The only decision that seemed appropriate to me as a man with no identity was to become proud of my identity-free life. Nihilism seemed to be a good choice. I decided that sixteen years of being Catholic was enough. God didn’t live, other wise I would know who Dan Feuerbach was, right?
I feel bad for everyone who knew me at the time. My life free from identity had to be the topic of almost any conversation I engaged in. Even the most trivial conversations would be turned to some rambling, illogical rant about the godless nature of reality. After a while people stopped giving me the attention I craved, so I upped the ante.
Mrs. Upton entered my life about now. She was tall and blond. Fresh out of grad school she seemed to have an understanding into the teenage mind that I certainly didn’t. She was my English teacher. She heard my constant rants and she saw that even though they weren’t well put together, they still reflected a degree of intelligence. She tried to extend a helping hand to me; I tried to bite it off.
She saw clearer than anyone I didn’t know who I was, and she knew it hurt me. At the beginning of the nihilism she would take me aside and try to coax some kind of true emotion out of me. Whenever she did this I would just insult her by calling her an idiot, sheep-woman for following her leper messiah. She took it in stride and decided to give me space until I came to her. I never did, and it’s too bad. She had a lot to offer.
I engaged in a lot of extreme anti-school activity. Never drugs, alcohol, sex, or violence. It was usually acting immature in front of my classmates to solicit attention. Sometimes it would be me “falling” out of my chair in the middle of class. Other times I would make loud farting noises.
One of my most extreme moments came in American History class. The teacher assigned us the exciting adventure of drawing three symbols that represented America to us. Usually students drew dollar signs, eagles, stars, stripes, flags and other cliché things. I decided that I wouldn’t conform.
I walked up to the front of the class with my piece of printer paper folded in half. My heart was in my knees and rattling around like shoes in a dryer. I stood up straight and unfolded my paper about what America meant to me. It didn’t start out bad. The first symbol was a series of legs, arms, heads, torsos and feet. It represented all the people who died in wars. The second was a dollar sign because that represented who really controlled the system to me. It was the last symbol that got me in trouble.
I flipped the paper over and smiled like I was proud of myself. On the reverse side was a crudely drawn picture of two stick figures. The larger mounted the smaller and had little lines drawn around its butt to represent a thrusting motion. I grinned and said just one simple word:
“Taxes.”
The class stopped and then laughed, then applauded. I thought I was invincible. The teacher was not happy. She told me to go in the hall while she contacted the office. Then I waited in the office while they informed my parents. I received some lecture about how I was almost done in the Skutt community. I said I’d try.
That night I felt like shit. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Yeah, I was king for a day. Yeah everyone spoke my name around school. Yeah, I was applauded. I knew from past experience though that the next day nobody would care, but either way I’d still have to deal with the consequences. English class the next day would provide the first glimpse of the identity that would give my life the focus it needed.
Thursdays were creative writing day. Usually it was something fairly simple like writing one-page character descriptions or writing sonnets. I would half-ass my way though these assignments. The work I made wasn’t any different then the people around me. I just chugged through it so I could run back into my little world of nihilistic self-pity.
Mrs. Upton got in front of the class with the usual tasks. We read a short story, we pulled it apart. We (or more appropriately, they) discussed how the character changed, where and how it was set and did the story say about life. I was staring at the ceiling counting the number of panels that made up the roof.
“For Monday, I want each of you to write a short story,” she said.
The class groaned, but I was suddenly interested. I thought back to my brief affair with Johnny Got His Gun the summer before. I remembered the relief I felt knowing that I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I did. Even though I wasn’t fully aware of it, I had a basic understanding of the power of words. I didn’t want to use that power for relief though, I wanted to horrify. I wanted to get vengeance on them. For every time I felt alone at football and the addiction I had to their unknowing applause.
The bell rang and the students left. The room cleared out but I still had to pack my bag. Mrs. Upton called me to her desk. I was irritated. I thought it was going to be a lecture about how my story had better be appropriate or else. That seemed to be the only interaction I had with older people anymore. I knew deep down it was completely warranted.
“Dan, what are you doing your story on?”
“I don’t know Mrs. Upton. Why?”
“I’m curious.”
“It will be appropriate.”
“I don’t care,” she said.
I almost died.
“Huh?”
“I want to see what you can do. You’re very creative and smart. I’m sure you’ll amaze me.”
I didn’t know what to think. I kind of stuttered out a promise to do good and left. This was new. Total creative control belonged to me. All I had to do was what my imagination told me. All I had to do was think of a topic. I went home and inspiration struck.
My brother hogged the couch in the basement. The two-years-younger than me bastard wouldn’t move. I sat on the floor and we watched MASH. During the first commercial break something snapped into place. The olive drab uniforms and gunfire, the romance and the horror, my story needed to involve war and death. My story needed to involve betrayal of marriage.
I sat down and crafted, over the next four hours, my novel from beginning to end. The five page epic of a man who is sent to war and the new wife he leaves behind. No names for my characters, I thought, it’s more artistic that way. He gets drafted after they get married. He goes to the front lines. He watches his buddies die. He wants to die but holds on for her. He gets back to her and finds out she’s pregnant with his neighbors kid. He kills himself and she gets committed with as many descriptions as possible.
I spent so much time on this and then it was time. I stood in front of the class again. The paper had sweaty thumb prints all over. My voice shook at first. The first paragraph limped out of me. Then it came more naturally. Then, it wouldn’t stop. I told the class of how his leg wound needed maggots in it to prevent Gangrene and how his crimson and grey slid down the wall. You could hear a pin drop.
I finished the last sentence. Jaws hit desk tops, people looked at anything but me, students shifted in their seats. I didn’t know what I did. Then Mrs. Upton started to clap. Then everyone did. I was being applauded because I did something. I was being applauded for an accomplishment. I was being cheered because I did something constructive. It was the greatest feeling in the world.
After class I was complimented by students for my good work. I received high-fives from people who I hadn’t spoken to since the football days. Clapped on the shoulder, hugged, dare I say…respected? I was getting ready to leave when Mrs. Upton called me up to her desk again.
“Dan, that was awesome. I knew you’d do well, but that was more than I expected.”
I turned red. It was better than I expected.
“What are you doing after high school?”
“I have no idea.”
“Consider English. You have a gift for it. I think you could do something really special with it.”
Then I considered English when, after three days, people were still talking about my reading. A few random people I barely talked to requested copies. I stood in shock. I did this. I did this with my words. My letters made an impact on people and it felt good. I knew I could help people. I knew there was something behind all this. I smiled.
This happened almost six years ago. I still think about the series of events that led up to this. The seeds for my English major were planted on that day. Quickly after this event the idea got stuck in my mind. As I focused on school I began writing in notebooks. I wrote poems and stories and scenes and characters everyday for the rest of my high school tenure after this event. This kept me out of trouble. The outbursts in class stopped and I felt comfortable during the eight hours I spent at school.
First of all, it needs to be said: the reason I started was ego. The rush of applause after that reading made me feel like a god. I loved manipulating words to illicit responses in people. However, as I matured my love for writing and reading did too. Today I genuinely love writing. Sometimes being in classes that require thirty or more pages of material is daunting but when it’s over I feel like I honestly accomplished something.
This event came at exactly the right moment in my life. I was so lost and didn’t have anything in particular to look forward to. I never viewed myself as talented at anything in those days. This was a major contributor to my lack of identity. I lashed out for something and didn’t seem to get it. It was the sudden stroke of inspiration and the follow-through in class that made me pursue an education in my native language.
This event also propelled me into more books by different authors. I hadn’t read since the Trumbo book. After the event I read anything I could find. At first I had trouble finding good books by interesting authors but after a while I began to figure out what I liked. Vonnegut and Ginsberg are two names I never would have known if I hadn’t been for this event.
I still haven’t answered my question. I still don’t know who Dan Feuerbach is. Everyday I get a slightly better picture, but it’s still blurry, the camera is still shaking. I definitely am closer now then I was back when this happened. If it hadn’t been for that fateful day in my high school English class, I might still be lost in my fog of self-pity.
I still think about Mrs. Upton, once in a while. Her faith in me gave me the confidence to write my story. I respect her for trying to reach out and I’ll never forget her. We never got too close though. I was still emotionally unavailable after the event. It’s too bad though because I never really thanked her for her help.
Somewhere in all the stupid shit I did in high school there is a lesson. That lesson is if you try to hard to be something you’re not then eventually it will collapse. It’s best to be who you are. My attempts to fit into the jock world and the music scene were doomed to fail from day one. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, though and I definitely needed something to latch onto, even if for a little while until I figured myself out.
The final point I need to make is that the event signifies a remarkable shift in my definition of literacy. Up until that point I viewed literacy as being able to read and write. That’s all it was to me. I knew how to make the words and I knew what they sounded like. When I read that paper though, I knew what it meant to be truly literate. After almost six years I can finally articulate it. Literacy is the ability to read, write, use, understand and express concepts, whether abstract or concrete and to understand the emotional impact behind the words.
English 354
4-13-2006
Writing Assignment One Final Draft
Who is Dan Feuerbach? This question followed me for years. Going from the pre-packaged identity of middle-school to the relative freedom of high school was difficult for me. When I entered Skutt Catholic High School I was terrified. All around me I watched as my friends from eighth grade expand their own identities while I was lost.
I started at the simplest point: jock. I joined the football team because it seemed like the cool thing to do. The football players seemed to have it all. While I laid my head in my arms and pretended to sleep after teachers finished a lecture, the football players would banter with the teacher and flirt with girls. However, this didn’t really work. Weighing one-hundred and forty-five pounds and the coordination of drunken hobo it was only a matter of time until I proved useless to the team. The majority just pretended like I didn’t exist. A few of the other bad players managed to form a superficial bond with me that carried on after the season did.
After two years of failing as an effective football player slipped by and I decided to switch identities. The summer between my sophomore and junior years I started playing drums, the second simplest point in my angst-ridden mind. I figured if I couldn’t be the popular jock I could be the mysterious musician. This didn’t go too bad. I wasn’t great but it was closer to who I was then football player. I trained myself thirty minutes each day in the style of Lars Ulrich of Metallica. He became my idol. I downloaded all his drum tabs and all the Metallica albums. I stayed up late in between shifts at my job trying to pin down his technique. Although the songs were long at first, I became addicted to the crunching guitars and threatening vocals.
One night I was listening to the song “One.” The sublime guitar rifts and restrained power intrigued me. There was something different about this song. I picked up the album insert and read the lyrics. From the first word to the last goose bumps raised on my arms. The story was completely different than anything else I ever heard.
It was the story of a man in a war who stepped on a land mine. His arms and legs were amputated and his ears, nose, eyes and mouth were rendered useless. The song consisted of him begging to be killed. I had never heard of such a thing. I didn’t think there could be a good reason to beg for death, but there it was.
The next two days only escalated my fascination with this story. I downloaded the video. I needed to see how these (at the time) brilliant men would portray this visually. When the video made its way from the web to my computer I felt the same feeling creep over me as I did when I realized what the song was about in the first place. The next six minutes changed my life.
The man with no senses came on screen. He consisted of nothing but a torso and a surgical mask draped over his face to hide the wounds. The lyrics faded and all I heard was the voiceover from the man on the hospital bed. As the song reached its horrifying crescendo the man tapped out “S.O.S. Kill me.” in Morris Code on his pillow. The nurse called in a translator and they pulled the plug. The last scene was the man dying on a pillow while the nurses celebrated New Year’s Eve with champagne.
The image replaced with black, the guitars faded and I stared. I couldn’t look anywhere. All I could think about was what I just saw. I didn’t know what to do. My hands clicked on Google and typed in “One” Metallica.” I searched for what inspired that song and I found it: Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
I drove to Barnes and Nobel immediately. My mind craved this book. I thought there was a secret of some kind waiting inside. There was an answer to my identity dilemma that Trumbo knew and wanted to give me if I just read the book. I got home and dived straight into the book. In five hours I had finished it.
Joe Bonham’s problem was identical to mine. The particulars varied but the idea was the same. He was trapped in his own body; I was trapped in my own role. He wanted the escape of death and I wanted to kill off all the failed versions of myself to escape. We both felt alone and trapped. I could identify with everything he said. After a few weeks of intense contemplation, I put the book aside and went back to drumming.
The summer ended and school started again. Still hell bent on being the musician I came up with the idea to blend metal and grunge. Although I only had the vaguest notion what either of those two genres was about, I dressed in flannel and muttered “Enter Sandman” to myself in class. My junior year was not what I would call pleasant.
Although I pushed myself into the musician thing it was starting to push me back out. I wasn’t hearing any new music. My friends, mostly the very few leftover from my football days, refused to go to the Ranch Bowl with me and I was afraid to go alone. With my new identity dying away I began to act out in frustration. I was morphing my identity again, this time I chose to go for something negative.
The only decision that seemed appropriate to me as a man with no identity was to become proud of my identity-free life. Nihilism seemed to be a good choice. I decided that sixteen years of being Catholic was enough. God didn’t live, other wise I would know who Dan Feuerbach was, right?
I feel bad for everyone who knew me at the time. My life free from identity had to be the topic of almost any conversation I engaged in. Even the most trivial conversations would be turned to some rambling, illogical rant about the godless nature of reality. After a while people stopped giving me the attention I craved, so I upped the ante.
Mrs. Upton entered my life about now. She was tall and blond. Fresh out of grad school she seemed to have an understanding into the teenage mind that I certainly didn’t. She was my English teacher. She heard my constant rants and she saw that even though they weren’t well put together, they still reflected a degree of intelligence. She tried to extend a helping hand to me; I tried to bite it off.
She saw clearer than anyone I didn’t know who I was, and she knew it hurt me. At the beginning of the nihilism she would take me aside and try to coax some kind of true emotion out of me. Whenever she did this I would just insult her by calling her an idiot, sheep-woman for following her leper messiah. She took it in stride and decided to give me space until I came to her. I never did, and it’s too bad. She had a lot to offer.
I engaged in a lot of extreme anti-school activity. Never drugs, alcohol, sex, or violence. It was usually acting immature in front of my classmates to solicit attention. Sometimes it would be me “falling” out of my chair in the middle of class. Other times I would make loud farting noises.
One of my most extreme moments came in American History class. The teacher assigned us the exciting adventure of drawing three symbols that represented America to us. Usually students drew dollar signs, eagles, stars, stripes, flags and other cliché things. I decided that I wouldn’t conform.
I walked up to the front of the class with my piece of printer paper folded in half. My heart was in my knees and rattling around like shoes in a dryer. I stood up straight and unfolded my paper about what America meant to me. It didn’t start out bad. The first symbol was a series of legs, arms, heads, torsos and feet. It represented all the people who died in wars. The second was a dollar sign because that represented who really controlled the system to me. It was the last symbol that got me in trouble.
I flipped the paper over and smiled like I was proud of myself. On the reverse side was a crudely drawn picture of two stick figures. The larger mounted the smaller and had little lines drawn around its butt to represent a thrusting motion. I grinned and said just one simple word:
“Taxes.”
The class stopped and then laughed, then applauded. I thought I was invincible. The teacher was not happy. She told me to go in the hall while she contacted the office. Then I waited in the office while they informed my parents. I received some lecture about how I was almost done in the Skutt community. I said I’d try.
That night I felt like shit. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Yeah, I was king for a day. Yeah everyone spoke my name around school. Yeah, I was applauded. I knew from past experience though that the next day nobody would care, but either way I’d still have to deal with the consequences. English class the next day would provide the first glimpse of the identity that would give my life the focus it needed.
Thursdays were creative writing day. Usually it was something fairly simple like writing one-page character descriptions or writing sonnets. I would half-ass my way though these assignments. The work I made wasn’t any different then the people around me. I just chugged through it so I could run back into my little world of nihilistic self-pity.
Mrs. Upton got in front of the class with the usual tasks. We read a short story, we pulled it apart. We (or more appropriately, they) discussed how the character changed, where and how it was set and did the story say about life. I was staring at the ceiling counting the number of panels that made up the roof.
“For Monday, I want each of you to write a short story,” she said.
The class groaned, but I was suddenly interested. I thought back to my brief affair with Johnny Got His Gun the summer before. I remembered the relief I felt knowing that I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I did. Even though I wasn’t fully aware of it, I had a basic understanding of the power of words. I didn’t want to use that power for relief though, I wanted to horrify. I wanted to get vengeance on them. For every time I felt alone at football and the addiction I had to their unknowing applause.
The bell rang and the students left. The room cleared out but I still had to pack my bag. Mrs. Upton called me to her desk. I was irritated. I thought it was going to be a lecture about how my story had better be appropriate or else. That seemed to be the only interaction I had with older people anymore. I knew deep down it was completely warranted.
“Dan, what are you doing your story on?”
“I don’t know Mrs. Upton. Why?”
“I’m curious.”
“It will be appropriate.”
“I don’t care,” she said.
I almost died.
“Huh?”
“I want to see what you can do. You’re very creative and smart. I’m sure you’ll amaze me.”
I didn’t know what to think. I kind of stuttered out a promise to do good and left. This was new. Total creative control belonged to me. All I had to do was what my imagination told me. All I had to do was think of a topic. I went home and inspiration struck.
My brother hogged the couch in the basement. The two-years-younger than me bastard wouldn’t move. I sat on the floor and we watched MASH. During the first commercial break something snapped into place. The olive drab uniforms and gunfire, the romance and the horror, my story needed to involve war and death. My story needed to involve betrayal of marriage.
I sat down and crafted, over the next four hours, my novel from beginning to end. The five page epic of a man who is sent to war and the new wife he leaves behind. No names for my characters, I thought, it’s more artistic that way. He gets drafted after they get married. He goes to the front lines. He watches his buddies die. He wants to die but holds on for her. He gets back to her and finds out she’s pregnant with his neighbors kid. He kills himself and she gets committed with as many descriptions as possible.
I spent so much time on this and then it was time. I stood in front of the class again. The paper had sweaty thumb prints all over. My voice shook at first. The first paragraph limped out of me. Then it came more naturally. Then, it wouldn’t stop. I told the class of how his leg wound needed maggots in it to prevent Gangrene and how his crimson and grey slid down the wall. You could hear a pin drop.
I finished the last sentence. Jaws hit desk tops, people looked at anything but me, students shifted in their seats. I didn’t know what I did. Then Mrs. Upton started to clap. Then everyone did. I was being applauded because I did something. I was being applauded for an accomplishment. I was being cheered because I did something constructive. It was the greatest feeling in the world.
After class I was complimented by students for my good work. I received high-fives from people who I hadn’t spoken to since the football days. Clapped on the shoulder, hugged, dare I say…respected? I was getting ready to leave when Mrs. Upton called me up to her desk again.
“Dan, that was awesome. I knew you’d do well, but that was more than I expected.”
I turned red. It was better than I expected.
“What are you doing after high school?”
“I have no idea.”
“Consider English. You have a gift for it. I think you could do something really special with it.”
Then I considered English when, after three days, people were still talking about my reading. A few random people I barely talked to requested copies. I stood in shock. I did this. I did this with my words. My letters made an impact on people and it felt good. I knew I could help people. I knew there was something behind all this. I smiled.
This happened almost six years ago. I still think about the series of events that led up to this. The seeds for my English major were planted on that day. Quickly after this event the idea got stuck in my mind. As I focused on school I began writing in notebooks. I wrote poems and stories and scenes and characters everyday for the rest of my high school tenure after this event. This kept me out of trouble. The outbursts in class stopped and I felt comfortable during the eight hours I spent at school.
First of all, it needs to be said: the reason I started was ego. The rush of applause after that reading made me feel like a god. I loved manipulating words to illicit responses in people. However, as I matured my love for writing and reading did too. Today I genuinely love writing. Sometimes being in classes that require thirty or more pages of material is daunting but when it’s over I feel like I honestly accomplished something.
This event came at exactly the right moment in my life. I was so lost and didn’t have anything in particular to look forward to. I never viewed myself as talented at anything in those days. This was a major contributor to my lack of identity. I lashed out for something and didn’t seem to get it. It was the sudden stroke of inspiration and the follow-through in class that made me pursue an education in my native language.
This event also propelled me into more books by different authors. I hadn’t read since the Trumbo book. After the event I read anything I could find. At first I had trouble finding good books by interesting authors but after a while I began to figure out what I liked. Vonnegut and Ginsberg are two names I never would have known if I hadn’t been for this event.
I still haven’t answered my question. I still don’t know who Dan Feuerbach is. Everyday I get a slightly better picture, but it’s still blurry, the camera is still shaking. I definitely am closer now then I was back when this happened. If it hadn’t been for that fateful day in my high school English class, I might still be lost in my fog of self-pity.
I still think about Mrs. Upton, once in a while. Her faith in me gave me the confidence to write my story. I respect her for trying to reach out and I’ll never forget her. We never got too close though. I was still emotionally unavailable after the event. It’s too bad though because I never really thanked her for her help.
Somewhere in all the stupid shit I did in high school there is a lesson. That lesson is if you try to hard to be something you’re not then eventually it will collapse. It’s best to be who you are. My attempts to fit into the jock world and the music scene were doomed to fail from day one. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, though and I definitely needed something to latch onto, even if for a little while until I figured myself out.
The final point I need to make is that the event signifies a remarkable shift in my definition of literacy. Up until that point I viewed literacy as being able to read and write. That’s all it was to me. I knew how to make the words and I knew what they sounded like. When I read that paper though, I knew what it meant to be truly literate. After almost six years I can finally articulate it. Literacy is the ability to read, write, use, understand and express concepts, whether abstract or concrete and to understand the emotional impact behind the words.
posted by Dan at 12:56 AM
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