Wednesday, October 06, 2010

A Little Bit Thornton Melon

I'm embarrassed to admit how much I love Back to School. I believe I may have actually seen this movie at the theater, and I know that I've watched it pretty much whenever it comes one of the bad local tv stations at night. I was convinced that school was going to be exactly like that. Um, well, not exactly.

It's been a while since I've taken a writing class. I took one the semester before Z was born, and I meant to go back, but Z's a handful and I wasn't sure how to balance her, work, me, training for the half, volunteer work, etc.

I'm now enrolled in a class about writing personal essays. I've taken a class with this teacher before, and I was vaguely intimidated by him. He won't bullshit you or tell you your stuff is good when it isn't. Two years ago, when I took his Humorous Writing class, he told me that one of my stories about getting drunk in college and throwing up on my roommate's crush's bed was neither funny or interesting. But then he told me that my 'Letter to An Ex-Husband" was brilliant and amazing. I like him.

The class is an interesting mix of people, and I am one of the youngest. Our first assignment was to write about a childhood memory and the stories were amazing. Some light (read: me swallowing a nickel in church) and some very deep like this beautiful story about a girl making her alcoholic father happy for the first time. Everyone seems to have a very poetic writing style, which is also a bit intimidating since that is not how I write AT ALL. There is nothing worse that having to follow the reading of a guy who described seeing his childhood friends killed at a pool party during fighting in Lebanon with your story about your own personal tragedy of that time you farted at work. (And yes that really happened.) I'm a little scared, but also relieved and excited to be back in school.

Next week's assignment is to write about a photograph that represents a certain time in your life. I spent some time leafing through albums and discovered a photo of all my London roommates dressed in our Halloween costumes. I have no idea if I'll use this one or not, but oh, the memories. London was about as close to Thornton Melon as I'll ever be.

1 comment:

Brian said...

Now that fart story is funny.