Like most bad habits, I started writing when I was a teenager.
I remember the first time I wrote something that didn’t have to do with homework. I was 13 years old and I had just finished suffering another of my mother’s ‘I’m always right because I’m your mother and that’s a good enough reason’ tirades.
After this particular tirade, I went to my room and I picked up a pen and some paper.
Half an hour later, I was done writing. Throughout the entirety of my teenage years, I had never felt as positively electric as I did right then.
What I wrote could be conceived as the worst attempt at poetry. Ever. But still, it was an awesome moment for me.
A little while later I started high school. I produced more shitty poetry. I wrote a biography of the first band that I was ever in. The English teachers I had in my freshman and sophomore year were awful.
Freshman year, I had Brother J. When I think about him, I think about the time that he made fun of a paper one of my classmates had written. This was mean ‘make fun of’ not playful at all. This was also in front of the entire class. I also remember when he invited the only two black guys in my class to the front of the class to recite the poem ‘We Real Cool’. Brother J. made it a point of telling them to say it ‘how they would normally talk’. Google the poem. You’ll see why I still remember that.
Sophomore year was Mr. H. He was one of the school guidance counselors who picked the shortest straw and had to pull ‘double-duty’.
He was a fat fucking prick. So fat he had a FUPA (fat, ugly, penis area). You’ve seen them before. It’s that thing that fat white people have where they look like the just shoplifted two cantaloupes from the grocery store. In the front of their pants. He was also a just over middle age white man who still used hair tonic. A prick like no other.
Junior year came and I was gifted with Mr. Barker. He taught American Lit and Brit Lit. He was the first and only teacher that I have ever had that made me feel like I was worth something. Like I could really do something with my writing. Thanks to him, he pointed me in the right direction and helped me see what I was supposed to do with my life.
So here I am. And there you are.
As always, thanks for reading this.
Matt
