11th grade

It was a long weekend.  Too long for me.  So I took to the computer, which sadly some days is my best friend.  There's a site I go to where I can take various "tests" (and I use that term loosely.) Some are more interesting than others.  I was drawn to one called, "Are you an English Genius?"  And apparently, because I know not to say "Her and me went to the museum" and some such redneckery, I am.

Please do not tell that to Ms.  Dannon, my eleventh grade AP teacher.  She thought my most prolific skills were chatting with and writing girly notes to Amy Paulus during class.  I earned a solid "D" but because she was generous, or because I wrote a unique thesis about declining SAT verbal scores instead of doing research on a famous author, she granted me a "C."

Little would she know that I have turned into a writer.  Well, maybe not a writer, but someone who can use words as tools to express the parts of me that normally do not eek out in common living.  I am a better me when I write.  I admire the writer's thoughts in me far more than I like myself. 

There are some things I knew right away when I was growing up.  Strawberry Twizzlers are good. I will always be a world-class rock skipper.  Silence is confusing.

There are somethings I had to live into.  Like loving who I love.  Like writing.  Or putting my thoughts and feelings out there in public, like with this blog.  And even, especially in the last few years, through letters, in stories, and when I am very, very brave, face-to-face.

Had I trusted Ms. Dannon's "C,"  if I had chosen to accept that as a permanent station, who knows where I would be.  Or who I could claim as a friend.  Or if I would have ever heard my heart the way it writes to me now.