Journal usage.

z z z z z z

I was in my lit class, and I don't know, I thought it was kind of funny. "OK, I want you all to start keeping a journal."

Something like, "Hey, Mrs. Marcos, do you have an extra pair of shoes I can borrow?" So, being the annoying wise guy that I can be, I printed out the ENTIRE THING up to that point. I hadn't quite figured out how to use the printer yet, so I had to feed each individual page in one at a time. All told, it was around eight hours printing, but that was due to errors most of the time. It also came to about, in her estimate, ninety pages. These were front and back, single spaced, 1.5 cm margins, and an eight point font. (five point used on the jokes.)

::Slap:: "Here you go, here's my journal."

I got it back the next class. "You read ALL of it?"

"Why, was there a part I wasn't supposed to read?"

"Well, no, but you read ALL of it?"

"Except for the jokes." She went on, in one-on-one meetings, to comment on two parts, that of the rabbis' view on depression, and Abraham and Sarah. (Which, by the way, I still haven't gotten back.) I was impressed. I mean she really, I don't think, read all of it. It must have gotten rather pathetic after a while. She probably skimmed it. She didn't comment on the philosopher bit that my father had slammed. Plus, the depression in general didn't phase her. It's nice so I don't have to explain the Groucho thing again, and it really has naught to do in a teacher-student relationship.

Still, I think she read an impressive chunk of it, to say the least. Not to shabby. She suggested that I write my essays like my journal. Excuse me? It may be easier to write in a comfortable manner, but to submit papers in the calm, depressed, cynical tone? This is academic? Well, to a point. She did tell me I went a little too far in my essay by literally mentioning in my paper what my alter ego would say.

Yep, my essay. I tried it. It hurt a bit to write. I wrote a paper to turn in, with clear jokes in them. Not hidden jokes that we would put into the history papers. Real jokes. I mean, it wasn't like, stam elephant jokes. I did use them to make a point. Still felt strange though.

When I finished it, I reread it, and said to myself, "Good God, this is crap." But it was too late to start over. Plus, as I saw it, if nothing else, I could show her why taking the self-deprecating humorous tone wouldn't work. The last paragraph was just an insult of myself, just like that anonymous play I wrote for the one-acts at school.

Commercial break:

OK, we now return...

Like they say, and first hand experience agrees (not to sound like a snob, but it's true), that after finishing a writing, the writer immediately starts thinking just how poor the book really is. The author knows all the plot holes, knows where the changes were added on and bandaged. It looks like junk.

This was different. I was sure it was a bad paper, not as bad as the last one, but pretty bad. I didn't change my opinion until the classmates told me they liked it. Then I went along with them. But it's still hard to bring myself to write essays in that fashion.

It's natural for me to write in a friendly manner. This is the way I think, I talk, (or the way I think that I talk) and write to people. I had been taught from day one not to write an essay like this though. Elementary, Jr. High, High School, all forcing me to write in a correct way. It wasn't natural, but I was getting there.

I tried explaining it to Dr. Grauer that I was left handed, but they'd been forcing me all of these years to�

"Wait a minute, what decade did you grow up in? When I was a kid, they had already�"

"It's a metaphor."

"Oh." OK, it wasn't a very good one. The best I can come up with, in complete parallel, is one that less than, say a dozen people in the world will get.

When I was in kindergarten, and they tried to teach me how to write, the teachers had a monstrous time with me. First of all, since I was learning Hebrew simultaneously, I would occasionally write my exercises sdrowkcab yletelpmoc, and never fail to annoy them. The other problem was my way of making the individual letters. When I made a lower case "b," I would start in the middle, make a more-or-less clockwise circle, and then go straight up to the top of the line. That's a "b." It looks like a "b," and I thought it was more efficient, but it was WRONG. The teacher would demonstrate to me, over and over again, on those 11.5x8 (yes, sideways) kindergarten paper that had two inches lines the letters, with a broken line down the middle. (I've been tempted, since around sixth grade to turn in an essay, transcribed on this style of paper.)

"First you draw a straight line, from the top bar, through the broken bar, down to the bottom bar. Then you make a circle that touches the line, and doesn't go above the broken bar, or below the bottom bar, but touches them both. OK? Now you try." I had three years of making the line�and then the circle; kindergarten, and two yeears of first grade. (No, I wasn't held back for this. Though, it'd be interesting if I failed for not making enough "b"s, the prob was that my parents had put me in a year early, so I was the youngest and smallest, and always picked on.

Then, we left Baltimore, and moved to Florida. There, they taught D'nealion handwriting. I have no idea if this is still around, and I really couldn't care less. The whole point of D'nealion was to teach a manuscript that would make for an easy transition to cursive. Of course, "b" was taught the way that, after three years, they had finally gotten out of my system.

OK, there's no question. "I was left handed, but the people around me want only right handed people. So, since I can remember, they forced me�
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Michael Kadish

"People do not quit playing because they grow old ... They grow old because they quit playing." -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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