He got away with it. Mom didn't cook today and dad is working overtime. He didn't want to have leftover curry, for the third time. Sometimes curry goat can taste better the second time than the first time, but without fail day three curry goat is tough and tastes like poverty. But since mom said it's okay to cook something fast because he has a big assignment to do, she made him hot dogs. He hates the schneider's kind even though they're a little bit bigger but they'll have to do. 2 hot dogs, each one wrapped up in a slice of Jamaican Hardo bread from Tastee, ketchup only. Today I'm not going to enjoy these hot dogs though, because I have this great idea for the assignment.
He sat down. Sitting in the tiny 4th bedroom which his family refers to as the computer room, for the first time he is excited about doing his homework. Grades 1 and 2 were pretty simple, but grade 3 has taken him by surprise. He's not even quite sure why his dad calls it cursive writing, but being left-handed with less than average dexterity he's pretty sure it has to do with foul language. He hates it so much, so he asked Mr. Colwell if for this big writing assignment if we could print it. Mr. Colwell agreed thinking that he would revert to standard lettering, not knowing that his uncle is in IT and has convinced his usually frugal father to invest in an IBM clone Epson 300 EGA computer. 16 colours was pretty advanced for 1990, so much so that most applications would not fully utilize the power of this system - word processors notwithstanding. It didn't matter to him though, he was so happy to be able to 'print' his assignment today. Because he knows all of the MS DOS shortcuts, Mom and dad will never know that their 8 year old son is actually playing computer games while doing his homework. Normally homework always comes first.
He didn't get away with it. His father normally drags his feet when he walks but whenever he's in the mood to ensure discipline in either of his sons he is impeccably fleet of foot for a man nearing 50. He's received his first and last warning to turn off those damn games and finish his homework. After a customarily received scolding about the importance of hitting the books to avoid a life of prision and turning "wutless," he'a acquiesced to finishing his assignment. He wasn't even delaying because he didn't want to to it, deep down he just knew that once he started writing this story it would never stop. It was to be his first story, and it had to be just perfect. Writing is so much more fun than anything else. Arithmetic is validating, he loves getting 1st or 2nd every morning in minute math. Geography is cool because he gets to colour, even though he doesn't stay in the lines and he can't write the country names straight without drawing a faint line underneath with his ruler, which ends up smudging as he writes the name with his crooked left hand. But writing is just fun. He gets to take this world that is in his mind and put it somewhere, where other people can see it. And when it's there, it looks exactly the way it looked in his head. It's the only place where he makes sense.
He's a little bit different everywhere else. He uses the wrong hand and holds his fork wrong, he uses the wrong foot and kicks with a curve, he speaks with a lisp and he has braces behind his teeth. He weighs too much and if wears that undersized black power shirt again he knows someone will actually push him to the ground. He buys paper airplane books and the ones about helicopters because he hates Goosebumps. Truthfully he just doesn't read as fast as the other children and it makes him feel sad when they talk about the books a few days later and he is again outted. Read your own adventure books are fun because he does a pretty good job of picking the most positive end before the other kids. Reading is just a drag on time, but with this computer he can write faster than anybody he knows. So he prompts dw4.exe and opens up this word processor, blue screen with white characters.
He starts to type, in a fashion that only an 8-year old could invent. He looks like he's playing Double dragon with his left hand hovering over W, A, X and D like a nintendo keypad, and his right hand principally responsible for any other key on the keyboard out of that range. Regardless, brush to canvas he starts it off. Halfway through the adventure he pauses. "Where is this story going?" he wonders. Mom has yelled at him once already to get ready for bed, the third warning will come in a half hour and with a belt. He has very little time left to finish this story, so he pulls out a piece of paper from the dot matric printer, and a few pencil crayons, and he maps out the story. The main character is going to have to make his way past the marsh, over to the pits, through the obstacle course, save the victims, and out of the camp, to live happily ever after. Now that this has been sorted out over 20 minutes, he's back to typing. The story has now written itself. Like clockwork his mother has decided to blast through the door with anger at her son's disobedience only to find humility. Her son had turned the lights off in the room so that she would think he has gone to bed so he could finish his assignment without worrying her. He can see the screen just fine, monitors were not exactly bent on power converservation in the 90s. Her roaring "Jam!" has now been stifled into a gentle and motherly "...when you're finished your pyjamas are on the bed, make sure you brush your teeth, Jamuski." Autonomy! He's allowe to break curfew! But he doesn't even have time to soak in his chance to be rebellious, he's getting really tired and this story has to be a whole page long. He adds some character depth near the top, a little bit of filler plot in the middle, some creative spacing before the "The End" and voila! Now he can go to sleep knowing his homework is complete.
He stands up. He's normally the most shy kid in the entire class. He still is, at least ten other kids presented their story before him, he didn't volunteer. But Mr. Colwell gave him the most comforting feeling when he said "Jamil, I want you to read your story, I was very impressed. At least now if the other kids disagree or think the story is stupid then they disagre with Mr. Colwell which means that they are wrong. So he reads it. He reads it so fast with his face buried in the paper. While he reads it, he's so nervous that he folds away the dot-matrix perferated sheet edges used for feeding the printer. Without knowing it he gets to the end and looks up. Everyone says nothing, and then someone finally says "Wow!" He turns native red. He was right, with these words they would finally see the world the way he sees it.
And that's why he writes.
The original story had an epilogue so I might as well have one. Afterwards Mr. Colwell took me aside and said, "When I said it was supposed to be a page I meant a regular lined paper page, this computer page is probably worth two and a half regular pages. You did way more than expected, but when you say print, that should still be with pen and paper. This is what we call typing."
I've always written a bit more than desired.
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