Creative Critters

I asked for an electric typewriter on my thirteenth birthday and, because my parents have always been forthcoming with gifts, I got it. It seems silly that I wasn’t asking for a toy or a new bike or something, but at the time I was only interested in writing. I was that big of a dork. And I had read “The Princess Bride” and a few other books by William Goldman as well as some Ken Follett and decided I was ready to start writing international spy novels. Before high school.

That typewriter carried me through high school right up to a Creative Writing class my senior year.

It was a small class. Less than ten students (mind you, my graduating class only had 70 students – a small private school). The teacher called us her “Creative Critters”. It was filled with the geek core. The “smart kids” who seemed like intellectuals and some of whom would go Ivy for college. Intellectual snobs with wealthy parents who liked to discuss politics and the merits of Proust and the conflict inherent in “A Tale of Two Cities”. I, on the other hand, had managed to avoid discussing or frankly even reading “A Tale of Two Cities”. In fact, at about 10 a.m. on a Sunday I asked my mother if we had a copy of the book anywhere in our library.

“Why?” She asked. “Has it been assigned?”

“Yes.” I told her. “I’m being tested on it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!?” What followed was a lot of screaming and yelling and probably a few obscenities like “fuck” which mom has only used about 20 times in her life. She saves “fuck” for times when she wants to hurt people. Usually her children. Whenever mom says “fuck” heads are going to roll so you’d better get out of the way, put on a helmet and, if you have one lying around, a nice aluminum suit of armor.

We rushed out to buy the Cliff Notes and I lay out in the sun perfecting my tan while reading the mini-book. I got a 42 on the test.

Needless to say, I was a little bit of an outcast in my Creative Writing class. A little too outspoken. A little too silly. Although, my best friend from fourth grade (who I nicknamed “Perhaps” and who nicknamed me “Maybe”) was in the class along with a few other people I had known for ten years. So they didn’t spit on me or tell me I was stupid or quiz me on my knowledge of the Ottoman Empire while their noses tilted up at that ever so slight eight degree angle.

Still.

Once, Ms. Williams passed out little sheets of paper with words on them. We were asked to write a poem about the word on the paper. My word was “gazelle”.

Now, I knew that gazelles were mammals. Four legged mammals, even. I thought maybe they had horns. And they were brown. That was the extent of my gazelle knowledge. Four legged brown colored mammals with horns.

Most mammals eat meat. Okay, not most mammals. But most wild mammals. Most wild, brown, four-legged mammals with horns are known to indulge in the occasional living, breathing being. Grass and berries isn’t generally enough for most wild, brown, four-legged, horned mammals.

So my poem plunged me to the depths of my gazelle knowledge and referenced their sharp teeth, pack-hunting tendencies, and attack prowess. I also said something about blood and gore and ripping of flesh and smell of death as they killed their feast.

As I read my masterpiece aloud, I noticed some strange looks from my classmates. When I finished, Ms. Williams, our teacher, announced, “That’s a very… interesting poem. However, gazelles are not carnivores. They are vegetarians. Prey. Cheetahs eat them. They are very docile animals.”

Everyone had a good laugh about that. Including me.

As the year wore on, Ms. Williams, was often absent. We never quite understood why, though theories flew around. She was an alcoholic. She was in a mental institution. She had asthma. Her lesbian lover was in the hospital. Her dragon attacked her in her sleep.

Once, she was out for a few weeks and we were asked to write acrostics. An acrostic is “a composition in which sets of letters (as the initial or final letters of the lines) taken in order form a word or phrase”. So, if you read the first letter of every line vertically, they will spell some other word relevant to the piece. Acrostics are like poems, but not really. They should not rhyme. And each line must be a sentence of about the same length. And the beginning of each sentence must be a word – no breaking a word across the line. At least, that’s the way the Intellectual Ivy Geek Squad understood it.

Now, there is nothing wrong with assigning acrostics in a Creative Writing class. It’s a common technique and, after all, we were only eighteen years old so very few of us were writing great literature of Shakespeare caliber.

However. She had been out for two weeks. And every day the substitute came in to announce 1) Ms. Williams’ absence and 2) our assignment of writing acrostics. Two weeks of a very, painfully, achingly, kill-me-now literary technique that students like us could master in one sitting.

When she returned, the acrostics stopped. However, we were asked to write a book of poetry with ten or fifteen poems. I included the following:

How I Feel About Acrostics

A nnounce the word “a-
Crostic” and be sure to have protection
Rear its ugly face and from
Our class you’ll find objection
See, we wrote these silly things for weeks
To find we loathed them with a passion
Into every class we brought this trash
Consequently, they’ve gone out of fashion
So, you see, you’re advised not to assign them

Since your “creative critters” hate the thought
Uv making phrases from a single word. If I
Catch you doing this again, I’ll send my
Killer gazelle to eat your [pet] bird

When I read this aloud to the class, everyone objected. Loudly. Some even snickered.

“You can’t rhyme acrostics!”

“You can’t break up a word like that at the beginning of a sentence!”

“Uv is not a word!”

On and on they went. I just smiled. I was infinitely proud of my silly poem and its silly rhymes and silly use of language and pure unadulterated silliness of silly. And I bloody well hated acrostics.

Another assignment was to write a one-act play.

Mine was called “Utopia”. It opened with three old men sitting around a table discussing whether or not they could hire snipers to kill off society’s undesirables and create a utopian society of the smartest people, the most attractive, the most talented. The next few scenes announce the death of the president and other key people the three men considered objectionable. It ends with a TV announcer saying “six hundred and seventy-three notables have been killed in the last three days” as the three men sit around the table and toast their success.

We were asked to read our plays aloud to the class and, as ever, I faced more snickering. It was morbid. It was stupid. It was ridiculous. Et cetera. Et cetera. The other plays were more sophisticated. Written with more talent. More realistic.

A few days later, Ms. Williams announced that she had submitted our plays to our theatre director, Sister Anne – the woman who put on school plays every year.

Mine was the only one that Sister Anne considered producible.