This was a weird one because it was all about the year 1995 and in 1995 I was 9 years old. There isn't any other link between the stories, other than talking about what happened during that year. I wish there was a better theme for the show, because memories of 3rd grade aren't crystal clear, but trying to look back at it I think I have something. Luckily for you, I remember a good story from 3rd grade that actually might play well with the life I'm in now days. The more I go through this idea of using the program as a series of writing prompts for personal essays or whatever else you want to call these, the more I see it as a horribly good thing. It's amazing because they have to come up with unique topics every single week, but also horrible because there are going to be some that I simply have nothing for, luckily this is not one of those that I have nothing for.
My First Writing Group
I don't remember all of the details, I don't remember why we were doing it, and I'm pretty sure that it was only about a page long, but 3rd grade sits clearly in my mind as the first time I wrote a story.
Rewind back to me being 9 years old. I'm the weird kid at school, nerdy, but the grade schoolers didn't quite know how to approach the nerdyness that was me, so I just kept on rolling as me. The only weird part about my 4.0 GPA in grade school (that promptly tanked as soon as hormones and middle school came around) was that I was absolutely no good at spelling. Writing was my weakest subject. Ironic now, I know, but I take it to be like my backhand in tennis. It used to be the worst shot in the world from me, but because I drilled it so much and focused so much time on it, it slowly became what I'm strongest at.
With that in mind, I was super proud of what I had created. I worked hard on it, I thought that it was top tier stuff, and I was ready to have other people in the class review it so that they could mark off on nothing on it, because it was perfect. Like I said, I was a little nerdy, and also a little cocky about it too. We sit down in the group and one of the stories that I had to go through and edit was missing something! I was so proud of myself, the story had a sentence that wasn't a full sentence. It didn't have a capital letter to it, but instead started off with three periods. I mean, come on kids, even I knew that sentences didn't start with periods.
Thus started a debate between me and the girl on if you could start a sentence with three periods. In my world, sentences had to start with a capital letter, have something doing something and then end with either a period, question mark or exclamation point. If there was anything that I learned in second grade it was that a sentence had to have those things. After making enough noise and neither of us backing down we took things to Mrs. Dagger (considerably less awesome than her name builds her up to be) and that was my first introduction to the creative writing rule that you can break just about any rule that's in existence if you have a reason for it.
You can have a sentence that starts, or even ends with multiple periods . . . you just have to make sure that it makes sense. It's one of those things that you don't get taught that early on when writing, and luckily in my first (or at least one of my first) writing groups I learned that you can be creative with creative writing. You have to know the rules, and you have to follow the rules, but if you feel like breaking out of them every now and again, and you have a good reason to, then go ahead and be creative and do something different.
I can't remember much from third grade, but I do remember having that argument, and knowing that I was right, knowing with everything that my teachers had taught me, that what was on the page wasn't a sentence, and then learning at the same time that words don't always have to fit into the rules. There were other small things about that school year, like how Mrs. Dagger would take roll, but learning that words can do weird things if you know how to use them right, stuck with me.
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