It’s not about the peanut butter and jelly. Recently, a memory of a middle school writing assignment surfaced. Our teacher asked the class to write about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That night, before I sat down to scribe my essay, I made a PB&J and reflected on everything that goes into the process. The next day the teacher asked us to read our PB&J recipe (recipe! recipe!) to the entire class. As each student got up and read their less-than-one-minute guide on how you take bread and a knife and spread on peanut butter and grape jelly, I sank further and further into my chair. By the time my name was called my throat had gone dry. I pushed myself up and, hands shaking, stood in front of the entire sixth grade and read a story about traveling to Georgia to pick peanuts, shell and crush them into butter; about picking and placing sweet red strawberries into a wash tub, and, pant legs rolled to my knees, crushing them with my feet; about wheat cut from dusty fields, thrashed, and ground into flour, then … well, you get the idea. Somehow, during the knee shaking five minutes it took me to get through my story, the room stretched making the trudge back to my desk longer than the speech itself. And, seriously, did my classmates have to snicker as I walked the green mile? Did my teacher have to clear her throat and reiterate the assignment was to write a recipe (yeah, yeah, I got it already) before she called the next student up? I don’t recall which class it was, my teachers name, or who my classmates were, but, I do recall that as I crafted my tale I disappeared into a another dimension - much like the feeling you get when you read the perfect words in the perfect book - only I was in control. With one or two words I was able to pilot myself to a different time of day, place, or emotion. Perhaps experiencing that feeling again brought the memory back. Whatever the reason, it has finally led me to the point of my ramblings – the art of writing offers the ability to mold words into worlds and everyone should take a shot at it, just like I did, regardless of the throat clearing corrections and snickers from the past.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:28:02 +0000
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