It was a dark and stormy night. Those words have haunted me ever since I read Snoopy type them out on his trusty typewriter. Whenever I had a language exam I would run home and the first thing my dad always asked was, “What essay did you write?”. My dad, a physician, was an unlikely doctor and dad. Instead of asking the typical questions pertaining to math and science, he would be interested in my literary pursuits. I think he must be the only dad who promoted my reading of books under the blanket using a flashlight.
When I used to spend my summer vacations at my grandmother’s, there would be a horde of my cousins already there. I remember I used to be the only kid to get any mail. It usually would be a bunch of books from my Dad who unfailing kept my reading habit going even if I did not have access to a library. I would open my package with excitement and show the books off to my cousins. They would be jealous not only because getting mail was such a big deal back then, especially if you are a twelve year old, but me flaunting the books around was too much for them to handle.
It eventually ended in a chase through the backyards with me clutching my precious books to my chest and running for my life. Since I was quite a monkey then, I used to shimmy up a forbidding looking tree and camp out with my cousins taunting me from below. I used to take care to choose a tree with plenty of fruit so that I could retaliate when my cousins pelted me with stones. Once their patience ran out I would pick a ripe fruit, settle back on one of the big branches and commence reading.
All that reading is coming back to haunt me now. My head feels like a champagne cork that is being compressed with all the literary gas built up inside me. It has to pop. And so began my quest to release those words on paper. I thought it would be easy. I mean, if a cartoon beagle can do it, so can I.
But I was wrong. First, I had no stamina to write using paper and pen. Since I eventually became a software programmer the feel of the keyboard was more natural to me. Even though I developed a fearsome typing speed - whenever I tried to write something literary, the blinking cursor on the blank screen jeered at me. I tried drawing on my presumed immense literary cornucopia of reading. Zilch.
And then one day the floodgates opened. I don’t know why and how. Those words started showing up with regularity and I did not have to delete them out of self-criticism.
Maybe it is because now when my daughter comes home from a test, I ask her “So what essay did you write today?”.