I have writing class tomorrow. I feel I can write fairly well (you’re here, aren’t you?) but I still struggle with gerunds, superlatives, and infinitives. And to be honest, I have a hard time really giving a crap. Maybe I shouldn’t have spent High School English hour out in the park smoking pot with my would-be wife, or drinking warm Hauenstein with my future-ex-brother-in-law from the trunk of his Chevy Vega (there’s a fairly entertaining story there, I can tell you).
However, despite my self-imposed handicap, I still like to write. So I signed up for a class. Why not? It gets me out of work early. We all sit around a big table and read each other’s stuff; that way you can hear how crappy your writing really is. You’re supposed to pick someone to read your latest Hemingway, which I don’t like to do (even though I somehow get picked more than most – they must like my nifty Norwegian accent), so I try to keep things simple and just pick the person to my left. She seemed nice enough. Oh boy.
I admit, I’m guilty of dropping the occasional naughty word in my writing. Not only can I not help it, but I think it livens things up a little. What I didn’t know when I quietly passed my piece to the girl North of me was that she didn’t swear. Not at all. Ever. No fuck, shit, piss, damn, crotch, bitch, bastard, nor boner have ever passed her lips. She went as far as pronouncing Jesus as hay-soos, but that’s it.
Talk about awkward. I felt bad for her. I thought I’d passed into some weird anti-Tourette’s world, because every time she came to a bad word there was this long uncomfortable silence during which I nearly blurted out the offending verb, noun, or preposition just to help her along.
She apologized afterwards for butchering my work. I said don’t fucking worry about it.
Tomorrow I’ll pick someone else.
Talk about a bunch of tight asses… Good thing I grew up with a family that curses like a sailor, then became a sailor, then married one 🙂