I am not a very adept writer. I can’t even think of what to write about now. I fill my pages with mindless nonsense every time my pencil touches them. I can’t give a picture-perfect description of the azure sky. I can’t write a friendly, bantering dialogue. Being a good writer is crucial in school and I just can’t seem to be able to master the art. When a paper and pencil are set in front of me and my teacher tells me to write something, I will deploy all my brains, but in the end come up with nothing. My writing would be facilitated if someone told me what to write about, but I may not like what they tell me to write about.
It’s especially difficult because my teacher is particularly fastidious when she grades my writing. As I hand in my horrid papers, I feel a pang of guilt and regret as I return to my desk in the back of the room, slowly meandering my way through the rows of others’ desks on my way.
A strong lavender scent, the smell of my teacher’s generously applied perfume, precedes my teacher as she walks to me to hand back my paper. I close my eyes, praying that maybe this time wasn’t as bad as the others, but as I open them, I see my paper stained all over with the red ink of my teacher’s pen. As I am still grappling with my latest English failure, my hook-nosed, dark-eyed teacher hands out yet another writing assignment.
I have a fitful sleep that night, dreading the next day where I’d write my next failing grade. Fast-forward to the next day, and I am sitting at my desk staring blankly at the equally blank sheet of paper in front of me. I assume all the other kids’ heads have come up with copious ideas for the assignment, because they are all scratching away furiously at their papers. My usually lightning-fast thought process has decelerated to a half-mile per hour. My capacious, empty skull hasn’t even the merest flicker of an idea, like a candle to light the cobwebby, dark emptiness that resonates with my teacher’s audible deep breathing.
So that is why I wrote this paper: because I couldn’t ,for the life of me, think of anything else.