Escaping the universe, we are physically confined to, is necessary in life. Although, it is impossible. So, how do we accomplish this? We escape mentally. There are many outlets humans use to explore beyond the physical realm. Escapism is a way to forget the woes of life and distract ourselves with something more… well, just more.
There is something magical about people who can create through words. The ability to create stories, worlds, universes, and everything else you can imagine just through a stroke of a pen, well the stroke of a keyboard, is incomparable. Even movies start with writing. It’s an artform where the creator and the consumer can both escape in different measures.
People with the ability to write well, are not valued as much in society as they should be. How crazy is the idea of people collectively seeing a random assortment of symbols, that at some point in history, society had assigned value to. Then, everybody being able to visualize that value? Think about it for a moment.
SKY.
“Sky,” is just an assortment of lines and curves that somehow conjures images. Some of you might have seen a night sky. Some might have seen a clear sky on a sunny warm day. Then, there are some that envisioned a stormy sky. Maybe some thought of a person. No matter what sky you envisioned, all the English readers could interpret something related to the word.
My love for writing began very early. From a young age, I knew I couldn’t live without storytelling through literature. It all began in second grade. It was in Mrs. Wilson’s class. To premise, I was a terrible speller from the first moment I learned how to read and write.
There were many reasons for this. Parent’s that didn’t make me do my vocabulary words, lack of motivation in school, and interests other than academia to name a few. To be fair, most seven-year-old children care for a lot of other things than school.
Nothing up until this point ever called to me. Institutionalized learning was not my specialty in life. I never completed my minute math sheet on time. At this point, I can’t even remember what we learned for science at that age. Words were hard, but I managed. Then, something changed. We had our first short-story writing prompt.
For the life of me, I cannot remember the exact details of the description. I just remember, the story had to be written about an abominable snowman.
It was the first time I was able to imagine something and then put it into words on paper. It was on that special writing sheet for children. Depending on your age, you know what I’m talking about… the ones with the extra-large spaces and the dotted lines between each solid line. The ink was a little splotchy from the copy machine and you could only fit about eight lines on the sheet. It asked for your name on the top right corner.
We had been taught different ways to write leading up to this assignment. Since we were young, we were taught to use “sounds” and start sentences with exciting adjectives followed by a comma.
At first, I dreaded the assignment. As I said before, my spelling was not very solid. Grammar was pretty much non-existent. Even so, a few moments after we received the prompt. I had the first bout of excitement. I could see the story in my head.
The gist of what I came up with is as follows (Please remember there would have been virtually no commas, every other word was probably misspelled, and my vocabulary would not have been as developed as the outline that follows):
A young girl is playing outside in the snow by herself. It is a cold winter’s day and snow is falling all around her. Her gloves are mismatched because she was too excited to play in the snow to notice she grabbed one of her sister’s. She is trying, and failing, to build a snowman.
Suddenly, a monster as big as the trees around her scoops her up. His fur blends in with the snow around them. She screams and yells, but the dense snow muffles the noise (I definitely did not use the words dense nor muffles back in the day. It was added today for dramatic effect). He carries her back to his cave. Gently, he sets her down on a very large bed.
The cave is dark and cold, lit only by candles. The bed is at least comfortable, even if it’s much too large for her. The Yeti does not speak to her. He leaves and then comes back to her with a cup of hot chocolate (because for some reason, Yetis drink hot chocolate). He leaves her alone for a few minutes more and then comes back carrying scrambled eggs. She hates eggs, but she does not tell him this.
She asks him why he brought her to his cave (I do not believe I knew how to add quotations at this point in my life). He cannot speak, so he grunts and picks her up again. The monster carries her to another room. This room is also lit by candles. In this room, there is a sick Yeti. Her fur is more grey than white.
She is coughing and the floor is covered with tissues. She is very uncomfortable.
The girl asks if they need help. The boy yeti nods his head yes.
The girl tells him if she lets her leave, she promises to come right back. The yet, out of options, lets her leave.
The girl treks home through the snow. The yeti doesn’t follow her. Immediately, she runs to the bathroom without even taking her snow shoes off and raids the medicine cabinet. She gets cold medicine, vapor rub (loved that stuff as a kid), and another box of tissues. She quickly throws the items in her school backpack and makes her way through the snow.
The snow had grown more intense. She somehow lost her way back to the cave. She starts yelling for help. Suddenly, (again with the adjective at the beginning of sentence) the yeti picks her up and pats her head. She is relieved. She was saved.
When they get back to the cave, the girl gives the yeti the supplies. The yeti goes to the sick yeti’s room and does not return for a few minutes. When he does, he pats her head again. The girl asks him if she can go home now. The yeti nods his head. This time, he carries her back safely and sets her down where he found her before. He waves goodbye and disappears into the distance. The snow quickly covers his tracks. It was as though he had never been there.
The girl never sees the yeti again.
To the best of my ability, that is what I can recall of the story. When I was in school, we did not have computers to write on or tablets to use. Everything was done in paper and pencil. Oh, how I wish I could just pull up some of the work I did as child.
For the longest time, I kept that physical story. It served as a sense of motivation for me. Between moves, it unfortunately got lost or thrown away. I still remember the red paper folder and the yellowed paper with the large lines and terrible handwriting.
With the barely legible writing, it was amazing that Mrs. Wilson could even read a word of what I was trying to construe. It might have been purely the enthusiasm I displayed that allowed me to get a perfect score. I was one of the only children to get up for more pieces of paper to continue my piece.
This was most likely not the first piece I ever wrote in my entire life, but it was the most life changing. From that point on, writing has been a very significant part of my life. It is a form of expression. It is a form of escapism. It is a form of entertainment. There are so many factors of writing that have aided me in life. It all began with this piece.
Second grade was the last year in school we wrote fiction pieces for a long time. The following years were to prepare for persuasive writing. I did not enjoy that type of writing. Yet, the values I learned from Mrs. Wilson’s class still aided me to succeed in all writing. It wasn’t until high school that I was able to venture out and start writing fiction again. At that point, writing became a hobby.
Life gets in the way sometimes. Dreams don’t always come to fruition. At one point I might have through I would be a famous fiction writer one day, or at least have a multitude of novels published by the time I was 25. None of this has happened, yet the ability to transpose thoughts to words will remain an integral part of my life.
I hope I have grown a lot as a writer over the years. I want to capture my fantasies and dreams through words. I want to inspire others to write and enjoy the process. The themes I enjoy writing about change through the years, but the fundamentals remain the same. Just to name a few, I have enjoyed fantasy writing, horror, and romance. Lately, I have been focusing more on short stories instead of trying to task myself with a novel on a full schedule. Through the years, I hope I can finally complete something fantastic. For the moment, I will settle for mildly interesting.
Thank you Mrs. Wilson. Your simple writing prompt in our second grade classroom caused a chain of events that forever changed me.
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