Trippin’ Down Memory Lane
I called my best friend from college the other night because I’m in my forties and I need to remember my youth. I’m sick of being invisible in the check-out line at Kroger’s.
So we chatted away about the changes at UCLA (where we went—Go Bruins!) and where her daughter would be a freshman in the fall. Then we fell to reminiscing about the stupid things we used to do (like jogging at 1 a.m. in Westwood… Westwood! Like rapists didn’t live in bushes in Westwood in the early eighties?).
We talked about our current lives and I filled her in on Brave Writer. This friend is not a homeschooler so I spent time describing the little world you and I take for granted, and how teaching writing came to be, even though when she and I left college, I was a polyglot bound for the mission field.
She startled me with a recollection that I had truly forgotten—repressed memory syndrome, obviously.
“Julie, I can totally see you teaching writing.”
“You can?”
“Totally. Don’t you remember? I went into full-on panic mode any time I had an essay due. I’ll never forget when you sat me down in your living room, took my notebook from me and said, ‘Now, Cyndy, what do you want to say in this essay?’
“I didn’t have a clue—no outline, no notes, just a few hazy thoughts that I blurted out. You calmly started scribbling away, asking questions and before I knew it, you had written an outline of what should go in my essay as well as started writing it for me… and you didn’t even know anything about the subject!
“I was in awe,” she said.
So I’ve been coaxing people to write for a long time, apparently. Warmed my heart! I don’t know how I knew it, but I just knew she could write, if she started talking. It’s still that way. If I can get you talking, get your kids talking, get your kids talking to you… writing erupts.
On the other hand, don’t ask me about balancing a checkbook during college. After bouncing, I kid you not, TEN checks in the span of TWO weeks my freshman year of college, this self-same Cyndy marched into my little studio apartment, sat me down at a table and showed me that you are actually supposed to ENTER the amounts you spend and then DEDUCT them from the current balance! Who knew? Apparently Cyndy did. 🙂
