I do love to write. I took a creative writing class last year and I found that I enjoy writing memoirs the most, by far.
Here's the first one that I wrote. This may or may not be the edited version - I don't particually feel like reading through to see. I'm thinking, though, that it isn't because there's no title on it. I may or may not come back to edit it later. Sorry about the length here and how there is no indentation because of how the boards are changing it. So, as a result, I'm marking the paragraph beginings with '#'.
*****
# It’s not intolerable pain until I look straight at it. The silver slimy hook is hanging there like it was its life intention. Everyone is standing there, just around, gasping, chuckling, making disgusted faces, all dependent on his or her age. You could cut the sense of shock, mostly of my stupidity, with a cheesecake sting, that which my Great Aunt left to come to my aide. Crimson streaks made trippy swirls through the black of my tightly closed eyes; they had yet to transfer down to my finger. Like a still punctured pin in a Happy Anniversary balloon, the hook had yet to let anything out, plugging the volcano that would eventually burst.
# Age two was the age of bliss. The play and the carefree nature, which is a constantly dwindling flame by now, made my life mine. Pollywags were overly abundant at the Shack in the country, in our country more than an hour, no more than two, away from our demanding lifestyle in the suburbs. Collecting the tadpoles, dubbed pollywags years before my time, was our hobby, and still is over a dozen years later. My twin first cousins-once-removed, making them the younger cousins of my mother, were my best friends. Four years my senior, Andrew and Ashley were my teammates in crime, and life. Their coolness was never ending. And when they were scolded, they were idolized, the Lord in the eyes of a two year old, taking a fall for the greater good. I’ve learned a lot from the pair of them, most importantly, at that age, the art of the pollywag hunt. Handfuls at a time, we scooped those suckers into our yellow buckets and paraded them around with our heads held high, usually using some sort of marching feet. One summer afternoon, the sun at a moderate height in the not-so-special sky, Andrew, loving himself for his accomplishments hopped in, presumably for emphasis, to show off his bucket. In it, he had more than the usual. It was like the sporadic Easter when you got a pound of chocolate rabbit rather than just a bunch of bite sized pieces. Looking into his pail, we saw what we were accustomed to, a pet stores supply worth of pollywags, but with a new surprise - a fully grown, yet small in size, frog. In sync with a squeal and a “Whoa!”, Ashley hoisted the frog up from its new habitat into the air in order to share in her brother’s success. The frog, not enjoying his experience in the sky, decided to flee, jumping off two heads on its way onto the house floor, just like you see in the movies, wreaking havoc over the already overcrowded house.
# Along the trail in the backyard of our “Shack”, you can find a nature trail. About halfway through the walk and a the highest point of the hills sits a hunting “cabin”, which can better be described as a small little tree fort where you could normally find ten year old boys sitting out in their backyard talking about comic books and the little red haired girl in their class. This hunting lookout has been in the family longer than I have, or my mother has, for that matter. Its successes are shown in pictorial form on the living room wall, like how a doctor displays diplomas on the wall of the office. From up there, we could view the most beautiful of sunsets. The way they hit the back brush was picturesque in a way hardly describable. The blends of oranges, golds, reds, sapphires, and violets had the magical abilities to wash away any pain, taking it down with the sun to the point where it met the dissociating seaweed and the legendary uncatchable fish who was old enough to be my grandfather.
# Standing on the dock now, the glare of the metal trying to blind me doesn’t prevent the glare of the worm’s eyes staring at me, taunting, from where it lies down near my left foot. The pain was interrupted by the backlash whip of the hook being removed and was quickly replaced with the most excruciating pain of my conscious memory. The tear in my hand was large but it was ponies in Never-Neverland in comparison to the death that I felt was surely coming. Laying myself down on the dock, a quarter for drama, the rest for an attempt at pain relief, I caught a glimpse of the stupid fish that I was trying to catch in the first place.
# I caught his brother the next trip.
# That’s exactly what it was about. It wasn’t the revenge so much, not more than a twelfth at least, but it was getting back. It was not letting a fear fiddle with the mind and the course it decides to take. It’s the mind defeating mental matter and the intruding fish hooks found in every dark, slimy, bright, or cobwebby corner in life’s never ending zigs.
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I'm also very into journalism type writing.
