eptivity

Several years ago, I learned to read. I was 4 at the time, so when I was 5 and it was time to start kindergarten, my reading skillz propelled me straight into first grade.

In second grade, I finished my math workbook a few weeks before the end of the school year, so they gave me a third-grade workbook. And so my math skillz propelled me into being a year ahead in math through the end of high school, culminating in a three-student calculus class in which my friend Amy regularly ate her lunch, lay on the floor, and/or proclaimed our collective lack of conceptual understanding to be at least half of the teacher’s fault.

But before that, I was 12, and Mrs. Shearer’s eighth-grade English class inspired my illustrious ’95-’96 literary career.

Mrs. Shearer made us do things like read books and study foreign Christmas traditions and complete Winston Grammar worksheets, the very bane of our existence. And she also made us write stories, all the time, which made this class the best I’ve ever taken (even better than that college grammar class).

The stories were usually themed, like “use 10 of these ‘jungle’ words in a story,” but no matter the theme, my cast of characters revolved around one man: Bob Crotchit.

Bob had a wife named Frieda, and they lived in Zimbabwe with a teal-striped dancing flamingo whose name escapes me. Bob’s favorite colors were orange and mint green. Bob had a friend named Mr. Woody, who worked at the tire factory, and a friend named Herman J. Herman, who lived in Wisconsin and owned three chickens named Hen, Henny, and Henrietta and a rooster named Jerry (he made cheese for a living, but info re: his source of milk is strangely lacking). Bob’s friend Al featured prominently in an epic adventure called “Al’s Plane and the Dangers of Orange Juice.”

Our big project for the year was to write and illustrate a book. I made a pop-up book called Breakfast at Vinnie’s Various Vegi-Sausages. Bob is here relegated to a genial fairy godfather-esque role, and his godson, Flin, is instead embroiled in a tangled web of intrigue involving the aforementioned teal-striped dancing flamingo, blackmail, tiddlywinks, Love Potion No. 9, and two villains named Stanley “The Squid” Snodgrass and Percival “The Prune” Peabody, who wore matching hot-pink Elvis belts, whatever those are.

The only line I can actually remember: “Twin candy cigarettes dangled like participles from thin lips.” I’m pretty sure they were also drinking virgin margaritas.

In a later, semi-related story, a folder of Winston Grammar is used to fend off some attackers, inciting Bob to shout, “Not the Winston Grammar! I don’t want to live my life not knowing what a predicate nominative is!”

I was very strange child.