When I was growing up I was pretty much proficient at most of my school subjects, but I remember having a difficult time with book reports. Reading a book IN FULL felt like a very large and daunting task and seemingly impossible. In third grade we read Johnny Tremain in the classroom, a few pages a day until we finished it weeks, or likely months, later. I don’t remember anything about it. I remember he mutilated his hand while smelting silver, but I could also be remembering that because Bart read the same book in the episode he was home schooled. I had a very difficult time retaining information from what I read. I could read and dictate just fine, but when asked to speak about what I just read my memory was like a wiped whiteboard.
I couldn’t keep track of the characters, their actions, or the overall plot of books. There was only a few books that I could read and retain info, and it usually came down to how the author chose their words, prose, cadence, or whatever. I’m not sure actually. Some books just clicked better than others. And there were many books that didn’t click at all during those elementary years.
In middle school and junior high, however, I discovered humor. At Waldenbooks I frequented the humor aisles, mostly for Far Side, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbs, and other books of comics featured in the newspaper funny pages. After I had read all of the comics that I understood, and also didn’t understand (Doonesbury was a tad too topical than my sheltered child mind), I found my way to the humor books that didn’t evolve talking stuffed tigers. I fell deep into the world of humorist Dave Barry. Dave Barry was a humor writer, a humorist, that wrote humorous opinion pieces in the newspaper every week. His newspaper pieces were consolidated into books and I started to collect and read them all.
To correct myself, I believe I found out about Dave Barry first from the TV Show, Dave’s World, starring Night Court’s Harry Anderson who played as Dave. The episodes were based off the writings of Dave Barry Turns 40 and Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits. It ran from 1993 to 1997. This show really gave me a glimpse of an adult job that I wanted: he spent all his time in his office writing funny things. He didn’t even have to commute! His office was built in his backyard so he just walked out to it. He took his breaks in his kitchen!
At the time we had an old IBM PC which was only running DOS, used 5.25″ floppy disks, no hard drive, and needed a boot disk. The monitor was orange and black, and was definitely collecting dust. After watching a lot of Dave’s World and reading Dave Barry books, I started writing my own humor takes. I followed a lot of the same prose of build up and delivery, opinion and perspective based, but definitely within the limits of my junior high sheltered mind.
I may still have these writings somewhere. I know at one point I had transferred the files from 5.25″ floppy to 3.5″ floppy and those disks are possibly in my garage currently. If I find them, I’ll let you know.
Inserting humor into writing became a very good tool to use and also made doing writing assignments for school a lot better. Finding methods to insert a joke felt like a really clever strategy to get the homework done.
For my homework and writing assignments I got an upgrade from that IBM computer: a Brother Word Processor, which was essentially a typewriter hooked up to a monitor. I could draft up my homework and “print” it out. Printing was done with the typewriter. It cost a lot less than a real computer and also didn’t have any games. (There was a model that came out AFTER the model I had that had Tetris and I remember asking the clerk at Sears if I could just have the disk since I already had the Word Processor and they had to tell me no).
While reading humor novels became a good way to actually enjoy reading, doing book reports about them were very difficult. Book reports for English classes required that one could explain the plot, character development, the twists and turns of a story, and deliver it succinctly within the few hundred word requirement of the assignment. What plot development is there in “Don’t Stand Too Close To A Naked Man” by Tim, the tool man, Allen?
Dave Barry, Saturday Night Live, Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Simpsons, and every other very smart humor that came out in the early 90’s definitely defined my early self. Jokes had layers! Jokes were aware of themselves and broke the fourth wall!
Through high school I still struggled reading books for book reports and I didn’t read for the enjoyment of reading. Even thinking back, I don’t think I read the Dave Barry books, or other humor books, for the enjoyment of reading, but to fulfill a book report assignment. There’s possibly a few books that I did read on my own. I definitely had many avenues for entertainment, having a TV, a VCR, a Sega Genesis, and a collection of tapes and CDs. Where would books fit or compare with the electric static of loud entertainment coming from those devices?
After high school, while in Texas, the first time I was very much on my own, I actually fell deep into loving reading. A friend turned me onto Ray Bradbury and while I was already aware of Douglas Adams, I hadn’t read anything yet. That year I read many books from Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, J. R. R. Tolkien, Orson Scott Card, and any other sci-fi or fantasy novel I could get my hand on.
I hadn’t really gone back to re-read the writings of Dave Barry as an adult until last year, August 2023. In August I had flown to Pittsburgh to go on a short noise tour with my bestie, Rain. While driving through Massachusetts, there was a free library at the AirBnB we rented. We checked it out to review. Rain found a book for their partner and I found a Dave Barry classic that I remembered reading and enjoying during this early growing time of my life. While Rain drove us into town for breakfast I told her, excitedly, a lot of what I’ve written here. I skimmed the book for a random quote, and no joke, the two or three random entries I found were full of severely outdated racist and sexist comments.
I don’t necessarily know where Barry fits in political opinion or on the political spectrum so I’m not sure if we’re aligned lately in the current sense. This chapter isn’t about him, per se, but my history in writing.
From ages 19 through my early twenties, I started writing. I was on an old blog site, Xanga, which had an active community in an early form of some form of social media. I would use the xanga platform to write fiction and non-fiction entries. I wrote a lot. I almost wrote every day. The Ray Bradbury quote, “What better way to live forever than write every day of your life” really stuck with me. It still does to this day. If I’m not doing something that doesn’t have some sort of record and playback ability it doesn’t feel like I’ve done anything meaningful. Chores aren’t documented for instance.
I dove deep into Kurt Vonnegut and started to read more edgier books like Chuck Palahniuk. Everything I read became a new tool-set for my own writing. I used the xanga platform to practice writing short stories. I also ranted a lot about life, and even complained about people that I didn’t think would read it. (They eventually did! Ha!)
These years in my early twenties where I journaled and came up with story ideas, I put music on hold. In high school I was in a couple of bands, was very proficient on the guitar and was learning bass, drums, and other instruments. There was a moment while in Texas and a year after where I decided to put music on hold. That’s a story for another time (honestly, because it’s a LOT).
When I started on xanga, writing blogs felt very anonymous. Having people comment on the posts from other parts of the world also made it anonymous. I sort of made friends on this platform. I even was engaged to a girl for a few years that I met on the site. Some people that were in my real friend circle found the posts I wrote about them, made fake accounts and left comments in a very shady way. Instead of asking in real life, they did this passive aggressive move. This made me not trust them fully, but also made me very self aware of where I was writing and what I was writing about.
On livejournal and other blog sites later (even this word press blog) I started sterilizing my entries. Instead of ranting about anything and everything, even if to get it off my chest, I stifled my words. I was too self aware of who could possibly find it.
At this time, I also was transitioning into adulthood, maintaining a job, keeping a relationship, doing the boring things adults do. I had a goal to release a novel by the time I turned 25. That never happened. I had too many ideas written down and no actual stories developed. I kept reading and enjoyed reading when I could find time or habit to read daily. I fell into the very easy mindset of: I’ll write in my forties.
The mindset was very easy to fall into. “I’ll do that later” is something most humans say, and often. “That’s a future me issue.” Definitely!
Well, as I’m writing this, I’m 44. I’ll be 45 in just a few months, officially making me in my mid-forties. It’s time now to start writing. I’ve been thinking about this a LOT lately. So, regardless if people read this blog or not, I’ll use this as an avenue to write. Fiction and Non-Fiction/Auto Biography will be categorized accordingly. I still have a goal to publish. Being creative at my core, I need to create and build. So I will keep pushing with this.