Teachers

The question was asked: What would you like to say today to the teacher that gave you a hard time in school?

Well, here is what I'd like to say:

Up yours! I'm 43 years old and I don't have to be here any more! You're obviously part of my nightmare!
One teacher that I can think of that gave me a hard time was my gym teacher when I was nine years old. I hadn't understood something he said so he made me run back and forth across the gym as a punishment and encouraged the other kids to laugh at me when my face turned beet red.
The other teacher that gave me a hard time was my sixth grade teacher who I really don't think liked kids at all. It's amazing that I still enjoy writing, but I think it's because I could see he was a jerk, in spite of the fact that I was always crying in his class. He was always giving me F's on my writing because I "followed too closely" the outlines I created. In other words, he knew that I wrote the story first and then the outline. But if you didn't follow the outline you created initially you would also get downgraded. It was a no-win situation. However, I remembered from when I was in fifth grade submitting a writing sample for those yearly tests and the results came back telling me that I was writing at an eighth grade level. I was proud of that and it stayed with me. Luckily, because sixth grade was horrible. Not only did I have this teacher trying to make me feel stupid, but I was given one of those IQ tests that is based on pattern recognition. Having a degree of dyslexia (which was not something they'd heard of back in the day) when it comes to numbers and patterns, I did horribly at it and until I was in my twenties and took a Mensa test (and did well on the whole, believe it or not) I believed that I was borderline retarded and was fooling everyone whenever I got a decent grade.
On the whole, I'd like to give almost every educational professional from my sixth grade year a whoopin' that they wouldn't forget.

Possessed By The Writing Demon

This was actually a reply to a statement made by a friend that once I earned the godforsaken nursing degree that I don't really want I can write for the love of writing rather than to make money. While this would work for someone who is sane, it doesn't work for the certifiably insane. And that would be--my evil twin, of course!

That being said, here is my explanation of what my amazing hack-titude at writing means to me.

I don't write as a means to earn a living. I do it because I'm possessed. Not by him (my spectral co-author)--I've just always had this need to do it. I don't really expect to ever make any money doing it. But like Bierce, Lovecraft and Poe before me, I do it because it has taken hold of my soul.
I've always had a love-hate relationship with writing. It's like one of those pathological romances that is both destructive and as essential as breathing. I sometimes hate that I HAVE to do it or I start becoming insanely depressed. But I love creating the alternative realities.
I can't put off writing while earning this godforsaken nursing degree, which I would jump ship from in a heartbeat if anything else I'm working on starts making money for me! The fact of the matter is that I do NOT have any desire to be a nurse. It doesn't speak to my soul. It's just a damn job. Which means I'll be a half-assed nurse, just like I'm a half-assed medical technician. But I've been stuck in the medical field for so long that I'm too old to do anything else unless one of these online projects takes off.
In the meantime, I will strive to make my place on the list of great weird fiction writers. I can't actually ever hold a candle to those who went before, but I hope that someday someone will read what I've written and say "hell yeah! I want to write like Bierce, Lovecraft, Poe and STRANGE!" Then I'll have succeeded.