When I was in 8^th grade, my English teacher gave us an assignment where we were supposed to write a story. I don’t remember if there was a topic or a page length, but I do remember that I hand wrote it on notebook paper. I’d just moved back from India where for the past 3 years using a computer or typewriter was considered a form of cheating because it meant our penmanship couldn’t be judged.

I spent all weekend writing and rewriting l every time I made a mistake. At some point I got of rewriting and started to get a bit worried that if I kept rewriting the first paragraph in my very best cursive I was never going to get this done on time. So Monday morning I place a crinkled, scratched up, slightly yellow (I’m not really sure why I remember it having a yellowish tinge) very heavy stack of 5 or 6 pages (I used a whole lot of white-out too) with scribbling both sides on top of a neat pile of one-sided page long typed up sheets. That was when I felt my first twinge of alarm. My second, third, and billionth twinge came very shortly after when the teacher announced that she would be reading everyone’s paper. Aloud.

Now let me tell you about the story I wrote so very passionately. This was a very serious, deep, deep, story about a soldier in a far of place writing a letter to his girlfriend back home. This was some profound shit. People would read this and weep. And after they used up all the tissues in the box they would wonder, “My! Who is this genius writer?” This was to be the beginning seeds of my ripe literary career. People would speak anecdotally of this period. It would become a part of my folklore, like Picasso’s ability to cut out perfect shapes of any animal when he was ten or something.

This is not what happened.

My teacher laughed all the way through the reading. At points, she had to stop and cry a little into her elbow. I was mortified. I loved my teacher. So tall and shiny with the prettiest smile. She was my hero. The only person who smiled at me in the hallway and made me feel normal for one hour every day during a year when I mostly just felt like a freak. And she laughed so hard. But when she was done and had finally stopped dry heaving from laughing so hard, she asked me where I’d gotten the idea to satirize a clichéd war story. She told me that I had the best comic timing in written word she’d ever read by an eighth grader. I think the word sophisticated was thrown in a couple times. And I got an A. The only bad thing she had to say was that all my work needed to be typed out in the future.

I tell this story because in some ways this online venture isn’t all that different from me scratching earnestly on pee colored paper. I will pour out myself here, heart and soul, till I prematurely develop arthritis. Then you will laugh, maybe cry a bit (sometimes maybe for real?), and give me an A+. Maybe even a gold star. And I will love you more for it.