Do you like me check yes or no?

In the first grade, I was six years old and in love.  To me she was Gods’ living proof that there were angels. Any six-year-old boy could drown in her big brown eyes. I tried every method of gaining her attention: flowers, candy-bars, and even saving her a seat in class.  All failed miserably.  Every waking moment possessed the thought of her except when I was playing freeze tag with the fellas. One day while engaged in an intense session with a yo-yo, I remembered that my mommy told me that daddy had given her poetry once. That was one of the reasons she married him. Therefore, it seemed like a good idea to get some. But what was poetry?

I was determined to have it and emptied my Spiderman piggybank, marched directly to my father and said, “Daddy, will you take me to the grocery store so I can buy some poetry?”  I will never forget his laughter; it filled me to the point of tears.  I wanted poetry, and I wanted it badly. With a sympathetic grin, he sat me down and began a simple explanation of what poetry was.

He finished with, “Remember son, poetry is about what you feel, and it comes from inside you.  No matter what anybody thinks, it’s all about how you feel about someone or something.”  At once, I sat down to compose my first masterpiece.  My mind drew a blank.  What should I say?  How do I begin?  Is this the right word?          Does all poetry have to rhyme?  Do I have to use periods?  These were just a few of the questions that hit me upon my first attempt.  Although a struggle, it was fresh and exhilarating.  I was allowed to write down thoughts and feelings that were completely my own.  To top it off, my finished work was never wrong. This newly found knowledge excited me, in contrast to the boring newspaper articles, which my daddy forced me to read.

“Reading will make you a better person son. You’ll appreciate it in the future.” My father drilled these dreaded words into me every time I resisted a mandatory reading session. Each time he said, “Reading…” I could mouth the rest of the words under my breath with him as easily as I could say my ABC’s.
Blah, blah, blah…no, not this time, this poetry thing was all mine.
         
Three weeks later emerged my first poem:

Connie Ramirez you are pretty.
You are cute just like a kitty.
So I am asking you for the go.
Do you like me check yes or no.

Okay, so it is not Walt Whitman, but I got the girl and the envy of the entire first grade class.  In the process, a funny thing happened.  My true happiness was in the fact that I took feelings, wrote them down, and conveyed them to someone else. Later, I found out that not only was poetry effective but moreover people could actually empathize with my feelings.
 
From then on I was on a mission to become the world's best poet. Along the way, my writing led me to the discovery that it was sometimes very arduous to describe certain things. I did not know how to describe accurately how someone looked. I knew what they looked like. How was I to get someone to see what I really saw? The same went for actions or feelings that I could not describe. I still struggle with these elementary aspects of writing after years of practice.
 
During those early days, most of what I learned did not come from school. Teachers always seemed to put restrictions on what I was to write and how to do it. My schools did not emphasize the joy of creative writing or its’ importance for future use. This caused many students I knew who had shown promise to retreat from it all together. So white flag in one hand and blood red paper in the other, they label writing a lost cause. How important is structure if it kills the creative mind?

The comic books I have read must number in the thousands. My cousin and I read for hours and then wrote stories of our own. (This is partly how I learned to write dialogue.) One day unexpectedly, he stopped writing with me. After weeks and then months of frustration, I finally asked him why. He said was always wrong no matter how hard he tried, and that his best work never made it to the “good” work board in school. As a result, he stopped writing and has not written since. In my opinion, he was a better writer than I was, but this experience taught him to quit. That incident only added fuel to my fire. I asked myself, “What if I was not good enough?” This question frightened me. I began a fervent search for more knowledge of how to write more effectively. Therefore, my reading became more intensive in both quantity and quality. I found that through reading different styles I could learn diversified techniques.

I will never forget the first time I read the “Autobiography of Malcolm X”. I was fifteen, and my mind was completely overwhelmed. An illiterate hustler goes to jail and educates himself by reading and memorizing the dictionary. Was this for real? The most baffling thing was that he essentially could curse someone out without using any profanity. You felt his fury and rage as though it were your own. He did not describe the tension underlying his speech; you simply felt it through his words. No pictures, no algebraic equations- simply words. Malcolm's use of the English language was so commanding that it left me awestruck!

His message was relevant to me as history, but his words were a double-edged sword slicing deep chunks out of my inferior writing style. Determined now more than ever, I continued to read anything on Malcolm and anything that he mentioned. Studying his style and that of others, I began to see moderate change in my own written work. Furthermore, my interests now reached out well beyond poetry. Before I knew it, I developed a love for writing of all variations.

I have held many conversations with people who hate writing or say that math is more enjoyable, because it is an exact science. Yes, depending on the subject matter and type of paper, you must follow a certain format. Even in those cases, if you follow procedure there are no wrong answers. In fact no one’s answers are ever right, they are just are plain old answers. What you put into your own writing is yours alone. Completely unique. No one can ever come to you saying, “How you feel is not part of this procedure, so I am sorry your answer is wrong!” Thus, I would rather write an essay than do one algebraic equation. Length, content, or audience requirements, I love it all. My true heart still belongs to poetry, though, and the sweet little girl who first inspired me to write.