Memory #31: Three Pages a Week
When I was fifteen and a sophomore in Mrs. Yoder's English class, I started to keep a journal. Not because I thought it would be good to keep a journal or because I had a lot to say. I did it because it was an assignment. Mrs. Yoder made us write three pages a week, every week, all year in a little spiral steno notebook. There were no other requirements for the journal. You just had to write three pages a week about anything you wanted to write about.
I will be thirty-nine years old next week, and I have been writing in notebooks (sometimes in notebook computers, but more often in notebooks) for twenty-five years. It is a habit that borders on obsession.
You got bonus credit in Mrs. Yoder's class if you wrote more than three pages a week. For most of the weeks during the past twenty-five years, I would have gotten a lot of bonus points.
I would thank Mrs. Yoder, if I knew where she was. I wonder whether any of her other students took the gift she gave us--the gift of habitual journaling--and ran with it as I have.
Old journals sit in a big box in my basement office, piles of them.
And just today, while writing in my journal, I figured out what to do with them.
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2 comments:
I can't imagine it would be very difficult to track down a Mrs. Yoder in Elkhart County...
I love the suspenseful ending.
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