Middle School Journal

When I was in Florida visiting my parents last month, my mom asked me to go through some of my things from long ago; take what I wanted to keep and get rid of what was garbage. I found some things that I still can't part with--a note my friend Jen wrote on an airline sickness bag, my baptismal candle, this tiny green ceramic frog that used to mean so much to me, and then some of my old writing, such as this palm-sized notepad from 6th grade that I kept. Mostly, I wrote stories based on characters I liked from books or TV shows such as Little Women and Remington Steele. My characters were almost always adults. The women were beautiful, and the men were handsome and sometimes dastardly and they were all very very rich

I must run soon to work, but I leave you with an excerpt. This is a fan letter I wrote but never sent to Warren Beatty, probably after seeing Reds with my parents.

Dear Mr. Beaty (sic),

I got your address from my friend who knows this editor man.

My third period class put on a play that I wrote. It only lasted about twenty minutes, but it was pretty good.

The play was called Cinderfella. It was sort of a satirish thing, but Fred (the guy who was Cinderfella) did a good job. My friend Diana played the evil stempomther and I was one of the evil stepsisters, Arminta.

The thing was that I got to act, write, direct, and produce it. That was kind of neat. It makes you feel important.

I watced the awards the other night. Well, actually only some because at around eleven, I had to go to bed, so I didn't see the award you recieved, but heard about it later on the radio. You must get a great feeling of accomplishment.

Sincerely...Aimee

And then I wrote a note like "Be sure to remember that I'll never send this."

I was a fledgling feminist even then, casting against type to have Cinderella be a guy rescued by a princess, though you'll note that I didn't change the gender of the mom or stepsister.

There are pages and pages of this stuff, and most of is fiction, with lots of adverbs and lots of adjectives, as well as practice drawings I did of Garfield the cat, who was popular at the time.