Love at First Write

I was in 8th grade. I got busted for chewing gum in class, and my punishment was to write a paper about why you shouldn't chew gum in class. In retrospect, I'm sure my teacher was expecting something along the lines of an apology, sincere contrition to my flagrant disrespect for her authority, and a confession of my flaunting my chewing gum in front of my obedient and gumless peers. However, what she got was something more along the lines of this: You shouldn't chew gum in class because you might start choking on it and have to spit it out onto the sidewalk at recess, and some poor guy might step on it, and then, before he even knows he's stepped on the gum, he might step on some lady's application for her dream job and ruin it and it won't even get turned in, so the poor guy's shoes are a mess, and that lady will never get her dream job. THAT'S why you shouldn't chew gum in class.

Boy, was that fun! I fell in love with writing that day, especially writing silly, outlandish stories. So, for all my fans out there who were just dying to know about my auspicious literary beginnings, there you go. And for the teachers out there, those pain-in-the-neck, smart alec kids might just be practicing a talent that will eventually prove useful one day.