Kids, study!

December 20, 2014

Nobody should think that I am "a natural" at writing, that I never had to do anything to have the writing skill that I have.

My parents read to me from the time I was born.  The story of when I had figured out how to read is that my father fell asleep one night while he was reading to me, and that I started reading where he left off.  At first, he thought that I must have remembered a part of the book which he had read to me before.  Then he realized that we hadn't read the book before.  He got to watch more television and read more books side by side with my mother after that; who wants to have a book constantly interrupted by a father's snoring?

Later, when I was in school, my parents demanded more from me academically than they were able to give me consistent, emotional support for.  They did not, however, destroy the liking of academic achievement or of nonscholastic achievement that they imparted to me.  Being smart is a lot of work, and it took me years to be able, quickly and accurately, to describe my thoughts through speech and in writing.  Ultimately, though, being smart is fun.  It is also a source of mental peace to be able to bring good things into the lives of other people with words.

I am much hated by the conglomerate, and I have made no secret of my anger and disdain for its behavior.  I was not, and am not, always as skillful at the rest of my life as I am with words, and the conglomerate has viciously taken advantage of every weakness and indiscretion it can find.

Because I learned to write by writing and by reading, and have never done much formal study of punctuation and grammar, I don't always get that stuff right.  I get as impatient as anyone else, looking for and reading rules about which verb tense to use and whether or not punctuation marks should be outside parentheses.  Please learn from my mistakes, and do better than I do.

Copyright L. Kochman, December 20, 2014 @ 2:23 p.m.