The Early Years: Selected Works, Part I

In a recent ill-fated attempt to rid myself of the omnifarious crap piled hip-deep in every corner of my room, I stumbled upon some of my old writings from sixth grade. The year was 1996, and I was twelve years old. If memory serves, we were required to archive all our work in a folder, a folder which apparently I've managed not to dispose of in the nine years since. The contents of said folder are, without exception, hilarious. I’ve always felt that kids these days are far smarter than I was at their age, and if these little slices of personal history are any indication, I’ve been right all along. Seriously, my memory of those days is a haze of cartoons and sugary cereal. How is that different from now, you ask? Well, now I don’t have to play little league.

This first excerpt is evidently a haiku. Recently I began scheming to write a book of nonsensical haikus, sell it to a publisher, and get filthy rich. Clearly that seed was planted when I first started bastardizing poetry:

Lion
A lion escaped
From the zoo just this summer
CHOMP! Well, you found him!

The word LATE is emblazoned across the page in thick purple ink, along with the following in red ink of a more customary thickness:
“Very amusing! Remember to write final drafts in blue or black ink. A.”

This was a theme in my time as a public school student; teachers approved of my work but saw fit to mark me down due to the fact that I was always either utterly clueless, or blatantly disregarding the parameters of a given assignment. Remind me to tell you about the time I got both a detention and an ‘A’ for handing in a math project.