Write about a time when you were injured or ill. Focus on the adaptations you had to make to accommodate whatever the problem was; walking on crutches, writing with your other hand, only seeing out of one eye, etc. After digging out highly specific details, explore how the experience changed you.

I don’t look like it here, but I’m in some pretty serious pain.
I had just got a new laptop for Christmas and was probably drunk,
so that may account for the smiling.
Also… wow my teeth were white.

Back at the end of 2007 going into 2008, I got what I call the Four Month Sore Throat. I’d started getting sick at the beginning of October, but because I’d had a lot of trips scheduled, I had a lot of plane rides ahead of me. Plane rides + sore throat + painful inner ear = BADNESS. It didn’t help that I worked at a place that offered very little sick time (vacation time was easier to earn but was still like squeezing blood out of pennies), so I was in the freezing cold all day and I never had time to rest and recover. I was stressed at LIFE in general as well, and round after round of antibiotics did nothing to help.

I was in pain all day and night. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain, and I was popping ibuprofen like candy. So much food went bad over those four months because I couldn’t swallow without a lot of pain. I ate sparingly. (By the time the ordeal was over, I was able to wear size 14 in girls jeans.)

I had coughing fits, I had migraines, I had pink eye, I had bronchitis. It just went on and on and on. I was a hot mess.

I coped the best I could… but it was difficult. I finally got cured in early 2008, when I went to a new doctor who actually listened to what was wrong with me, prescribed me the proper medicines, and even some pain pills. Things got worse before they got better. All the gunk that was in my head and causing me so much misery (turned out to be a chronic sinus infection) started to drain and my entire face felt like it was on FIRE. The one day, the pain felt different. I knew it was coming to an end. And as the days went by, the pain lessened until that whole nightmare was over.

The main adaption I had to make was eating less. It just hurt too much to swallow. Fortunately, not eating much was pretty easy for me for reasons I won’t go into. I also had to spend money I really didn’t have on doctor visits, time off (when things became extra unbearable), and expensive medications. I suppose I just took money from the grocery budget to cover it.

This experience has made me not take my health for granted. I got terrible sore throats every quarter when I was a little girl, but nothing of that magnitude. Any time I get a sore throat now, I monitor it carefully and try to take precautions to keep it from growing to the mammoth nightmare it was those four months. Now I think I have the tools to avoid such things now. I am much less stressed, and I have medicines (holistic and traditional) that will be much more effective at helping me fight something of that magnitude, were it to dare come back again.

Write about the tools you wrote with in elementary school. Give details of your classroom, the people in it, and what kind of kid you were. Mix in action with the descriptions.

I went to two different schools for elementary school, and both experiences were as different from each other as night and day.

My first school, Corlett, was awesome. It was a small school, K–3 only, and the teachers were nurturing and I learned a lot. I loved my first and third grade teachers–Mrs. Ortman and Mrs. Oden–like I loved my mom, and I even liked Ms Dukes, my second grade teacher, even though she was more strict than the other two. My principal’s name was Mr. Sunshine. What a great name for a principal right? He really was a ray of sun. I loved when he’d visit our class or I’d see him in the lunchroom. He always called me Harmonica. I remember Ms. Lindsey, the lunch lady who’d bang on the table with a broomstick to quiet us down. I hated when she did that!

First grade was on the first floor, down the hall from the girl’s bathroom. It was kind of a dark room. Mrs. Ortman would sing songs to us like “head, shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes.” We had grey desks that opened and held all of our stuff, including oil cloths, which smelled SO GOOD. Mrs. Ortman’s desk was in the corner of the room. Sometimes she’d do this weird exercise where she’d stand in one part of the room and say “May I have your attention please?” and we’d all look at her, and then she’d go somewhere else and say “May I have your attention please?” and we’d turn to look at her there. I am still not quite sure the point of that, but I certainly remember it. I also remember winning second place in a citywide writing contest. The essay was titled “What I Like Best About Cleveland.” I remember one of the prizes was McDonald’s gift certificates. I still have my actual certificate for it.

Second grade was also on the first floor, on the other side of the school. I remember the room being very bright. I also remember getting the Weekly Reader and being very excited the week that Michael Jackson was on the cover. This was the year I got paddled. It didn’t hurt, but I made a big to do anyway. I also got my first detention in second grade.

Third grade was golden. I loved everything about it except looking up words in the dictionary. Vocabulary was so boring, tedious, and hard. (Funny, now I LOVE looking in the dictionary.) I remember the room having a warm glow, but that may have been how I felt when I was in there. Mrs. Oden made a wonderful learning environment.

I remember writing with a laddie pencil in first grade. Big, blue, no erasers on top. I was so excited to move on to No.2 pencils in second and third grade! And sometimes… even pen!

Age 9

People were surprised that I loved school so much, but I had fun there. No one picked on me, I had friends, and the teachers liked me. The work came pretty easy to me, and I was always doing cool jobs like being the messenger or student leader.

Things changed when I switched schools.

I lived in Cleveland, so I was bussed to the west side for grades 4–6. Here, I learned what it was like to see other children get favored. I started learning about racism and discrimination. I learned that some teachers are mean and that they pick on students that trigger their own issues within themselves. I also learned that students can be mean and heartless.

But I also found unlikely friendships, and started nurturing my creative side. I took up orchestra, playing the violin. I started writing. I developed an insatiable thirst for reading that my mother was all too happy to keep supplying for. I was learning French and long division and all sorts of advanced things because I was in the honors program.

I’m sure I used pens and pencils through those years. I remember in fourth grade, Ms. Theis’s room being really bright and open. She had a picture of a hippo with a speech balloon that said “I don’t care how you do it, as long as you do it my way.” She taught us to say “ask” instead of “ax” and “library” instead of “liberry.” It was in her room that I read The Secret Garden–the good one where Mary says “I don’t give a tinker’s damn what they think.” It was also in her room that I fell in love with reading. She had a library and I’d check books out all the time. The one I remember the most was called The Secret Circle, but it wasn’t the Vampire Diaries one. I used to read it over and over and eat these cookies that Duncan Hines made. They were crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside and FREAKING DELICIOUS. I was so sad when they were discontinued–they were far superior to Soft Batch cookies. (Is Soft Batch even still around?)

me in fourth grade

Fifth grade was hell for me. I hated it. I hated the teacher, I hated most of my classmates, and I felt that the room was oppressive and dank. I cried almost every day over something and everyone made fun of me for it. I had exactly one friend. Everyone else couldn’t stand me. The teacher would provoke me to make me cry, and then make fun of me for it, and encourage everyone else to join in. It was awful. She enjoyed humiliating me and putting me on the spot. My son is in fifth grade now, and I pray every day it’s a million times better for him.

I escaped into books every chance I got. My mom would do her “big shopping” at Giant Eagle and they had a great children’s book section. I loved “big shopping” days. I’d come home from school and the place would be stocked with treats and there would be a huge stack of new books for me to read. That’s when I started reading books by Janet Adele Bloss, Judy Blume, and Barthe DeClements. BOY could I relate to her title “Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade”.

Sixth grade was better. Ms. Doycich was a fantastic teacher. She’d get so mad that steam would pour out of her ears, and it was fun to watch. I wasn’t much more adjusted than I was in fifth grade. I never figured out why I was so much more sensitive than usual. (I’ve always been highly sensitive, but fifth grade was terrible). Maybe it was because I’d had two deaths in the family and I was fragile. I don’t know. I managed to get by somehow. Maybe it was because I finally managed to make a few friends. I was so comfortable with people that I wrote my first story, about a bunch of us trapped in a haunted house. I wrote it in a Michael Jackson notebook.

Maybe it was the new principal we got named Mr. Trask. Mr. Trask was amazing. First and foremost, he LOVED Mickey Mouse. I mean, you think *I* lke Mickey Mouse? This is child’s play compared to this man. Secondly, he was FUN. I loved when he came to visit the classroom. He was always laughing and smiling. He would arrange amazing events for us, like giving us the afternoon off so we could watch Mary Poppins, drink pop, and eat popcorn. NO SCHOOL WOULD EVER DO OR ALLOW THAT NOW. He’d often gather us for an “assembly” to watch Laurel and Hardy movies. It was a great way to break up the monotony of class and keep us engaged.

mr trask, mrs arnold, and me
good lord, that dress

I often wonder what happened to Mr. Trask. I hope he’s retired and living in Celebration, FL, a hop, skip, and a jump from Disney World.

I’m not sure if this post told much about ME. I suppose you can gather that I was sensitive, creative, and a bit lonely. I didn’t write a lot in those days, but I read like crazy once that door was opened to me. I’ve never lost my passion and love for reading, so in that aspect, I’m still the same. 🙂

If this is truly day 3 for you, write about what the last couple of writing sessions have felt like. Harder than you thought? Easier? Why? If you haven’t quite gotten the hang of taking those 15 minutes, write about what got in the way and how you feel about it.

I am so excited to say that this is truly day three for me. I’m excited to say that I truly look forward to these sessions, and that I’m getting used to writing every day again.

The sessions have felt liberating. I feel like I have permission to write! I think part of the problem I couldn’t/wouldn’t write before? I had/have a block in me that says I don’t deserve to write. That I have other things to do. Or that I’ll never make anything of it, it’s a waste of time, and I’m not good at it so why bother?

But these WFMAD sessions…it makes me feel like it’s OK to write. Like, one of my favorite authors in the world is GIVING ME PERMISSION to write and so it’s OK for me to do this.

The best part is that I can write from my heart, and it doesn’t have to be perfect or publication-ready. I can just write, and in just writing, I’m slowly working my way up to loving the process again.

So far, Laurie has offered two prompts each day–a non-fiction prompt and a fiction prompt. I’ve been picking the non-fiction prompts because they encourage me to explore myself in regards to writing. They force me to be honest with myself about writing and whether or not I really want to do it (for a living). And because the prompts are non-fiction, I feel less pressure to make up something brilliant. I can just write something that’s real, that I can draw from experience, that I can draw from what I’m feeling or thinking. So, the sessions have been easier than I anticipated, thanks to those non-fiction prompts. And I think…that by choosing the non-fiction prompts, I’m confronting my fears of writing fiction in a way.

Fiction writing prompts have always been tough for me. I find it hard to make up a story on command. Writing idea books and things like that are worthless to me because I’d rather make up my own ideas and settings and characters. I also like to come up with my own ideas. (But I don’t allow myself to brainstorm as much as I should.)

I LOVE creating people/characters. And building their worlds. Seriously! You should see me when I play the Sims. I create characters and build houses over and over. I actually play the game too (but not often because I fall into a Sims hole when I do that–I binge on it which is not healthy so I play it very rarely), but my favorite thing is creating the world. I was the same with my Barbie dolls when I was little and maybe not so little. I loved dressing them up and setting up their homes, but I never really wanted to actually play with them. The set up was my favorite.

And I know that’s my issue with writing fiction now. I create worlds and characters in my head, on my computer, in notebooks ALL THE TIME. But I have a hard time figuring out what to do with them once they’re there. I imagine them looking at me with their arms raised like “WTF, man? WTF?”

But give me a journaling-type prompt, and I’ll run with it. I remember when I kept an online diary years ago, sometimes I’d go to a site that offered journaling prompts and write my entries based on those. I LOVED that. It gave me a central theme for the entry instead of just babbling about my day (although some people seemed to love when I babbled about my day), but it allowed me to draw from my own experiences and feelings and wants and expectations.

I’m hoping that by doing this WFMAD project, I get back in the habit of just… WRITING. And I’m hoping with that, the plotting and things will come back to me. That I can get over my fear of fiction. I used to GO FOR IT. Now I hold back, always doubting, always editing and editing some more, never really moving forward. Reading too many book reviews, scared I’ll do the same things that piss off certain people and audiences. I shouldn’t even care what they think, especially if I’m just writing a draft. A baby.

I recently took a writing class on the basics of plot–I KNOW. It’s like I’m have to start all over, right? But it’s OK. I have no shame. Whatever gets me going again. I know I have the tools in me. I just need to polish off the rust, oil them, and get them working again.