Sometime around 1969 I wrote my first short story. Fifth grade in Ms. O’s class, we were assigned to write a story about anything we wanted. The assignment scared me to death. I didn’t spell well, my handwriting was atrocious and I had never even thought to try to write an actual story.
At the last minute, I decided to write something called “The Signs of a Storm”. I think it must have Spring in the Texas Panhandle and storms took up a lot of our psychic space in that season.
It was a pretty silly story. I produced a typically childish narrative that used war as a metaphor for a tornadic storm process. Very dramatic.
On the day it was due, Ms. O had us all pass in our stories and she passed them out to random readers. I was understandably mortified.
About fifteen minutes later, Jodie E. stood up in the middle of class and proclaimed, “Oh my god! This is best story I’ve ever read! Reed, how did you write this?!” Again, mortified. Jodie didn’t really like me much.
She thought I was weird. And she was right. I tended to space out, I was over-sensitive, prone to sudden mood shifts and strange ideas. I’ve since learned why I was like that and at some point I may write about it here. But not today.
I guess if this was a Hollywood movie, it would end with me going on to produce award winning stories and novels almost immediately. But instead, Ms. O promptly lost my story. I didn’t write again for many years.
But it did stay with me. And over the decades, I have written a fair amount of stories. I’ve tried traditional and online publishing, but nothing has ever come of it.
So I’m just going to release them into the wild on this inconspicuous personal website and see what happens.
Thanks for looking in on me.
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