When I was a kid, I got in trouble at school only once that I remember, and it was for telling stories.
I was around 9 years old.
The quiet, studious sort, I was scared stiff when I was called into the office.
What had I done? I never used bad language or hit other kids. I always raised my hand to answer questions and never missed a day even when I was sick.
I had to suppress a sigh of relief when Mrs Smith closed the door and told me that all I had done wrong was tell stories!
You see, there had been complaints from parents because their children were having nightmares.
When pushed, they'd admitted that it was because there was this weird girl in their class who spent her lunch break entertaining the other students.
Monday through Wednesday, she'd sing.
A bit of Belinda Carlisle or Ace of Base, maybe something from Sister Act or Grease, she'd happily take requests, it didn't much matter what song as long as she was singing.
Then on Thursday and Friday, she'd tell stories.
Some were true, anecdotes from a life very different from those of her classmates, filled with strange people and dramatic events that were in turns hilarious and tragic. During these stories, the children would laugh and gasp and occasionally exclaim 'You're pulling my leg! Did that really happen?!'
The other stories were darker, woven together from a thousand different threads of things the girl had read, watched or experienced firsthand in the house she grew up in.
These stories defied explanation, and no one ever interrupted while they were being told. A strange hush would fall over the group as they sat on the concrete floor of the playground, and sometimes they could have sworn that the sky would darken and the birds stop singing. The exuberant screams and whoops of the younger children running about nearby would fade into the background, and no matter how they pulled their sweaters down over their grass stained knees, their skin would still break into goosebumps as they listened.
These, it seemed, were the tales the parents had a problem with. Go figure, right?
'What the hell is this?!' Mrs Smith screamed down at me, face reddening, 'Rent A Ghost?!'
I nearly laughed. It was so surreal.
After a lecture about how it was especially inappropriate to tell such tales in a Catholic school, she made me promise that I would never again tell any scary stories to the children in my class.
I said that I wouldn't, and even though my classmates begged and pleaded, swearing never to grass me up again, I kept my word.
However, while I never again spooked the delicate boys and girls at my school, I continued to come up with stories. No longer permitted to tell them orally, I started writing them down.
My pocket money was squandered on pens and notebooks from Woolworths, and I was overjoyed when my mum found me an old typewriter in a charity shop.
I didn't have a desk, so I sat on my bed with that heavy old thing on my legs, fascinated by the clacking sound of the old metal keys as they beat against the ribbon, imprinting reams of paper with my imaginings until I'd be told I had to stop, it was too late at night to be writing, go to bed!
My Year 6 teacher, a Mr Geraghty, who is now the headteacher of that very same primary school, was a big supporter of my hobby.
In my Leavers' Book, where everyone left notes to wish each other luck for the future, he wrote that he expected to recieve a free copy of my first book.
I've kept that note, but have found it much more difficult to keep up my writing.
Life gets in the way sometimes, and in the process of trying to be a responsible adult, scribbling down what's happening in my interior world took a backseat.
That's what this blog is about. Trying to find the incentive to write again, holdaing myself accountable for making it a more regular practise.
The plan is to go back and edit all of my exisiting stories, poems and songs, written sporadically between other commitments, and compile them here, as well as forcing myself to write new things.
Maybe it won't come to anything. Maybe I'll be the only person who enjoys anything that comes out of my pen/keyboard. That's ok. As one of my favourite writers, Stephen King, says 'A story should entertain the writer, too.'
But maybe, just maybe...one day I'll be able to give Mr Geraghty that free copy.
I just hope he doesn't get nightmares too easily!