As I get older, more and more I find
myself thinking and searching back through memories. One that came to mind
recently was my first writing success. Unlike those successful authors whose
first books became best-sellers and set them off on the path to fame and fortune,
my first writing success was a bit more modest. It came up my senior year in
high school for a class in driving. I am this old — high schools had driver
education classes. At the end of the semester, we were required to do some sort
of project about driving. While most of my classmates turned to mechanical
projects, I took a different path and, of course, waited until the last minute.
I decided to write a story. I found a pamphlet that listed accident causes
including things like road conditions, weather, visibility and others. Then I
wrote a story about a woman going out for a drive. As she encountered each of
the conditions, I inserted a footnote crediting the pamphlet pointing out that
condition was the most common in reported accidents. I recall "straight, dry
road, clear weather. and such. The main conclusion was the most common cause
was driver distraction. So I had her child in the back seat start fussing and
the driver turning to respond, steering into the oncoming lane and BLAM! I
typed it up neatly (personal typing being another semester course in high
school then), found a nice binder to put it in and hoped for the best, totally
fearing I would get an F for it and never be allowed to drive. Well, to my
surprise, the teacher loved it, pointing it out to the class as a great project
and putting it in the front of a display case where all the projects were placed
for the whole school to see. So much for the great American novel, but it was a
start.
