A less than auspicious start into the literary world

           

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.