What the heck is THAT supposed to mean?

I knew I wanted to be a writer at a very young age. When I got to jr. high and high school, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. My favorite class, of course, was English and I loved the creative writing exercises. Give me a writing prompt and I’d give you a ten page masterpiece, even though the teacher said it only had to be five pages.

In the seventh grade I had a teacher that was the hippest teacher ever. He brought his guitar to class and we sang folk songs. He talked about dreams and feeling the music and getting it. Dig it? And oh! How I felt the music! Yes! I understand everything the writer was saying. It touched me. I felt their pain. I embraced their anguish.

And then came tenth grade and America Lit. And delving into the psyche of Faulkner (God help us all!) and Hemingway and Poe. What did they mean? It was then my true ambition surfaced. I wanted to write a novel so complex every tenth grade student would scratch their heads wondering what in the crap I meant. Surely I was suicidal. Or maybe a psycho. The words on the page reflect such a great despair and hopelessness no sane person could ever have penned them. Right? Insert evil laugh.

Note to English teachers – you can stop looking for the hidden meanings in every piece of written work. Sometimes, it is what it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.