The left-handed pen-slinger

I learned to write from my mother, who taught me the alphabet, and also forced me to read ridiculous books that were as old as she was, but in a lot worse condition. After not too long, I graduated into the first grade, and was able to have the opportunity to write without my mother looking over my shoulder. I was equipped with a paper and a pencil the size of a horse's leg, determined to show that paper who’s boss!  No paper has ever had the alphabet written on it as intensely as the paper I was given that fateful day. Well, that last sentence is probably a lie. I’m sure some ancient Phoenician dude carved the alphabet into a wall of stone or something. Carving is some serious business.

My next memory was of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rasmussen. She and I didn’t get along, because for some reason she didn’t like that I was left handed. We’d be learning the truly useless technique of cursive that we would never use after elementary school, and she would politely explain how you write a certain cursive letter. She would then explain the stroke of your hand, and how this will work for everyone but Talin and Jolynn, because they’re left handed. It will especially not work for Talin, because he’s an idiot. (She didn’t really say this, it’s just implied.) Then she’d look at me really intently until it got awkward. To her, I being left handed was something that could have been completely avoided if I wasn’t such an idiot. Of course, I hardly noticed her intent stares because I didn’t pay much attention in class back then. Eight years later, not much has changed.

I moved on to other teachers, including a swearing lumberjack with a profound vocabulary and a degree in elementary education. He taught me the wonders of poetry, and had me bind it into a book of poems that I was quite proud of. It was the genius work of a sixth-grader, if there is such a thing.

I further advanced into jr. high, braving strange English teachers that were missing a finger, or threatened to rip my arm off and beat me with the bloody end. Usually, though, that threat would be too long, so she’d just give me a sickly-sweet smile and say “pay attention, or I’ll rip your lips off.” Now, a human who has had his or her lips ripped off their face is not an especially attractive human, though I’m confident I could have pulled it off. After all, I am Talin Hansen. We mostly did random vocabulary words that I have not used since that class. Now, a few of you may know that when assigned something boring, I like to liven it up by adding a twist. Making up a ridiculously random story, doing everything with a theme, and adopting an Australian accent are all techniques I’ve used in the past. So we’d use a theme every week for vocabulary, and write all our sentences on the topic of peanut butter, monkeys, man-eating warthogs that wear ninja masks and wield large machetes, and other such nonsense. It was an interesting year, at least.

Since being in high school, I’ve learned many things about English. These include never use the word ‘you’ in a persuasive essay, don’t write in a monotone, and find better substitutes for your words. Most important is that even if you think you have the best essay in the history of mankind and nobody could ever come close to how cool it is, Mrs. Wakefield probably already thought of a much better one, yesterday.

So this is how I learned to write. Not very impressive, as this paper itself testifies. Then again, I am Talin Hansen, so maybe I have a chance of distracting you from my bad writing using my rugged good looks and boyish charm. You have to admit, it’s probably worth a shot.