Writing and Me - Coloring Outside the Lines

Just some random stuff... For more than a year before I finally reached The Big Day and started kindergarten, I'd been begging my Mother (a kindergarten teacher) to teach me how to write. The physical act of writing, that is. I'd been writing stories inside my head for a very long time and only lacked the academic skill to put the words to paper. I was extremely frustrated and anxious because I thought I had good stories and I would forget them before I ever learned how to write. Well, against her better judgement, Mom did teach me how to write at an extremely early age. I think she'd seen kids who just didn't fit in with other kids and she didn't want that for me. In a sense, she was right because I was punished my very first day of kindergarten. The teacher was explaining what the alphabet was and then she taught class how to write the letter "A." I wrote out the entire alphabet. I thought the teacher would be proud of me. She made me stand in the corner and explained about the sin of coloring outside the lines (except that's not what she called it back then) and not following directions. I hated kindergarten after that. I'd been looking forward to it for so long and in one instant, a teacher made me hate school. And I've been writing... and coloring outside the lines... ever since. When your creativity and curiosity and entire soul cannot be constrained by groupthink or the heavy-handedness of a society that frowns upon independence of thought and expression, it does set you apart from the sheep, the clique-joiners, the idealogues who can only blather on in the approved groupspeak of their selected dogma and you find yourself almost an observer to Life at times even though necessity makes you be a participant on a daily basis. But you enter a peculiar zone without rules for the brain and it liberates. And you create. And that's worth the price of admission. Yes, indeedy. So, my fellow travelers, don't be scared to step outside the lines. It's kind of fun here. And I'd enjoy the company.