My New Boyfriend

My writing class is keeping me from writing!   Every week I sit down to write here and find myself  distracted by the writing I am supposed to be doing for my class.  As a result, neither the blog or my classwork is getting done.  However, my golf game is improving.  When in doubt I just go play golf!  That is pretty much how the last few weeks have gone.

The class is not exactly what I had hoped it would be, but damn if I'm going to just give up.  It is a memoir writing class and I thought it would be a good starting place for my writing and give me some good tools.  The class is definitely challenging my brain and forcing me to examine my life.  This is not always easy.  "Write about your greatest fear" is one assignment this week.  Does my irrational fear of breaking down in a car on a road trip count?  What about my most recent fear of writing extremely boring and trite essays compared to my fellow students?  At least I won't be guilty of writing a ten page essay about civil rights in the '70's, an apartment in Paris and food in Ireland and then volunteer to read it out loud, in a monotone voice, causing the teacher and the rest of the class to fall asleep.  The teacher did stop him at one point....at about page 5, and said that in an effort to save time maybe we should "move along" which lead to one of the most uncomfortable stand offs I've witnessed in a long time.  He said, "No, I haven't gotten to the part about the verdict yet."  We were very close to our own civil rights event at that point so the teacher just let him read the entire paper....yawn.  I paid money for this??!!

Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent writers in the class who have had very interesting lives and really should write their memoirs.  I am humbled every Monday.  I leave class and think I need to do a lot more living before I have anything memoir worthy to write.  I sit next to an 87 year old man.  He is/was a doctor.  He wrote one paper about how when he was in his 40's he was electrocuted and his 15 year old son "breathed" him back to life!  There were some hilarious parts in his story too, especially the part about being driven to the hospital in a Hearse because the small town did not have an ambulance.  When they got to the hospital and he was taken out of the Hearse everyone who knew him at the hospital thought he was dead.  He said that near death experience changed his life.   He is my new boyfriend, he is so charming!  I may have to fight off the 75 year old lady who sits on his other side, I think she has her eyes on him too.  Note to self... if I am ever old and single, I will sign up for a memoir writing class, it's where all the cute, interesting, old men hang out.

So I will force myself to sit down and write this weekend.  I will try to single out my happiest moment and my greatest fear and come up with some profound verbiage to delight and entertain.  It's gonna be a long weekend.