(no subject)
This is just something that I wrote up a minute ago. A little free writing that may turn into something. Hope you all enjoy. Feedback is always a good thing :)
Since as far back as I can remember I have been attempting to be a writer. It has always been a goal of mine to publish something of my own. Since I read some of the great American classics, I knew that I wanted to do something like that. Some people may have great dreams to be rocket scientists or the first woman CEO but I wanted to be a writer. The only problem was that I had no good ideas for a book. Sure I could sit in class and write down whatever random thoughts would come into my mind, but it never really seemed to stick. It seemed as if I was too lazy to really make anything happen. My notebooks were chalk full of scribbles and scratching of my inner thoughts. There were probably more notes on potential book ideas than there were about the class. I guess my lack of motivation was a universal problem in my life more so than just my writing. That was just one of my many problems when I started college.
I was eighteen and free as a bird. My mother dropped me and my entire life off at my dormitory and said good bye to me the summer before my first fall semester. I had come to take a few classes in the summer at Walcott State University in hopes of getting ahead and possibly working on some writings that I had crawling inside my noodle. But in the midst of all of my excitement lay a dormant fear of being away from the security blanket that was my parents. I had no financial and emotional foundation that could have prepared me for that summer. My friends were not as ambitious as I was and so they stayed in my hometown and had a gay ole time while I was “hitting” the books. I remember I would count the days until the fall semester would start and my friends would pack up their own lives and make the exodus to upstate New York.
The first night of school for me in the summer of 1954 was the toughest. I had just met my roommate that night and he was a scrawny kid by the name of Winston that hardly could breathe two words to me when my mother and I introduced ourselves. I had quite a few suitcases and bags that contained my personals, but all that he had was a very old poster of a Spitfire on the wall and a single suitcase that was tucked under his bed. He had wispy blonde hair and cloudy gray eyes that he always seemed to avert to one direction or another. You could never look at him in the eye and get a straight answer from him. He always seemed to have something else going through that brain of his.
“Hey Winny.”
I started calling him Winny after the few days that I had moved in. I was notorious for shortening people’s names even if they didn’t like it. He hated his.
“Hey Winny, you want to go the cafeteria and grab dinner?”
He was silent.
“Winny, Hey I’m talking to you.”
Still silent as a stump. His head was buried in a magazine. I couldn’t tell which one it was. I walked over to where he was sitting and glanced at the page. It was an article talking about the Soviet Union; something about communism and what they were doing over there on their side of the world. At the time I could care less about world politics. All that I could hear on the radio was talk of the “Cold War.” It was enough to make you sick. The media was spoon feeding it to the mass public and Americans were gobbling up all that they could as if they were eating their last meal.
I was indifferent. As long as the fighting was not outside the dorm or at home then I didn’t really care. It wasn’t that I didn’t have pride in my country but I just didn’t care. My father was a veteran of the second Great War and all he could talk about was how awful it was. He kept telling my sister and I that war was the worst thing in the world. It did not solve any problems but just made them worse. There’s always a loser, he used to say. He had been wounded in a small French village not more than three weeks after he had landed there. After spending a few months in a hospital outside of Paris he was shipped back to the states to be reunited with his new wife.
Since as far back as I can remember I have been attempting to be a writer. It has always been a goal of mine to publish something of my own. Since I read some of the great American classics, I knew that I wanted to do something like that. Some people may have great dreams to be rocket scientists or the first woman CEO but I wanted to be a writer. The only problem was that I had no good ideas for a book. Sure I could sit in class and write down whatever random thoughts would come into my mind, but it never really seemed to stick. It seemed as if I was too lazy to really make anything happen. My notebooks were chalk full of scribbles and scratching of my inner thoughts. There were probably more notes on potential book ideas than there were about the class. I guess my lack of motivation was a universal problem in my life more so than just my writing. That was just one of my many problems when I started college.
I was eighteen and free as a bird. My mother dropped me and my entire life off at my dormitory and said good bye to me the summer before my first fall semester. I had come to take a few classes in the summer at Walcott State University in hopes of getting ahead and possibly working on some writings that I had crawling inside my noodle. But in the midst of all of my excitement lay a dormant fear of being away from the security blanket that was my parents. I had no financial and emotional foundation that could have prepared me for that summer. My friends were not as ambitious as I was and so they stayed in my hometown and had a gay ole time while I was “hitting” the books. I remember I would count the days until the fall semester would start and my friends would pack up their own lives and make the exodus to upstate New York.
The first night of school for me in the summer of 1954 was the toughest. I had just met my roommate that night and he was a scrawny kid by the name of Winston that hardly could breathe two words to me when my mother and I introduced ourselves. I had quite a few suitcases and bags that contained my personals, but all that he had was a very old poster of a Spitfire on the wall and a single suitcase that was tucked under his bed. He had wispy blonde hair and cloudy gray eyes that he always seemed to avert to one direction or another. You could never look at him in the eye and get a straight answer from him. He always seemed to have something else going through that brain of his.
“Hey Winny.”
I started calling him Winny after the few days that I had moved in. I was notorious for shortening people’s names even if they didn’t like it. He hated his.
“Hey Winny, you want to go the cafeteria and grab dinner?”
He was silent.
“Winny, Hey I’m talking to you.”
Still silent as a stump. His head was buried in a magazine. I couldn’t tell which one it was. I walked over to where he was sitting and glanced at the page. It was an article talking about the Soviet Union; something about communism and what they were doing over there on their side of the world. At the time I could care less about world politics. All that I could hear on the radio was talk of the “Cold War.” It was enough to make you sick. The media was spoon feeding it to the mass public and Americans were gobbling up all that they could as if they were eating their last meal.
I was indifferent. As long as the fighting was not outside the dorm or at home then I didn’t really care. It wasn’t that I didn’t have pride in my country but I just didn’t care. My father was a veteran of the second Great War and all he could talk about was how awful it was. He kept telling my sister and I that war was the worst thing in the world. It did not solve any problems but just made them worse. There’s always a loser, he used to say. He had been wounded in a small French village not more than three weeks after he had landed there. After spending a few months in a hospital outside of Paris he was shipped back to the states to be reunited with his new wife.