Mr. Egg

I was putting some laundry away last night and something curious caught my eye at the bottom of my closet, the bright blue Leaning Tower of Pisa (italicized because it seems fitting, you know, leaning tower and all) bag that holds all of my school work from Kinder-garden to Grade 12.  It beckoned me.  It occurred to me that I may find that blasted Dylan Thomas paper inside.  I pulled it out from its little crook of the closet floor and heaved it up on my bed.  It’s crammed with projects, duo-tangs full of essays and creative writings, report cards, awards and my student handbooks.  I couldn’t resist leafing through some of it.  I haven’t peered into that bag for a really long time so it was fun to peruse my old papers that at one time meant so much to me.  Turns out in junior high school I was ‘activist’ minded as a younger self.  I wrote piles of essays on things like apartheid, abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy.  I wrote furiously with my elementary cursive handwriting, passionately and profusely.  I was certain to change the world with my brave ideas and bold pronouncements.  My journal entries were rife with ‘no one understands me’ rants and all of the things I wished for, for myself and others and often mused about the state of the world and the music I loved.  I had a lot to say and wasn’t afraid to spew my feelings and opinions onto the page.  It is safe to say that at that tender age, I had a bird’s eye-view of the world and possessed a very strict moral compass.  My stringent loyalty still remains intact however I am much more aware of the grey matter between black and white. 

I didn’t find the Dylan Thomas paper I talked about a few blogs back much to my dismay because I’d have shared my teacher’s comments with you here.  What I did find though was far more interesting and caused uproarious laughter in my house; the similar kind of amusement that was experienced after recently rifling through Hannah’s big box of artwork from school.  She’s 12-teen now and looking back at her over-sized creative faces framed with wild hair-dos that often sat on top of unusually petite bodies.

In 1^st grade I illustrated and wrote a rudimentary story about ‘Mr. Egg’.  The drawing alone had me in a fit of giggles.  I wasn’t and still am not much of an artiste but I won’t hold it against mini-Nic, I was only a munchkin.  Stunning writer though, what!?  Ha!

I give you Mr. Egg:

Mr. Egg was a nice egg.

He was funny and fat.

He played with the other eggs.

There were 3 boys and 7 girls.

He made a funny snowman

and he liked to swim in the summer.

He also really likes the pretty eggs.

The end.

So the premise of the story is that Mr. Egg is stout, audacious and likes the ladies, an oleaginous Humpty Dumpty.  Not an uncommon observation for a wee little one, correct?  Geez, where was my mind!?  I blame all that Beep I consumed at recess.  Sugar overload, I am surmising?  I amused myself with my fledgling depiction, drawing and thoughtful printing.  My letters were carefully written but some words were bigger than others.  I’d have taken a photo but I couldn’t get it to show up well enough as the story was written on cream coloured construction paper instead of the bright orange that Mr. Egg was drawn on.

I half hoped that while looking through my old school work I’d find the first and only children’s story I wrote.  It was about Nick the Turtle.  I am thinking it is being held hostage on a floppy disc (yes, I said floppy disc) that I no longer have and more than likely no longer exists.   I wrote it in 6^th grade and spent much of my free time, especially at lunch in the library at the far out Commodore 64s our school brought in and I had just learned how to use.  It was a huge step up in technology from playing tennis on Atari.   Wild times.  Nick the Turtle was pretty cute, a big green face and a brown checkered shell.  Think Gus from the Museum of Natural History in his salad days.  That’s what I was going for at least.  Sad to have Nick lost to time and a flat flimsy computer disc.  I never did print a hard copy of the text to go along with his illustrations. 

While I started to think about writing on a much deeper level in my high school years I did spend a significant amount of time writing when I was younger.  I wore rose-coloured glasses and had so much faith in humanity as children often do.  I was unaware of politics, religion, sex, violence, money’s rule and all of the unsavory atrocities that existed.  I believed that everyone was good and would always do the right thing, (boy was I green!), I believed everything would always work out and I knew that Mr. Egg crushed on girl eggs and enjoyed dipping his little eggy feet in the ocean.

What a cute kid I was.  I don’t know what happened to me.

In youthful propinquity,

Nic