flat denial

in the creative writing class i took in high school (maybe 9th or 10th grade), one of the activities was breaking into small groups and discussing a story that one of the people in the group had written.

one time, we read and discussed a short story that someone had written (and i have completely forgotten who it was) about coming home from school and finding out that her cat had died. one of the things that was brought up in discussion, i think by the teacher who had sat in with us, was whether a few of the passages were meant to foreshadow the ending, where the girl founds out that her cat has died. i argued that they weren’t, and of course it came out that i was wrong. the author had actually worked with the teacher in constructing the story. we were discussing the story without knowing who had written it. i’m not sure we even knew that someone in our group had written it.

i’m not sure what the lesson from this story is, but it’s something i think about every so often. perhaps the lesson is that sometimes there really is a lot of meaning in what someone says or writes. for myself, i often find more meaning in things i write without intending meaning than things i write intending meaning.

the bad habit i picked up from the class came from being able to get away with doing my writing assignments at the last minute. my locker was across the hall from the english department, and i remember quickly writing most of my assignments there during a free period i had before class.

and the title of this entry has nothing to do with the content. it goes with the entry i was going to write, but did not. maybe some other time.