My nephew Kayden asked me what time I went to work on Monday, and if I could help him with his English project before I left. I asked him what the assignment was, and he told me he had to write a narrative story in the first-person that was at least 750 words and had to have a resolution.
He thought maybe he'd write about a court case with lawyers and a judge, and I asked him, "Do you know anything about courtrooms? Like, do you watch any shows about that sort of th--"
"No," he said, "you're right, that's a stupid idea."
I told him it wasn't stupid, but that he should probably write about something familiar, like school, or golf, or family, or fishing, or buxom young women that like to wear white t-shirts and suspenders in the rain.
He said, "Okay, sure."
I said, "Alright, what do you want it to be about?"
He didn't know. I strongly suspect that's why he wanted my help with it.*
So, I kicked several potential ideas at him, of things I knew he was familiar with, that wouldn't be too difficult to riff on (I may have tossed out that old chestnut "Write what you know"), and he picked a fishing trip with him and his friend and his little brother. It starts to rain on them, and his little brother goes back to get ponchos and/or umbrellas, so he has the keys, and they're lately locked out of the car because of that.
I gave him a couple of notes, feeding him a set-up that could pay off at the very end of the tale, but mostly letting him write the story. And I was surprised by just how hard that was for him, just how bad he was at it, and how not enjoyable this task was to him. It was supposed to be at least 750 words, and at the two or three hundred word point, he asked if it was okay to stop. We could resume work tomorrow, the day before it was due. But I told him we should push on through to the end, and tomorrow, we could do revisions.
The story, as I said, was about him and his friend and his younger brother going fishing, and they get lost in the woods, and then a bunch of wolves chase them ("bunch" is the technical term for a pack of wolves). And to my surprise, he chose to end the story with the wolves eating his little brother.**
It was a surprise because it's not something a lot of kids--a lot of normal kids, anyway--would have gone for. It instead seemed like something I would have gone for at his age. And a lot younger, if we're being honest. So, was that my influence on him? Was that him writing something he thought would please me? Or is it possible that this sort of twisted morbidity runs in the family?
To my surprise, he wanted it to end with his little brother getting eaten, instead of sacrificing his friend's life, or having all three boys escape. "Are you going to get in trouble?" I asked, "having it end that way?"
"I can write what I want," he said. "The teacher said it could be about anything, as long as it was long enough."
Well, it was long enough. I have to admit that I made matters worse, though, by saying, "How about nobody believes you about the wolves, but later, a farmer shoots one, and when he cuts it open, they find your car keys inside it?" He liked that idea.
I did a word count when we reached the end, and we were at 864 words, which exceeded the assignment. I saved the file (for once) and told him, tomorrow, we can read it aloud and make whatever fixes it needs, then he could turn it in.
But that didn't happen. The next day, he told me he didn't want to work on it anymore, and that it was only supposed to be a first draft anyway. So, I emailed it to him and he handed it in. And he got 100%, which felt pretty good.***
The next assignment was to do a polish on the story, to fix whatever notes the teacher had given, by Kayden said he wasn't going to bother, as he'd already gotten 100%. Now, I don't know if that means that there were no mistakes (there surely were), or that it couldn't be improved (it surely could be), but if the teacher didn't find anything wrong with it, the boy wasn't willing to put in any more work. So I guess that's where he's not a chip off the old block (do uncles have blocks?). At least not totally.
RBO
*I get that this sort of activity is painful drudgery to some people, but man, it's the sort of assignment I ate up in elementary school, junior high, high school, and college. In fact, I even thought it was fun walking him through it, though it was a challenge not to try to take over the narrative, or correct him when he said, "Me and Chris kept running as fast as we could" and such.
**Not just biting him, or killing him, or infecting him with werewolfism (the technical term for lycanthropy), but eating him.
***I had worried that the teacher would say, "Uh, no. You need to rewrite it so it has a more appropriate, positive ending." But who knows, maybe he thought it was refreshing.
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