"Your second grader’s story should describe an event — or a series of events — using details to describe the characters’ actions, thoughts, and feelings. In addition to careful use of descriptive verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, your second grader should use sentence order, verb tense, and temporal words, like after, following, later, to clearly put the events in order. At the end of a second grader’s writing, there should be some sense of the piece or story coming to a close —
and not just writing 'The End.'"
greatschools.org (Retrieved 11-28-20)
I wrote a note to you. It’s a brief note so I put it on a “sticky” for you. In that way, you can place it anywhere you wish and have it to remind you of something you wish to accomplish that brings out the best in you. This note to you is about a note to me. I wrote it over 54 years ago. I never really knew why I wrote it at the time. It had nothing to do with any class assignment or punishment meted out to me for some childish prank I did as a seven-year-old. I wrote it willingly and completely as a volunteer. It flowed out of me.
I remember a few details about writing the note. I attended second grade, and, after becoming ill, I stayed home from school for the week. The note is dated March 1, 1966, a Tuesday. As I indicated, I was seven years old, just two months shy of my eighth birthday. I don’t remember anyone else being home except for my mother. A quietness prevailed in the house (which I find even now acts as an important requisite for writing). The sun shone brightly in my bedroom as I occupied one of the two single beds. That’s where I wrote the note, in my bed. I do not remember where I got the paper, but it included standard, lined-paper with binder holes. With clumsy spelling and grammar, the penciled note came to be a little more than five pages. It included a beginning, a middle, and an end. I can fill in other details by looking back in time. I know that the first airing of the Batman and Robin television series occurred two months prior on January 12, 1966. The importance of this relates to the note’s title, “Batman and the Joker,” and indicates how a Super Hero with a desire to conquer evil occupied my mind at the time. When Batman would get into trouble and scuffles ensued with his arch enemies in the fictional town of Gotham City, exclamatory emphasis came by way of imposing verbal inserts over the live action, such as, “ZOCK!” “POW!” “ZAM!” Those words and words similar to them made their way into my note to myself.
Those fighting words seemed fitting, since thwarting an illness and activating my immune system reached some level of importance at the time. Still, the message of the note and the fact that I still have it today, and am writing about it in a note to you, tells me more.
It tells me that something existed inside of me before I started writing. That “something” needed expression. Thankfully, I found a way to make it known to me. No one else has ever read this note I wrote; that’s why I call it a note to me. The fact that I have kept it all these years tells me that its true value would only be discovered later in life, much later.
I never spoke much as a child, but, here in this note, words began to link themselves with my own thoughts and they took on shape and form, as if I had built something. I remember being particularly intrigued that writing tools existed to assist the reader in understanding how a story progressed. Quotation marks and commas became the gadgets I toyed with to guide the story, to keep it organized and structured, and to move it along so no reader would be left with confusion.
The opening lines of the note to myself provide a sample of my first awkward attempts to use dialogue to tell a story (as written then):
“The fair is on.” said Batman “now let’s find out where the Joker is. said Batman “Look” said Robin “there’s the Joker. Yes” said Batman “there he is. nows the time to get him.” said Batman. “Get in the Batmobile” said Batman. In to the Batmobile they went. They came to the Batcave, and Batman said "if we don't get the Joker by tonight were daid."
Looking beyond the obvious lapses in follow through on punctuation, those first few lines initiated an adventure for me, one that existed within me and jumped out on to the paper. I knew nothing about “rough” drafts or “proofreading.” That did not matter. I allowed the beginning, the middle, and the end to flow out of me and I did the best I could at the time. When I got to “The End” of my little note, I stapled the pages together and packaged my mini adventure into “book” form. I had learned much along the way by teaching myself how to use a few tools to write and to free up thoughts swirling inside of me.
And I kept this note to me. I preserved it for a time when my second-grade wisdom could be better understood. That’s where my note to you comes in. It's attached below on the sticky note:
As I said, it’s just a little note, but I did the best I could with it . . . just like the note I wrote to myself all those years ago. I hope it moves you to do the best you can with what you have. That always brings a satisfying result.
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