The Baby Baboon
According to my parents, I jumped out of the womb speaking “proper English.” Just as all parents, mine have the tendency to exaggerate my talents. In truth, I came into this world the same way most people do: wrinkled, red, and screaming. If there were anything special about me, it was that I was a particularly ugly newborn, bearing a faint resemblance to a baby baboon.
As a child, I developed an acute sense of mimicry. My father tells a story about discovering my mimicry skills. I was around two years old. He had just come home from work and found me sitting at the table with my tea set. According to the story, I looked at him and asked, in a distinctly British accent, “Father, would you care to join me for tea?” I can only imagine my father’s shock. He and my mother had lived their entire lives in Alabama, and they both have very Southern accents. They assumed that I had “picked up the accent” from Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins.
Of course, I remember none of these childhood adventures. My first memories have less to do with speaking, reading, or writing and more to do with the birth of my younger brother and my intense fear of the television—I thought it ate my father. Therefore, I will skip ahead a bit in my autobiography.
Annie
Around age five—just before starting kindergarten—I became obsessed with the musical Annie. My grandmother owned the video, and I would watch it two or three times a day while my parents were at work. I quickly memorized the entire movie, every line and every song, and I would quote it and sing songs from it all the time. My father has been a church music director for as long as I can remember and was initially quite thrilled with my newfound love of music, but after hearing me sing “Tomorrow” for an entire three-hour car ride to visit my grandparents, even he went a bit bonkers.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten was a very dark time for me. I discovered quickly that my teacher, Mrs. Nun, was not a fan of Annie, as bursting into song was strictly forbidden. Mrs. Nun believed that all children should be silent, attentive, and generally terrified. I was none of these things. I was a “bad child.”
One thing I loved about kindergarten was the promise that I would learn to read. I’m sure my parents read to me a lot as a child, but the only person I actually remember reading to me was my grandmother. Meemaw, as I call her, has the perfect reading voice. Her voice is gentle and kind, with the tone similar to a silver hand bell. I had her read The Pokey Puppy to me every time I went to her house. It was perhaps the only thing I loved more than Annie.
Needless to say, I wanted to read. Unfortunately, reading did not come easily to me. Methods for teaching reading have been debated for decades. At this point, the popular method was to have children first learn the alphabet, each individual letter had to be learned in order.
I found the Alphabet to be frightfully boring. There were no stories in these letters like there were in my Meemaw’s books.
I remember Mrs. Nun handing me a set of flash cards. Each flash card had a certain letter on it, and I was supposed to put the letters in alphabetical order. Instead, I played with them, as if they were my dolls. They each came to life as characters in my head. There was Mr. A, who always wore a hat, and Mr. B, who was so angry with Mr. A that he kept his back to him at all times. Mrs. K was the best letter in the alphabet because she was the first letter of my name. I eventually put the letters in order, but they did not like it. Mrs. Q wanted to be beside Mr. O.
At the end of the year, Mrs. Nun advised my mother to make me repeat kindergarten because I did not know my alphabet. Of course, in my mind, I know the letters far better than Mrs. Nun ever would. All she wanted to do was make them stand in a certain order, but to me, they were each close, personal friends. Fortunately, my mother did not listen to Mrs. Nun.
First Grade
First grade was much better than Kindergarten. In first grade, letters had a reason to go in a certain order. In first grade, we were taught to read not just individual words, and stories came to life.
The first assignment I remember having required me to write a short story using our spelling words. So, I wrote my very first story. It was a sequel to Peter Pan, involving me going to Neverland. Apparently, I had gotten into my cousin’s comic book collection because my story was, in fact, a comic book—complete with pictures, dialogue bubbles, and fairies.
My teacher loved it so much, that she had me take it to Dr. Duke, the principal. Having been a “bad child” for so long, I immediately thought I had done something wrong. I was nervous, twitchy, and near tears the entire time Mrs. Duke read over my story, but when she was finished reading, she gave me candy and told me to write another one. Of course, I continued to write for candy.
Second Grade
In second grade, my Meemaw and I read The Boxcar Children, and I was inspired to write stories without so many pictures. My teacher, Mrs. Hobbs, encouraged my writing. For some reason, my favorite stories to write were ghost stories. I wrote one or two stories a day. I don’t remember them very well, but I remember my main characters: a girl named Casey and her brother, Bobby. I know one story consisted of their father being eaten by a television.
Third Grade
In third grade I became, if possible, even more shy. I rarely spoke, and I spent the majority of my time daydreaming. I had trouble completing my work, and multiplication tables were the bane of my existence. Numbers were boring. Unlike letters, numbers had no stories to tell me.
The only subject I was interested in was history. That was because, over the summer, my Grandaddy convinced me that the only good books were history books. Fiction books were filled with lies. I had read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, another biography of George Washington, and a 4th grade history book published in the 1970’s, which my Grandaddy had bought from a yard sale.
I say that I was interested in history, but whenever Mrs. Morris taught the subject, she left out what I believed to be the best parts. One day, I finally got up the courage to inform her and the rest of the class that our country was actually named for Amerigo Vespucci after he wrote two letters describing the new world so beautifully that everyone began to call it “Amerigo’s land.” I also informed her that Columbus was not the first person to discover America, and that he probably wasn’t all that smart since he thought he was in India when he got here.
Needless to say, I was not the teacher’s favorite, and who could blame her? I was an obnoxious little child.
Later that year I read Treasure Island, convinced that it was historically accurate. At some point I learned that Stevenson was not a historian and that his works were, in fact, fiction. I was greatly disappointed to discover that Jim Hawkins was not real, as I was slightly in love with him, but I eventually overcame my despair and started reading fiction more fervently than ever.
Fourth Grade
In fourth grade, I still wasn’t talking, spending most of my time with my face in a book. My mother, I believe, feared that I would never grow out of my shy nature. She must have been quite surprised when I signed up to audition for the children’s theatre’s production of Pinocchio. She was perhaps even more surprised when I was given one of the few speaking parts. I
After Pinocchio, I was forced to sing for the Talladega Community Theatre Director, Susana Herring. I did so while hiding behind my mother. Mrs. Herring cast me in the musical version of A Christmas Carol. I fell in love with theatre and I soon wrote my first play. I soon wrote my first play. It was a short play staring my characters, Casey and Bobby. They went back in time to meet Samson and Delilah. I was sure I had found my destiny. Of course, destiny is never really that simple, is it?
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