Youth of the Nation

Learning to write is learning to forget the lessons taught in grammar school. It's a learning to circumvent the hard rules of grammar altogether. Bend the rules. Twist the rules. Make the rules your bitch.

I found a school writing notebook from 6th grade in my worn blue desk at my parent's house. Mrs. Dodgen was my teacher's name. She was a hardass. A disciplinarian of the old school. She smelled of moth balls and had a giant mole on the right side of her nose. I remember having to constantly fight the urge to pop it with my pencil.

One story I wrote was about purple people eaters. The sentences were stilted and lacked flow. I wasn't a preternatural genius of writing. My writing has only recently gotten less bad.

The purple people eaters killed all the town members. The purple people eaters sucked the brains out of the children. And they danced on the graves of their enemies . . .

Or something. There were a few red marks, misspellings and the like. She also crossed-out "And." After all, you can't start a sentence with a conjunction. What silliness and unproper speech that would produce, children. Your sentences must die on the page. Please keep all personality and style out of your writing. Write how you think we want you to write. Go read a typical high school or college paper. The smartest kids are often the worst.

Play me out, P.O.D.