Fiction - a life shaper

A month of fiction would not be complete without talking about writing!

Yes, I write on this blog, but as a mathematician, I don't really spend much of my time trying to be creative linguistically (nice word, huh?).

But at one point in my life, that wasn't true.  And I would venture a guess that even my closest friends don't know that.

It all started when I was in first grade.  I was a good kid.  A really good kid!  So you can imagine my horror when my teacher told me that she needed to see me in the hallway.  Egad!  That's where the BAD kids went when they were in trouble!  What could I have done?!?

But I wasn't in trouble.  I mean, really.  How could I be?  I mentioned I was a good kid, right?  haha

No, instead, my teacher, Mrs. G said she had a special project just for me.  There was an event that she wanted me to participate in.  It was called the Young Authors and Artists conference.  She wanted me to write a book.  An entire book!

So for the next few weeks instead of going outside to play, I was writing.  If I wanted to have fun, my mom would ask me how the book was coming.  It seems like every waking moment was spent at the kitchen table carefully writing the story and illustrating the pages.  (It was really only probably 10 pages, but that's a LOT for a first grader to write AND illustrate!)

So when the book was finished, I attended the conference with my mom.  We were separated by age and each group of kids (and their parents) went to a separate room where we talked about our books and showed the other participants.  Then we got to "autograph" each other's book.

While this may not seem like a big deal to some, it was a very cool thing to me.

But the best thing wasn't my signature on the books of other people, it was the signature of one particular little girl on my book.  As I have said, we were in first grade.  We were writing on unlined paper and I was fascinated by this little girl's signature because she wrote in a straight line!  ....without lines on the paper!

So, here's my question.  Why is THAT the big thing that I remember about this entire story?  Why did that little girl's signature make me want to be someone who could write in a straight line on unlined paper?  Why did that one seemingly insignificant event in my life become part of who I am today?