What if?

We are exactly one week away from students showing up in our classrooms and beginning that next year-long journey of their high school experience, and we spent the day at countywide Professional Learning sessions. Ours in the English Language Arts weren’t bad at all. We were fortunate to spend the morning with this year’s HoCoPoLitSo Writer In Residence, Karen Outen. She read two excerpts from her book, Dixon, Descending, and I was mesmerized by her words.

Toward the end of her presentation, she asked us how stories begin and where we might find them. Immediately, I thought of the “What If?” approach that Ray Bradbury preaches in his own book Zen and the Art of Writing. Bradbury writes,

“There are three phrases that make possible the world of writing about the world of not-yet (you can call it science fiction or speculative fiction; you can call it anything you wish) and they are simple phrases: What if . . . ? If only . . . If this goes on . . . “What if . . . ?” gives us change, a departure from our lives. (What if aliens landed tomorrow and gave us everything we wanted, but at a price?) “If only . . .” lets us explore the glories and dangers of tomorrow. (If only dogs could talk. If only I were invisible.) “If this goes on . . .” is the most predictive of the three, although it doesn’t try to predict an actual future with all its messy confusion. Instead, “If this goes on . . .” fiction takes an element of life today, something clear and obvious and normally something troubling, and asks what would happen if that thing, that one thing, became bigger, became all-pervasive, changed the way we thought and behaved. (If this goes on, all communication everywhere will be through text messages or computers, and direct speech between two people, without a machine, will be outlawed.)”

(Crazy how dead-on he is with where we are right now on that last point, isn’t it?)

Anyway, your stories matter. Write them down. Every day of our lives presents us with unlimited stories. Here’s just a few from my day:

–> Staying in the middle lane of the beltway driving to work this morning, as the left and right shoulders are now used by idiots going 90+ mph as they weave in and out of traffic.

–> Early-morning spontaneous chats with my next-door colleague about vinyl, while he carries his shoes with him wherever he goes.

–> Mid-morning conversations with my Other-Neighbor about weddings, penguins, and late-night inspirations to do more school preparations.

–> Returning to my own school in late afternoon to organize my classroom books and discover two (out of thousands) missing.

On the surface, these ideas might not sound so great. With any one of them, I am granted the opportunity to bring those moments to life for you, Dear Reader, and share the nuances that made them memorable, even story-like.

This is just one of the things I hope to do this year with my students: Instill in them a wonder, a “what-if” approach to the otherwise mundane moments in their lives. They will hear it from me within the first five minutes of our first gathering: Your Story Matters. Don’t deprive the world of such magic, such story, experienced and shared as only you can.

If you have a story you’d like to share, feel free to drop me a note to my new address:

Rus VanWestervelt, PO Box 9723, Baltimore, MD 21284.

And I will be happy to return the favor. After all, we both have unlimited stories to tell, yes?