The Beginning
When did it all start? How did it begin? Those are important questions for many things, but especially when writing a story. I find that to be the most difficult part of a story. I could tap into Ancestry. Com and still not be sure.
I was asked the same questions about my writing. I had to reach back pretty far to come up with the answer. It was in high school, yet not in English class doing report writing or research papers. I didn't enjoy the process of setting up an outline to write.
No, it was in my sophomore homeroom where it all got going. Three days into the start of the school year a short, plump fellow with unruly blonde locks and a look of confusion stepped into our homeroom. Our class was comprised of students with the last names T through Z. The first mismatch was the young man's name started with a K. It turned out he fell short of a few credits to be a junior so at the last minute was stuck with us because our class wasn't as large as the others.
He kept to himself, and said very little. When he did speak, it was usually very odd. No doubt, he was considered a weirdo. Asperger's or Autism weren't a thing in the early 70s, but looking back on it he had to be on the spectrum. While the rest of us were bullshitting or playing cards, I noticed he was usually scribbling or doodling on a thick pad of paper. One day I left my seat and looked over his shoulder. I was amazed. He had been producing impressive cartoons, most of them caricatures. I asked if he minded me taking a look. He handed me his pad without a word. I looked at the cartoons and other pages with similar work. He was an excellent artist and a few of the caricatures looked familiar. I asked him about it, and he confirmed my suspicions. His main characters were my buddies Ed and Rick, and myself. My ears were incredibly large, while Ed's lips and Rick's nose were grossly exaggerated. It was definitely us though.
He finally opened up to me and said he drew every day. His problem, however was he was unable to come up with any dialogue between us. I offered my help. I knew I could come up with some crazy nonsense, which wouldn't be too far from our actual conversations. So for a couple of months we collaborated on his comic strips. He loved my written comments, motivating him to come with even more comic strips. He was a strange dude, yet we had developed a connection, if not a normal friendship. I had also found a different kind of writing, one that I looked forward to everyday.
At the age of fifteen, it had begun.