Attempts

It occurs to me that I have been writing essays for most of my life. At some point, early in life, the thought of writing an essay, a.k.a., a book report, filled me with dread. I’m not sure why, except that it was work I had to do and I always put off that work until the last possible minute1. I would have sworn that it wasn’t until high school that I started to change my mind about essays, that there was something to the attempt itself, which it turns out, is where the word comes from. And then this morning, on my early walk, I was listening to SiriusXM 80s on 8 top 40 countdown for this week in 1987. The music immediately had me back in 9th grade, my final year at Porter Junior High School, and less than a month from graduating. I don’t remember much about the writing I did in Junior High. I know that in 7th grade, we had to research and write books (short books) and then made bindings for them. My book was on Egypt, a subject I never would have chosen, except that I was trying to…