Mama Smurf
Bio
A vegan, homeschooling mama who loves animals, hates laundry, and has lots of both.
Stories (2/0)
Grampa's Gift
Call me Ishmael. My hand dropped. I didn't know what to write next. Turning the page, I started at the top. In the third grade, a poster showed famous first words from influential books; "Call me Ishmael" topped the list. My teacher explained that those words connected readers to the narrator through his first name; I guess writers don't usually tell their readers what to call them. She explained that the name he used all at once intertwined history and religion and psychology in a reference to his hardships (and maybe even lack of veracity) that his readers would understand. But how did the name he used tell anything about his life? The name I use was given to me and I don't have a choice in what it means so only by chance could it tell anyone about my life. His readers were a lot smarter than me, I guess. I tried to read the book a little the next year, but his readers were definitely not fourth graders who got a kick out of Clifford the Big Red Dog just a couple years earlier. But I liked that one line could mean so much to anyone. I want to write one line that means so much. But “Hi, my name is Mallory” couldn’t possibly mean anything to anyone.
By Mama Smurf3 years ago in Families