From the Archives

There once was a man named Bob,

who liked to eat corn on the cob.

But one day for Bob,

he got caught by the mob,

now he's out of a job.

- Bob, Part I

It's a great poem, isn't it? My grade nine, fourteen year old self sure thought so. My best friend and I had written over 100 of these poems all about Bob. His job, his wife, his family, his friends... everything Bob.

Where are the rest of these amazing poems? I wish I could say that I had access to them. I wish I could pull up the document right now, having a laugh at what my past self thought was hilarious. But, unfortunately for me, I wasn't smart enough to save my work.

It of course was back before people really used computers. So, the original Bob poems were written the old fashioned way; the way most of my pieces had begun, with a blue pen and paper. In this notebook over 100 poems were written about Bob. And of course, this notebook is now lost to the ages.

We had also published the poems on Webook. Remember that website? If you google it now you're met with nothing more than an error, and details on a company that ultimately was sold to another that ended up going bankrupt. I did see they tried a relaunch, but that was back in 2014. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately?) for me, that means all of those poems about Bob, among any other writing my high school self wrote, is now gone.

I won't even bring up the mystery of the lost hard drive, where I lost the workings of at least 3 years, and the pictures of many more. No, I don't like to talk about that. I guess you could say I'm very unlucky.

But back to Bob. Poems aren't my thing. Nor were they ever my thing, to be fair. I could never truly appreciate poetry, and I could never really get a grasp on what makes a good 'poem'. But, I have to thank poetry in a way. For if it weren't for those poems about Bob, perhaps I never would have discovered my love for writing. Perhaps I never would have continued to write about things that inspired me, and that happened in my everyday life, letting my thoughts and feelings out with ease, and no judgement.

It let to many short stories, and many late nights spent up letting a piece of paper, and later on the internet know how I felt. Nobody really read what I wrote, and to an extent I didn't mind that. There were a lot of things that troubled my mind that I was afraid of people knowing. Writing helped me seek that release.

Even though my first ever work is a silly poem about a man named Bob, I have to thank him. He has taken me on a wild writing journey, that has led me to the (un)successful writer I am today. Though I don't practice or even write as much as I used to, I do still have the same dream I did when I wrote Bob, Part I. I'll be published someday. Maybe not for Bob, maybe not even anytime soon, but I'll get there.