The Pizzimenti Mob =)
The little girl in the red dress used to get in trouble for talking. Every report card had a checkmark next to “talking” and that was not a compliment.
A few comments would follow those checkmarks like-“Clare talks too much.“ “Clare has difficulty focusing on her work.” And one of my favorites, “Clare spends too much time visiting with her neighbors.“
In my Catholic grade school you received letter grades; S (sometimes) N (never) A (always.) Grade school was full of lots of “S’s”and a few N’s. They’re were no high marks for talkers.
Pretty sure I only received a few A’s in my Public Highschool. When I would attempt to put my words on paper I regularly received this critique- “this is a run-on sentence.” I thought, Really? Who gets to be the judge of that? I had so much to say and sometimes only a “run-on” would reveal my heart. Still with this kind of academic discouragement I rarely did my homework but always had an active social life!
Once, my dad got called into the Vice-Principals office for a conversation about- a) my “talking” during a Chemistry test b) my lack of focus on studies c) my out of balance “talking” life. My dad’s response to the VP was, “I don’t worry about Clare because she talks a lot. I worry about kids who don’t talk and you don’t know what they’re thinking.”
Why did dad respond that way? Well, dad understood my inherited social milieu. Dad was the oldest of 6 kids. I was the last of his 6 kids, he was in his 50’s with his last child in high school, had lived a lot of life and loved a lot of talkers by then.
I did better in Community College (these are the only colleges that accept talkers) because I took Psychology and Sociology classes. I soon discovered that I was interested in God and people, making Bible College the best fit for this talker.
In Bible College I was learning the Gospel. Did you know that the word Gospel means Good News? I was thrilled! I found an occupation that needed people to use their voice to bring the Good News! I was discovering that my deepest desire was to inspire, motivate, encourage, disturb and challenge people into social action- using words
Bible College and Seminary classes gave me new ways talk to people. I even received life-learnning credits in graduate school for, get this- talking to people! I finally got A’s for “visiting with my neighbors!” How cool is that?! “Visiting with” and “talking to my neighbors” was the “focus of my work!”
So now, here I am, 53ish and I am being asked to spend more of my time putting words on paper for my “neighbors” to read. Humbling for sure because I am a much better “talker” than “writer.”
I confess right here and now that I am under-developed in this writing stuff. If you risk reading my blog, you may not give me an academic “A ” but I hope to inspire, motivate, encourage, disturb and challenge you to discover Good News and your own “A” game. (with a promise of lots of run-on sentences AND grammatical errors =)
Talking through writing,
clare