I'm going to dedicate my 40,000th post to my mother. [View all]

Last edited Sun Oct 5, 2025, 12:10 PM - Edit history (1)

She always wanted one of her children to be a writer. With me she got an autistic spectrum klutz -- clumsy in motion, clumsy with words.

I learned to read early, largely because my mother read to me. I remember knowing how to read before I knew how to speak. From kindergarten to the third grade, when the other kids were learning to read, I was sent out to work with the school speech therapists.

My handwriting has always been a mess. It hasn't changed much since I was in the second grade. My mom insisted I take typing as my seventh grade elective. This was awkward because there was only one other boy in the class of thirty. Typing is a skill that has served me well. I can type as fast as I think. I cannot write by hand as fast as I think. Talking as fast as I think has always gotten me into lots of trouble. Many of my thoughts are best not spoken. I have a knife scar on my arm that reminds me of that. A violent person didn't like what I was saying.

In college I decided to minor in English hoping it would improve my writing skills. I was a great frustration to all my English teachers but my writing did improve.

My mom's writing skills got her work as a script secretary, as an advertising copy writer, as an editor, and as a ghost writer. I've never sold any of my writing.

I've been reading DU from the beginning and signed on as hunter in February 2002. Since then I've been posting 4 or 5 times daily.

It's been a wild ride.