A Dedication

So I don’t think people dedicate blogs in the same way that they dedicate books, but if that were the case, here is my dedication:

“To Mrs. Greenberg, the first person who tried (and failed) to make me less loquacious, and also the person who taught me that word.”

What made me think of this? And some of my constant readers (hi Grandma, mom, dad, Marianne, Alyssa & Sarah--hi!) may be asking, who is this Mrs. Greenberg anyway?

To answer the second question first, Mrs. Greenberg was my fourth grade teacher. You know how some people have those stupid posters that say “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten”? (I’ve noticed these posters are especially popular with kindergarten teachers.) Well in all seriousness, for the second summer in a row, it has occurred to me that everything I need to know I learned in fourth grade. In Mrs. Greenberg’s class we had a loooot of homework. I hated it at the time, but I am convinced that I must have developed some sort of work ethic there. (I procrastinated a lot, and things haven’t really changed.) We had a list of spelling words each week. Monday night we had to alphabetize them, Tuesday night we had to write a sentence using each word, Wednesday night we had to write a short story using all of them, and Thursday night we had to study for our spelling quiz on Friday. Thursday night was easy since I was a super-duper-speller. (As several of my readers have pointed out (Amy/Dad) my spelling/general homonym use in this blog has taken a serious turn for the worse. The same thing happened when I was in Paris last summer; French immersion renders me unable to spell English words correctly.) So anyway, I got really really good at alphabetizing. When I spent all of last summer filing alphabetically endless documents/manuscripts/contracts at my two lit agency internships, I remember thinking that I could have completed these jobs--that I needed a personal recommendation and the Harvard name to get—just as well upon my completion of 4^th grade. But such is the stupid life of an unpaid/minimally paid intern, and that is a separate rant for a separate time.

So as any reader of this blog can tell, I am more than a little wordy. Part of the reason I hold Hemingway in such esteem is because he can do something with words I’ll never be able to do, that is, mainly, use less of them. My work this summer, however, for Let’s Go has been a constant exercise in conciseness. I must summarize every meal I eat, every museum I visit, every post office I encounter in 30 words or less.

“30 words or less” is the phrase that popped into my head today as I was walking through this gorgeous park in Amiens on one of the most gorgeous days I’ve had all trip. I found myself actually trying to take in the park in a 2 sentence summary (which I can’t include here for copyright reasons…haha, I feel slightly badass being able to say that). But it was very strange and I was reflecting on how I had come to perceive many things through this lens of “how can I best summarize this for readers in 30 words or less.” It is a very weird and difficult to explain phenomenon that you probably wouldn’t be able to fully understand not having viewed and experienced a 5^th of France in little 30 words or less segments. I suppose my editors would be happy about this state of mind.

Anyway, the phrase “30 words or less” was ringing in my head, and it seemed really familiar. Then I remembered these terrible book reports we had to do in fourth grade, which were the bane of my existence at the time, and sort of the equivalent of the 25 page papers I have to write now in their relative difficulty level. And the absolute hardest part was that we were required to start the book reports by summarizing the plot in “30 words or less.” This was always so difficult for me to do, but by the end of the year, I was awesome at describing how “Everyone in the dystopian town takes pills so they can’t see in color and except for one boy who can secretly experience all the sensations of the world.” (29 words, I think actually did read The Giver for the first time in 4^th grade, but definitely didn’t know the word dystopian).

And once again, this was a skill I learned in 4^th grade that would have allowed me to do this job when I was 10. Well okay, maybe I learned a few other skills between then and now that allowed me to travel through France by myself for the last 2 months (a blog entry on “skills” which I have been thinking about for awhile to come later…and I do maintain that a 10 year old could intern just as well as a 20 year old college student at a literary agency). But the ability to summarize succinctly, cleverly and comprehensively was the real basis and product of this job.

So yea, this is what made me think of Mrs. Greenberg. This has actually been the millionth time I have wanted to thank her for various things (4^th grade=major year), like when I played a strict teacher in a play in high school and based the character on her, or while doing homework late into the night and knowing I’ll actually get it done, or alphabetizing paperwork dating back to 1995 at the lit agency. Unlike most teachers who would give me work that I found really easy, and upon finishing it in like 2 minutes would let me have free time while the rest of my classmates kept working (or in the case of 3^rd grade, when I got a 100 on a test, didn’t have to take any more tests for the rest of the year—sorry to brag about these successes of 10 years ago, but hey, I was a smart kid!), she always had more work for me to do. As a 10 year old kid who just wanted to play on the playground, this was very frustrating. But I have realized retrospectively what an enormous impact she had on me, and I can’t think of any teachers from the Hendrick Hudson School District days who have pushed me as hard. Very sadly, she died (I think in 2004), along with several members of her family in a terribly tragic car accident in Mexico. I wish I could contact her to thank her for all these various things, and I think I actually might write her husband a letter about this.

Anyway, this ended up being a slightly less light-hearted entry than most, but it was what I was thinking about today. Off to din din, in this fabulous weather. And holy crapoli, tomorrow is my last day of this job. Just when I started to get good at it…