An Inspirationally Destructive Red Pen

An Inspirationally Destructive Red Pen

When children first start school they begin a new extensive journey, first meeting all new people and then having to learn a broad array of new things. One of those new things is how to read and also write. Teachers start out slow by having students write in big capital letters on funny looking red and green striped paper, next moving on to cursive letters with still that same silly paper. After a short while the students are on their own, writing notes for classes, notes to friends and family, along with research papers and stories for their teachers in school. And that is where my story begins, room 216 on the second floor of Pottsville Area High School.

School had just started; it was the fall of my sophomore year. I was excited about having new teachers and being able to boss around those little freshmen since I had finally lost that ridiculous title of “freshy.” Although one class did turn all that excitement right into knots in my stomach, it was English 10. Ugh I hated English, partially because I could never remember all those rules of writing, which I had just thought of as “dumb.” I figured, “Why would I ever need to know all them? Computers will be able to fix all my mistakes for me!” As I would soon find out, boy was I ever wrong. Surprisingly, class was going good; our teacher Mr. Mieckowski seemed to be a little weird and quite boring at times but all in all not too bad I mean who isn’t boring occasionally? He had a shiny head with very little hair and never wore long sleeves to class. He was also quite tall and skinny, so everyone had his or her own conclusion about Mr. Mieckowski’s personal life. A lot of the time this ended up being the topic of conversation for his students, along with his hatred towards icicle lights, white reindeer, and especially technology; the thing I loved most.

We spent most of the first month in Mr. M.’s class just going over “the infamous page one” as he liked to call it and just reading some great pieces of literature, including Of Mice and Men and Julius Caesar. Then one winter day, we all came into his cool green room and sat down, chatting with our neighbors as usual until the bell rang to signify the start of class. When the bell rang, our teacher began talking about our upcoming assignments; he told us we would be writing 3 essays during the next ...

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.... My faced turned pale, I knew for sure I was one of those exceptions. He began to discretely pass our papers back to us. Everyone was getting his or her papers except me. Sure enough I was on the bottom of the pile. I didn’t even want to look at it. While everyone was asking their friends how they had done, I just sat there. Griff then asked me how I did and I replied, “I dunno, you tell me” and handed him my paper. He looked at it and said, “Damn you beat me” I was shocked I looked at it; I had received a 97%. I just felt as though I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream. I would have had a 100 except for a few spelling errors, probably due to how fast I had written the final copy. Disregarding those lost 3 points, I was ecstatic. My paper was a work of art to me I wanted to frame it and hang it on my wall at that point. As time went on that excitement wore off and I realized it just wasn’t a paper I had written, it was a story along with an instructional guide I had written in my mind on how to write a paper. From that point on I knew I could tackle any paper those teachers could throw at me and it was all thanks to Mr. Mieckowski and his inspirationally destructive red pen.