I studied under George Singleton for a summer. I was in a small class of just-became-teenagers who were gathered from all corners of South Carolina and not one girl left without a maddening crush on him. He was funny. Smoked a lot. Liked junky garage sales. Wore the same black leather jacket just about every day. Gave a reading in front of a crowd of distinguished guests and said “camel toe” and then chuckled at himself under all the shocked stares. And he had these piercing blue eyes that said “I think in long sentences that are coherent and more intelligent than anything you will ever write.” Ugh. And UNG.

It was the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities before it became an actual school. At age 15 I qualified for the then-summer program because I wrote a short story about how a boy who lived in the plains got into trouble because he let the wind into the house. Made a big mess, he did. Sand everywhere. Anyway, I don’t know why George thought I belonged in the program. Maybe he actually got the extended metaphor I was weaving with the whole wind thing. Or maybe I just made that up when he asked me about the story. Neither one of us knew that at the time. I still don’t know. Can’t find the original copy.

So I went for about a month and a half (the duration). Wrote some good stuff. Wrote some awful stuff. The stuff that George called awful wasn’t too unlike the plot line of Grindhouse or Transformers, though. Maybe I was ahead of my time? Didn’t matter. Those blue eyes and that stubbly chin reduced me to tears on more than one occasion. In the end, I walked away from George Singleton a disillusioned pencil hater with an armful of short story books written by guest authors. For years I didn’t write a single thing besides messages in ICQ and a haiku on the first iteration of Zeldman.com. Anyone remember the martini haiku contest? I’d love to know.

Today I still don’t write like I did 13 years ago. Sure, I do blog stuff and try to be witty on Twitter, but that’s different stuff, much in the way a sonnet is different from a limerick. I got to thinking about George because I was itching to close the laptop, and I happen to still have all of those books I mentioned before. So I re-read These People Are Us one afternoon. And it got me to thinking about what a waste of time that summer was. I was an unfertilized plant, so to speak. Nothing to build a good story upon when you’re from a tiny southern town, and your only friends were people who feared eternal damnation for going to a party where there might be beer. I was a green, stiff, slightly dry little twig. Couldn’t do a thing with me, so he snapped me in half.

So how to get juicy and colorful and perhaps aromatic? Hell if I know. I’m out of practice. But here’s my guess v1.0 (for all you 15 year old aspiring writers out there): Be reckless. Fail miserably. Let people into your heart and allow them to ransack the place. Triumph. Travel. Forgive. Maybe be slightly mentally ill. Think in long sentences. Note I didn’t say “think in long sentences and use big words”–Big words are intimidating and impressive but they don’t do shit for telling a good story. And the best stories are short ones, in my opinion. We live life in episodes of varying lengths and each has its own theme. Divide into chunks, analyze, add to the mixture or toss in the compost bin so they can become something else. It’s really tough to make a point with just a few pages of text. George Singleton can, and he’s amazing at it.

Ah, George. This is how it works, eh? In my overly dramatic teenage mind you were stabbing me to death with a butter knife. Now I want that knife for my bread.

I wonder what he’d think of my blog?

There’s that whole “does my pet look like me or do I look like my pet?” cliché. Though pretty uncanny in some instances, that’s not what I mean when I say “our pets are us”. If I asked you “Why do you have a pet?” I’d get varying answers (none of which would be “because s/he looks like me!”). Some of us want to nurture, some of us want an excuse to do something like hiking or just plain going outside, others want someone to talk to, a few of us want to feel like a hero, and on and on and on. What we choose to have as a pet says a lot about us, too. Dog? Cat? Bird? Snake? Regardles of species, our pets have the exact same needs we do, whether we know it at the time of adoption or not. That, my friends, is what I mean by “our pets are us”.

You see, a pet’s survival is fairly uncomplicated. It needs to eat, excrete, and have something to do. So do we, right? Get a little deeper and we animals like a comfortable place to sleep, companionship, and to have some fun once in awhile. Beyond that we get into the “nice to have” kind of things like chairs and elevators, which animals use but wouldn’t necessarily want. I won’t go further because we’re all pretty good at calling to mind and naming off the “nice to have” human stuff. We know where to get it and how much it costs. But that simple stuff–The needs that involve our own minds and our own hearts… It gets forgotten. Our pets bring us back to–remind us of–what we essentially need.

…A little adventure without smart phones, city buses, squeezing through crowds, and explaining yourself to others. Smell fresh air, watch the birds, listen to the ocean, feel the sand and water as it dirties your feet, and cower at the mercy of the wind. Dig. Laugh. Run. Jump. To disconnect from all worry and care only about yourself. And your dog. Your human.