college memories

i took mr. morgan's class the summer between freshman and sophomore year. he seemed to like my stories as well as my friend rachel's, as he would share them with the class. it was the same in dan mccall's class - somehow my work and my friend abe's were shared most often. we were all people who genuinely relished writing; we had a radar for each other and gravitated towards each other immediately.

rachel was a goth girl with fair skin and pitch black curls who wore velvet black skirts. i remember being impressed when she told me she read straight through every copy of 'story' magazine, from beginning to end (mr. morgan had first introduced it to us). i was more the type to leaf through them and gravitate toward specific stories immediately but not really want to read any others.

the writing styles that appealed to me at that age were very distinct. i liked bold language, honest accounts of pain, eccentric characters, and indiscernible situations. i liked julia alvarez, and a story about a man dealing with depression while taking care of a pet rabbit. i liked a short-short-story that had won a monthly contest, about a man who thought his deceased wife had come back when his small son appeared at the breakfast table wearing her wig. i liked another story whose dialogue was reminiscent of a mystery novel, where the characters called to each other from between a second-floor window and a lawn as if undergoing a detective's interrogation, only to be revealed as an ordinary couple having a fight.

mr. morgan brought me into my first awareness of the literary magazine world and made me feel confident about my writing. most memorably and kindly, he warned me that 'marijuana dried up the language part of the brain.' i never forgot those words, as they made me wary of the popular attitude that the drug had no negative effects. his words kept me from ever wanting to indulge in anything of the sort (and also offered a handy admonishment for friends who did). i always did wonder, though, if he had uttered them because he thought i was under the influence at the time - which i was not.