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When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.

I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.

You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.

Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”

I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”

I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”

After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.

The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.

Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.

And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.

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harry potter books as clickbait articles

Crazy But True… This Man Will Do ANYTHING To Live Forever!

You Won’t Believe This Bathroom’s Incredible Secret

How Did One Man Escape Azkaban? The Answer Will Blow Your Mind

Uh-Oh! Here’s One Enchanted Goblet Mixup You CAN’T Miss

These Kids’ Reactions To Their New Teacher’s Rules Is Inspiring

Is It Cheating? One Student’s Trick To Acing Potions Class

7 Objects You Didn’t Know Contained Pieces Of The Dark Lord’s Soul

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Forget the Myers-Briggs fucking personality assessment. I am dead tired of hearing if someone is an INFP or an ESLQ or whatever. I want to know if someone is melancholic or choleric. Bring back the four humors. I wanna see “Kaley, 16, phlegmatic” when I go to someone’s blog. Who is with me. Lets make this happen

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Reblog this picture of me holding a Family Size box of Honey Nut Cheerios? I’d really appreciate it.

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ok a giraffe but… horse sized with a mario character extending from the ass

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A Punny Story

I had this girlfriend once where things were getting pretty serious. We wanted to move in together, so we went looking for an apartment. The second one our real estate agent took us to was perfect, we both loved it, so we made the decision to move in. Our neighbour was a really nice guy named Joseph. His wife had left him a few years prior, leaving him alone to take care of his eight-year old son. I always felt kinda bad for the guy. He had this weird accent that was really hard to place.

Keep reading

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*slams fist on desk* NOW THIS IS WHAT I LIKE TO SEE

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Dear teen girls,

Stop abusing your boyfriends and yes what you are doing is abuse.

Stop:

Yelling at him in front of his friends 

Hitting or slapping him when he does or says something you don’t like

Telling him he doesn’t have a choice when it comes to decisions that involve both of you 

Telling him he can’t hang out with friends because you don’t like him

Telling him to not talk to other girls even if they are his friend

Forcing him to spend every moment with you 

Belittling him and pointing out all his flaws

Calling him stupid or making fun of him for making a mistake

Threatening to break up with him if he doesn’t do what you want

Being emotionally manipulative and crying until he does what you want

Accusing him of cheating every time he’s not with you

Blow up is phone if he doesn’t text you every five minutes 

Telling him you are the must thing that has ever happened to him and no one else will love

Physically attacking him when ever you are mad

Forcing him to have sex despite that fact that he said he didn’t want to

Invading his privacy by going through his phone

Getting mad at him for changing his password and demanding he tell you what it is

If a guy did any of these things to a girl it would be considered abuse but since its the other way around its considered normal. Throughout High school I saw many girl treating their boyfriends like shit. Sometime even physically abusing them in the hallways and no one trying to stop it because its a girl attacking a boy. 

Boys: If your girlfriend does anything on this list leave her. It is abuse and you deserve better.

Girls: if you find your self doing anything on this list to your boyfriend you need to knock it off because you are being abusive. 

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kids have no concept of anything. i walked into my kindergarten class and one kid asked me what my name was. when i said miss jones, he said “i like that name. did you know i’m in love with you”

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Court Decision: I hereby find you guilty of clickbait, and sentence you to death by electric chair… what happens next will shock you

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baby animals blog

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The dolphin brought her phone back

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this page is so pure n lovely

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K