A MONTH OF THANKS: Day 1—My Words

Every year on Facebook, one of my life’s truest and most honorable friends, Sheri Lynne Hinton, posts everything she is thankful for over the course of each and every day in the month of November.

Knowing our friendship, and where it took us, I can say I am 100 percent thankful for having Sheri in my life as after our friendship had started, she went as far as to open her New Hampshire home to me at a time when I needed to escape a living situation that was going south fast.

And while she would be an ideal topic on Day 1 of my latest project—”A Month of Thanks”—she is simply the muse who is starting on me this latest journey into my psyche here in world that is The October Weekend.

One of the things that connected as friends was words.

Sheri loves them and is she a voracious pun-master extraordinaire, and we made each other laugh many times over games of scrabble at her family’s kitchen table.

With that, I figured what a place to start to be thankful.

With my words.

You know those people who seem to have it all?

God gifted them with good looks, a crapload of money, that perfect personality, the gift of gab and of giving … kind of like actor Ryan Reynolds, I suppose.

Well God gifted me average looks, barely middle-class money, a black and white personality where I constantly struggle to find the gray, a mush-mouth that doesn’t know where to stop, and … well the ability to write.

I can put words together in a sentence and have them make sense to the point where it can make people laugh and/or cry, think and/or react.

It is both a gift and a curse, but it’s the only thing I am 100 percent confident in and I know I can do it well.

How many written words have I strung together in my lifetime?

Countless—though it is undoubtedly somewhere in the millions.

Millions of words, one after another, put together just right.

From the day I won back-to-back short story contests in—What was it? Second grade? Third grade?—I knew the written word would be a huge part of my life.

Telling a modern fairy tale or coming up with a fictional tale of how the two Dakota states got their names paled in comparison to what I would later write.

I’ve written love notes to girls at school.

In my junior year of high school, I wrote an essay in which I declared I would be a sportswriter someday, and I was blessed to serve in that role for more than 30 years of my adult life.

I’ve written newspaper stories that chronicled a time and place, a person or a game, or even “hard news” that chronicled the lives of homeless teenagers, and maybe made a tiny difference.

I’ve written for local newspapers and national magazines.

I’ve written a forward to somebody’s biography.

I’ve written dozens of short stories and seven chapters of two novels that I never finished.

I’ve written to Presidents (Hello again, President Clinton) and Olympic Gymnasts (Tracee Talavera), to friends and family members—be it longhand on a piece of paper, or an e-mail shipped through cyber-space.

Here, in this world that is The October Weekend, I’ve blogged about nothing and everything.

I’ve put together words and stories that get tucked away into albums and scrapbooks that people will keep for all their lives. I’ve put together words that get tossed into a trash bag and thrown away with toilet paper and fish guts.

Words.

My words.

How could I not be thankful that I have the gift to do that?

Once upon a time, in my early 20s, I wrote a letter to a girl who worked at a Subway Sandwich Shop in Bangor, Maine, because I couldn’t bring myself to ask her out in person.

It worked.

I got a date.

She later became my wife, and we had three children until she was kidnapped by the Russian mob, and a character that looked a lot like Liam Neeson came in to save the day and my family. OK, that’s not true, obviously, but what a story it would be … if I could only put those words together.

I have a friend who reminds me a lot that words have power, and that they do.

And words come in all shapes and sizes, from cold hard truths to outright lies.

My favorite words?

I have a plethora of them, and “plethora” would be one of them.

I would put penultimate second to last in my list. (See what I did there?)

And, of course, fuck. There is not a better curse word in history than Fuck! Plain and simple. Four letters that mean so many different things and bring forth so many different emotions.

So, yes, it makes my list and if you don’t like it well (expletive deleted) YOU!!!!

Over the weekend, I got to cover an incredible high school football game between two arch-rivals and on Sunday one of the player’s dads texted me.

In the text, he said, “I forgot how much I love your style of reporting.  It’s more story telling and making personal connections while laying down the facts and key points of the event.   But you layer in more color and texture when it becomes a story and you bring the people/kids to life.”

I was touched by his words as it was just another reminder of what I do when I sit at a computer and let my fingers start to fly.

So, yes, there is no doubt when I decided to do a November’s worth of “A Month of Thanks” posts here in The October Weekend, it starts with the written word.

I am so thankful I can write.

And I am so thankful for Sheri, for being my muse and giving me the idea to start this latest 30-day journey.

See you tomorrow.