Why I Ruin Everything I Touch: An Essay

On the first day of my Comp class we were given an article and told to write 750 words relating to it. The words"tangentally related" were used, and somehow "750 words related to an article by Cathy Davidson on the modern classroom" turned into "1,020+ words on why I write all over everything I touch".

Today I found out that I had, in fact, misunderstood my teacher's use of the word "tangentally", and therefore I would be an idiot to turn this in, but I just liked it so much that I wanted you guys to see it. So, here you are:

1,020+ Words On Why I Write All Over Everything

While I was reading Dr. Davidson’s article, I found myself editing it; I was underlining sentences and whole paragraphs, writing my thoughts in the margins, and occasionally drawing little cartoons to illustrate a point. At some point, a thought occurred to me: While most students my age, or people in general, would hate to come across contradictions and other grammatical errors in a scholarly text, I was loving it, and secretly hoping to stumble across more. This is a habit you’ll probably see a lot of in this class, if the first day is any indication, and it’s a habit that I picked up from being a literary magazine editor in high school.

At Churchill, we had a group called “Phaeton” (which we were told meant “one who sets the world on fire”, but I don’t think anyone ever bothered to check; also, I don’t think anyone outside the group knew how to spell it) whose purpose was to collect poetry and short stories from the rest of the school, and whittle this typically huge mass down to a nice small book of student writing to be sold in the last few weeks of the school year. It was run by my favorite teacher, Mr. Wood, who had a unibrow and thought it was his best feature. It wasn’t.*

There were about twelve editors in total, and I was one of two head editors. Being a head editor didn’t mean a whole lot from the outside, but it meant that Mr. Wood, who had the final say, trusted our input a little more.

Every week, we got a Phaeton Packet, sometimes five pages, sometimes thirty, full of student submissions. Predictably, there was a lot of bad breakup poetry, super-dark, Goth-y, “BLOOD ON THE WALLS” poetry, and, most upsettingly, flat-out plagiarism of popular poems or songs. But hidden somewhere under that were usually one or two gems, written by quiet and clever people.

Mondays were Packet days. Phaeton met to discuss the previous weeks Packet, vote on what moved forward and what was thrown out, and at the end of the meeting everyone got a new Packet. I was always particularly excited about this, because I’d finished whatever book I was reading over the weekend and needed something to do in class besides, you know, class work. As soon as the Packet was in my hands, I’d sit down with my purple pen, quivering in anticipation of not only the great works I was bound to find, but the mountain of sheer terrible I’d have to cross to get to them. A lot of the other editors hated Packet days for this exact reason. I loved them. I loved drawing little cartoons and crossing things out and covering entire pages with the word “NO” in feverish haste (which would sometimes be my review; “I just wrote ‘NO’ all over this one”). I walked into my Phaeton meetings proudly, with my Packet in hand, looking like it had been snatched by a graffiti artist and passed around to all of his friends (who were all, incidentally, also graffiti artists), knowing that I had done my homework.

After a while, this peculiar method of involved reading became hardwired into my way of thinking. My teachers didn’t like it, because it meant that novels they handed out in class always ended up ruined, and my friends didn’t like it, because when they asked to borrow a book, they usually didn’t want to see drawings of fish wearing glasses (for reasons only known to myself) all over certain pages.

Now, however, people seem to find it quirky and endearing. For example, when what I shall refer to as “The Great Twilight Craze of Aught-Eight” was taking place, I picked up a copy of the first book. (This is another thing I do; I try to give every book, and every TV show, a chance. I’ve ended up liking some pretty weird things.) After reading about five pages I realized I wasn’t going to get through it, at least not without hating myself for it, and I was angry. I had defended this book and told people not to knock it until they’d tried it, and now I wasn’t going to get to properly try it.

This wasn’t just another bad book I could give up on. This was now a matter of pride. After a few days, in which I repeatedly picked up my copy of Twilight, only to put it down again, cursing and spitting like a cat, I decided that the only way I was going to make it to the end was to Phaetonize it.

I was surprised at how easy it was to read Twilight when I was able to write incredulous statements in the margins, draw a little lightning bolt and write “*CRACK*”over Edward Cullen’s name every time it was mentioned in full (which was a lot, let me tell you), and replace the words “brilliant surgeon” with “brilliant sturgeon”, and a picture of a giant fish wearing a lab coat. I actually felt sad when the book ended; it had been so much fun. If everyone read Twilight this way, no one could possibly hate Stephenie Meyer.

I had thought that my friends would be suitably appalled to hear that I’d read Twilight. It was, after all, widely regarded as a trashy and awful book. I was right, at least at first: Upon telling my friends what I’d done, their eyes would widen and they would ask, “Why would you DO that?” in a tone that suggested I’d casually told them I’d been eating starfish in my spare time. But they would inevitably ask me how I’d finished it, and when I told them, their expressions would turn from disgust to delight, and they’d ask if they could borrow it. They said it would be the reading equivalent of watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which was, of course, quite flattering).

For me, writing all over everything in an attempt to understand it is, optimistically, a comprehension tool, and pessimistically, a coping mechanism. It's how I relate to things. So in conclusion, I would like to apologize in advance for the amount of editing I am almost certain to do to everything I can get my hands on this semester. I assure you, I take absolutely no joy in it.




*Please note that this doesn't mean I think Mr. Wood's "eyesbrow" isn't a good feature. It is his defining feature in all my drawings of him! I just think there are many better ones than just that.

YES I HAD A CRUSH ON MR. WOOD, SHUT UP.