I'm often asked by young students what
they should study in college in order to become a professional writer.
If I was one perhaps I'd know. Other than the four mandatory years of
English in high school I've never taken a writing class in my life.
Never. Not one. And I'd bet that two of my favorite writers, Mark Twain
and Will Rogers, never took a class in creative writing either. A
teacher these days would give Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn an "F" for
not being politically correct.
Since my older brother was a brilliant
mathemagician, my mother insisted that I follow in his footsteps and
take every math class my high school offered. By the time I also took
two hours of ag classes a day, a lecture and a shop class, I didn't have
any time left to take typing. Which is how I've made my living, two
fingers at a time. Peck, peck, peck.
I'd probably like math, if it wasn't for
all the numbers. It's just that when I went to school it was after a
sinister creature had just created "new math" with all its fancy
formulas, powers, subsets, less-thans, square roots and pi. The only
thing I know now is that pie tastes better with a dollop of whipped
cream and if your roots like carrots, onions, tubers and other roots are
square, they'll dock you at the packing shed.
Math was good training to become a storyteller. I learned how to
round-off numbers so that a five ounce trout I caught became a five
pounder, and a Longhorn leppy calf with nubs that charged me became a
raving one ton maniac with 60 inch horns. In arithmetic I learned to
DIVIDE the bad news so I didn't dump it all on the reader at one time. I
also learned how to MULTIPLY degrees of emotion so that a wife who was
just having a bad day became "out of her raving mind." In my
mind-numbing statistics class I learned that the use of numbers should
always be kept to a bare minimum. One statistic per paragraph is more
than enough.
...If I was to advise young people I'd suggest they learn how to SUBTRACT
because that's what they'll spend their life doing: SUBTRACTING tariffs,
tolls, tithes and taxes. The commission man is going to SUBTRACT pounds
from your cattle and call it shrink, the auction market will SUBTRACT a
commission, and the government is going to SUBTRACT sales tax, income
tax, estate tax, property tax, excise tax, occupancy tax, and so on.
Then they'll SUBTRACT a surcharge, like a big red cherry on top a hot
fudge sundae.
...Besides SUBTRACTION, I'd also advise youngsters to learn how to DIVIDE.
Not the fancy long division kind, just simple short division stuff. As a
kid you'll have to DIVIDE everything with your siblings, then when you
get married you'll have to DIVIDE your dessert at pricey restaurants
with your spouse, and then when you get divorced you'll have to DIVIDE
everything you own. Yessirree… I'd pay attention real good on the day
they teach you how to DIVIDE by two.
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