The Impulse to Tell My Story

The Impulse to Tell My Story

Around the end of high school, I made a great friend who is a great friend to this day. I remember it happening because I had commented on her art work, which she worked away at, during English class. The teacher would talk and she would draw and, sitting a few seats back in the class, I would watch her drawing. I doubt I did well in English class, or any classes requiring reading over my five years in high school––yes we had grade thirteen. I was a painfully slow reader and the only book I read entirely was Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I only got through it because I had sprained my ankle badly, skating on the Rideau canal in winter and was confined to the living room sofa for three weeks. Yes, I laboured through this novel and finished it!