How I Switched From Computers To Journalism – The Second Part of a Three Part Story

part 1 was here. I wanted to finish this before leaving this weekend for Jamaica, and a week off Newsvine. This is what came out when I started typing.

And now... we return to our story..

Our hero, er, protagonist, I attended computer camp, every summer, prior to my junior year of high school. Then I went to a programming class one day and I heard a term I had not heard before, namely "pascal." And another one "fortran." And I began to realize that there was much more to computer programming than basic. Boy was I mad. They had left this key factor out at computer camps when we were designing programs to make clocks and card games and such.

Learn other languages? Whoa, that was not for me. See addendum 1 for back story on languages

I was also beginning to grow as a creative writer and was beginning to wonder how much room there would really be to be creative when writing whatever computer program someone above told me to write.

During this time I had been writing a great deal of satire and short stories during my high school years and was reading a lot of Kurt Vonnegut
and other writers who were leading me to do different things. Sure a lot of it was silly stuff like stories about Gumby being on the lam or early performance art pieces like how to sleep until noon but I was getting attention and I really liked it. And how much attention would I get as a computer programmer? Not much, I figured.

Meanwhile I was taking every opportunity to read and as I later wrote - much to mom's consternation when she realized it - actually looked forward to being sent to my room because it meant more time reading. I had pretty much decided by then that people in books were much more interesting than the republican preppies at my high school.

We don't need to talk about how I was too shy to ask any females out and when I finally did ask out a girl I had a crush on the whole prom disaster happened. Meanwhile dad was giving me the birds and the bees speech by giving me playboy magazines and I was trying to figure out why all the women had staples in their bodies.

Oh, and I hated cliques and so my friend and I hung out together and soon others who hated cliques began to hang with us too and soon our anti-clique itself became a clique and that was just one of the billion ironies of my life, the most recent being the one I wrote about earlier in the week namely that most of the special needs adults I work with can't read or write.

But I digress... (Are you starting to see why I named my newspaper column in college Butki's Babbles?) But I am getting ahead of myself.

So, yeah, high school was hell. I mean is there anyone who looks back fondly at high school? I think one reason I have been urging so many people to read the novel, King Dork, is it does the best job I have ever read of describing the hell that was high school in the 1980s.

Remember the movie Breakfast Club? Well I used to get told I reminded them of the Anthony Michael Hall character - they claimed they meant similar appearance but to me what I heard was "You're geeky like him."

Additionally -
"Scott?"

"Um, yes..who is this""

"This is your inner editor. You are babbling. Get to the point. Haven't these people suffered enough reading your ramblings."

"Curses, you are right. Now shaddup."

Ok, let's cut to the chase. Between reading great literature and realizing the limitations in computer programming and realizing how much more joy and creativity I had as a wrriter I decided I was not cut out to be a computer programmer. I had decided I was an artist. I still longed to fulfill my dream of being a paid newspaper book reviewer and/or a best-selling novelist but it was gradually dawning on me that those are not jobs one can just sign up for as easily as, say, a receptionist at a bank. See addendum 2 and 3

I had a good friend then named Eric. I wrote a memoir piece about Eric once. I can't remember what I called it so I won't link to it but it was the one about my dad and Eric debating the star wars initiative and me, on the one hand, being happy to see my dad opening up to the possibility he might be wrong (dad was die hard republican) but on the other hand I was jealous that Eric was having this conversation with my dad. Dad and I would debate the news - it's part of how I became the news junkie that I remain and part of why I went into journalism (though I didn't even fully recognize that connection until recent years, long after dad died...) anyway, there I go again babbling.

So Eric was 14 going on 35. He was the smartest guy I knew – he went on to Cal Tech and Harvard but what he had in intellect he was missing in street smarts so I was the one who helped him fit in with others.

Eric sat me down and we had a conversation that changed my life. He began by noting a recent occurence: I would write weird stories and distrbute copies of them all over the high school and soon strangers, friends and teachers were embarrassing me with accolade and praise and I began to think I might have talent as a writer.

And I will stop there for now.

To be continued....

(I know, I am SUCH a tease)