While my mom was working on cleaning up a back room today, she came across some of my old writings from when I was in second grade.

I didn't remember the exact number, but apparently I wrote 21 different stories about a character named Mary Peterson who went to wizarding school. It was such a blatant ripoff of Harry Potter, guys. Honestly. But the other students in my class loved them, so I incorporated the entire class into the story somehow as characters. Basically, I didn't understand the idea of copyright infringement or the all persons fictitious disclaimer, but what can you do?

Anyway, she found them today, and I've spent the last hour or so reading through the ones she could find (they're all super short because apparently I couldn't write more than 150 words per story or something). They're horrible, but at the same time, they were written by second-grade me who just wanted to write and write and write.

Here's an example of one of my stories from that year. I directly typed it as it can be found in the construction-paper-bound first edition, so the spelling and grammatical errors are from my past self. It's not related to Mary Peterson, since I don't feel like I should share it due to the others' privacy. In the ones I've read so far, the classmates were all named with their first and last name, so if I do end up sharing one, I'll find one with fully-established characters so it's just first names. Either way, enjoy.

Fairymainia & the mini alligators

In a land called Fairymainia, there were many fairies. All lot of fairies lived in Fairymainia. But on Feb. 21st, all of the fairies were in danger. So the fairies hatched a plan. But was the plan good enough to stop the mini alligators, their arch rival? They put their plan into action. The fairies split into groups. The question we asked is now answered. The plan was a complete success! The fairies made a peace treaty and signed it. Then they asked the alligators to sign it! The alligators aggreed, and they are friends to this very day.

THE END!

At least I've improved, right?

Apparently, I also wrote a play about Thomas Edison. It was two scenes full of likely inaccurate information that didn't even talk about lightbulbs, and each version of Thomas (there were two) had only one line in the entire thing. The narrator basically read a story and nothing else happened. Clearly, I was no Lin-Manuel Miranda or Sherman Edwards when it came to writing historically-based shows.

So, I'll just be over here, sitting on my couch in tears as I read my past works.

And all I'll be thinking about is this: Look at where you are. Look at where you started...