I recently helped with a writing workshop in eighth-grade classrooms and was reminded of something about 13- and 14-year-olds: they have quirky senses of humor. Their teacher, Kelly Grayum, is guiding them through the process of composing pieces of creative non-fiction based on events, moments and other aspects of their lives. The organizing structure was left up to the students: poetry, narrative, or enumeration — a recent favorite format of mine, which is likely the only reason I was included in the endeavor.
Given its etymological proximity to the word “number,” you can probably deduce that the word “enumeration” refers to an ordered list of items, such as in a collection. For eighth-graders who chose the enumerative structure, their creative non-fiction pieces enumerate and elaborate on “collections” of memories or perspectives that held some relevance or resonance for them.
Basketball season had just begun, so I was not surprised to see that many students’ first drafts highlighted various aspects of the game: “The 10 Best Things about HoopFest,” “Five Ways to Get Hit in the Face by a Basketball,” and “Six Methods of Throwing an Airball.”
One student, flaunting a Killer Whales swim team sweatshirt as if defiance of the hoop mania surrounding them, detailed the misery of early season swimming practice in a frigid pool with a broken heater — a piece that could be employed as an effective recruitment tool in a weirdly masochistic way, like how Ernest Shackleton’s alleged notice for his Antarctic expedition on the Endurance invited men to join a “hazardous journey” with “low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness” and promised “safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” Shackleton received a landslide of applicants.
Other students focused on their pets: “Eight Gifts my Cat Leaves on the Doorstep for Me” and “Four Silly Things my Dog Does.”
Still others went straight for the shock effect: “Nine Classic Ways to Die in the Methow Valley” (don’t worry — this was inventive, not predictive) and “The Seven Most Disgusting Things I’ve Ever Seen” (which included “a bowl of cold oatmeal” — ah, child, may your life always be so charmed).
A student with his splinted leg propped on a chair worked on “The Five Worst Injuries I’ve Had so Far.”
In preparation for my minor role in the writing workshop, I time-traveled myself back to junior high and wrote an enumerative piece of my own: “The Six Colors of Eighth Grade” (read it at ashleylodato.com if you’re interested). Looking back at my 13-year-old self while dredging up items for my enumeration, I realized that eighth grade was a time when so much happened, yet so little of it was memorable over the long term.
Working with these kids, I was reminded of how imaginative these young people are, how paradoxically self-conscious and self-aware, how enterprising. They — to use some of the active verbs they summoned up as part of a writing exercise — rock their own worlds, assert their opinions, and unveil their feelings. As they enumerated the nuggets whirlpooling in their brains, they whisked me back to a time when everything, if well told, could be a good story.
