in nonfiction class today the professor had us break into small groups of three to write a one-page collaborative essay in fifteen minutes. our group (jess, joshua, and me, but almost exclusively me) came up with this:
jess found a pen underneath a bench outside. its end had been chewed to bits by the teeth of a stranger. it was one of those cheap black ballpoint pens you can buy in a pack of ten from the drugstore. this pen, however, was different. the end of this pen had been chewed in an almost uniform circle. it was broken in, and jess was ready. though he had no idea whose mouth or ear or other orifice the tip of this pen had seen, he found himself chewing it anyway, almost compulsively. who had it belonged to? he wondered, as his teeth clicked comfortably in the existing grooves. were they the next longfellow? the next jane austen? or just the next john grisham? what inspiration lay in the dried up saliva jess was now ingesting? he checked to see if the pen still worked and, since it did, he concluded that whatever level of genius its former owner posessed, this former owner had forsaken his or her saliva-encrusted writing utensil, and perhaps a touch of brilliance along with it. was this the taste of genius?
it’s not a bad fifteen-minute essay, if i do say so. maybe it’s when i quit trying so hard that i don’t suck.