The Early Years: Accident-Prone Much?

From the “Doesn’t This Happen To Everyone?” Department:

The Early Years: Jim Thinks The President Gives A Crap That He Likes School

From the “I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not” Department:

The Early Years: Jim Can’t Swim. Or Run.

So this week I reached into my pile of ancient elementary school paperwork and pulled out this one:

The Early Years: Jim Is A Singing Snitch

I’m not sure if this checklist considers “Tells On Other Children” to be a good thing or a bad thing.  And “Participates Freely in Singing”?  I find that hard to believe!

The Early Years: Haunted House

This week, we have a lovely piece of artwork from the archives:

The Early Years: The What Is On The Shelf?

I’m going to file this one under “sentences that you are unlikely to see on contemporary elementary school writing assignments”. I’m sure you can guess which sentence I mean.

The Early Years: Jim Likes Animals

These “early years” samples are not really writing-related, but they probably explain a lot about why I spend so much time on Dennis’s crazy adventures.

The Early Years: The Bike With A Brain

For school assignments, I always wrote a lot of what could charitably called “speculative fiction” (or, less charitably, “nonsense”).  Here’s a very short example, most likely from elementary school, although it’s hard to tell because I didn’t bother to date it, or even to put my name on it:

A Portrait of the Artist as a (Very) Young Man

So my parents like to find old examples of things I wrote when I was a kid and send them to me, just to remind me that I, too, was once a child.  I thought it might be interesting to post one or two of them.  With that in mind, I present my classic tale of horror and suspense, “The Great Beast Invasion”.  If we assume that the date in the story is about when the story was written (which it probably is, given that kids are pretty much creatures of the “now” — just like dogs!), then I would’ve been six when I scribbled down this masterpiece.