PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The assignment was to place Huckleberry Finn in modern day New York and write a short story.  I was a high school kid in the 80s and only spent a few field trips in New York.  Of course, I watched many TV shows and I did have my imagination. 

Mr. V didn’t cotton to me.  I was a dirty, wrong side of the tracks kid and he was a GQ preppie.  I figured I would just go balls to the wall on my yarn.  I set the tale in Harlem and had Huck running into prostitutes and drag queens and trying two kinds of Mary Jane (One a plant and one a Ho for the naïve among us.)

I turned in a completely uncensored tale fully expecting to be failed and possibly sent to the principal’s office.  I skipped school for fear of repercussion.  Then I learned that Mr. V loved my story and read it out loud for the entire class.  He had to censor spots due to complaints of two classmates.

I returned to class greeted with a smile from the first fan of my literary stylings.  The class discussed my story.  Mr. V managed to use the word beastly twice in a 45 minute period.  I did take it as a badge of honor—as he was talking about my poetry and fiction. Ït’s beastly but beautiful.”  They say don’t judge a book by its cover and I think 2 people learned a lesson that week.