Thank you, Mrs. Owens

Mrs. Owens taught English class at St. Cecilia's school in Houston back when the decade of love and peace was drawing to a close. I have no idea where she is now, but I'd be happy to give her a hug and a thank you because she turned me on to writing with a simple classroom assignment. I remember it well.

It was probably only a make-work project to help keep the students occupied while improving their writing skills. It lit a tinder. The assignment was to write a description about something. Anything. Maybe it had to be something in the room, or maybe not. I don't recall. I do remember my subject.

After much searching, I decided to write about the pen I was writing with. It was beige. Three colors of ink--red, black and blue--selected by pushing down colored slides at the top. The top and the bottom of the pen were separated by a metal collar that had tarnished. There were teeth marks on it--plenty of teeth marks--because I gnawed on my pens a lot back then. There was writing on the side. I didn't realize then that pens like that are called "advertising specialties"; my dad had brought it to me from one of his clients. As I went on to describe the pen, I "saw" an image of the pen appear on the paper through words. I was hooked.

In hindsight, I imagine that it was the clarity of the image that hooked me because by the time I was 13, I had already spent seven years capturing my world in photographs. When words became images, I was hooked. My life changed; it has been influenced by words and images ever since.

Thank you, Mrs. Owens.