I’m a retired factory worker living now in Boise, Idaho.
In the fifth grade (second time around) I wrote a poem as a class assignment. The poem was read to the class and I remember one part of it quite well:
“Instead of spelling and reducing my fractions I’m entertaining the class with all my actions That’s why I’m placed in this class’s rear What some learned in one will take me another year.”
The class and teacher laughed and a powerful lesson was learned: Writing influences people‘s thought and emotions.
In the tenth grade I wrote a short story that was passed to friends. They found it amusing and entertaining. For all my life I have written only for myself sharing with only friends and family, like a painter who paints only for themselves because of its personal enjoyment.
Now being retired I’m sharing the stories that have rattled around in my head for years.
What Is The Jittery Goat All About?
The Jittery Goat went online in December of 2008. Something new is added once or twice a week. I’ve never had writer’s block – come close. I’m always searching for a topic that’s on people’s minds and that can be written humorously. That’s a challenge.
I’m from the generation that stared at test patterns on the TV, first plastered the a transistor radio to their ear, served in an unwanted and unpopular war, saw a President assassinated, one resign, one that should have, saw men step on the moon, and people blow-up in the sky trying to go to space. I have lived though IMAX, Iphones, Ipads, and now living through I forgot, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I find myself most comfortable with people who are skeptical and cynical, but not to the degree of being downright negative or depressing. In other words they see or want to see the silver lining, but they are constantly aware of the dark cloud and are certain of its potential.
The Need For Redemption Is Instinctive
What is read early influences one throughout life. The first book that I read that deeply impressed me (8th grade) was To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch was a man born of principle. He did the right thing because to him it was the only thing to do. The book Billy Budd followed. It left me thinking for weeks. The outcry of Billy Budd prior to his hanging impressed upon me the need to always be forgiving. “God bless you Captain Vere!” was Billy Budd’s cry to the captain responsible for his execution just before hung. Of course, Melville likely barrowed it from Jesus’ execution, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
In my early twenties I became more interested in the Bible, not as literature or a collection of lessons taught by narratives, but as God’s inspired message to man. It has been the Bible that gives redemption and forgiveness context, reason, and form for the Billy Budd-like declaration. We do it because God forgives. It is good and healthy for us emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Life is an unending chain of events of wrongs to us and as we have likewise done to others. Forgiveness is the only thing that makes sense. It gives depth and background for the Finch-like character I read about. Animals don’t retaliate for harm done to them, because they forget. Humans remember. Forgiveness is what prevents retaliation. It seems it is a quality that is unique in creation to humans.
Redemption seems, in some ways, an underlying thread in my writing. If not outright expressed it is often the reflex that pushes the key that forms the word that makes the story.
The desire to make things right when we offend is universal as is the need to extend forgiveness. It comes natural. We can’t live without it or the hope it produces.
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