My First "Bestseller"

The idea struck me when my eighth-grade English teacher approached a student in the hallway, a girl much more loud, outspoken, "rebellious," and popular than shy, nerdy me, asking her, "Where is the stuff??" Although I knew he was referring to classwork, the exchange sounded much like an illicit drug deal. A story idea took seed in my young, fertile imagination.

Then, when I returned to the English classroom, I observed the cork, globe-like pencil holder on Mr. Rossi's desk and envisioned joints being passed back and forth surreptitiously between the teacher and pupils. A funny adventure story was sprouting.

The year was 1981. I was a tall, socially-awkward honors student who suffered from OCD and newly identified petite mal seizures and largely functioned as a loner. I sought solace in drawing and writing, often exceeding the word limits in creative writing endeavors. So, when I realized I could develop my fantasy story using my real-life classmates and school staff, I decided to take on the challenge as an extra credit assignment.

Mr. Rossi supplied enough material for an interesting character study. I could easily sympathize with him when the students teased him about his messy desk. He would usually respond by saying something akin to Einstein's famous quote reasoning that, if a cluttered desk was a sign of a brilliant mind, an empty desk indicated something less than desirable. However, there was a general understanding amongst the students that you could determine what kind of day Mr. Rossi was having by counting the broken pointers in his waste basket as he often struck then hard against the blackboard on rough days. Most of us had also witnessed him breaking up schoolyard fights by taking the offending parties by the collar and pushing them up against the playground wall. Something that would never fly today. The current term "hyper-masculinity" might have been applied to him, especially as a female student secretly observed that he often left his upper shirt buttons unfastened, as if to expose his chest hair.

So, I formed the plot around my English teacher as the villain, supplying drugs to my fellow eighth-graders, and entitled my work, "The CDW (Charles DeWolf School) Connection." My parents had recently taken me and my younger brother to see a James Bond movie, and, with a few friends newly nicknaming me "Jules," I renamed myself Jules Bond as if I were some kick-butt action heroine. Having also seen the movie "Breaking Away," I threw in a bicycling love interest in the form of a fictional new neighbor. So much for pop culture's influence on the early adolescent!

If anyone grew up in northern New Jersey in the early 80's, you were in the land of malls, and a common coveted middle school experience was being driven to the mall with friends. Therefore, my mystery-action-adventure culminated in an after-hours chase at the local mall, complete with familiar stores and mannequins. Having spent my sixth-grade lunch breaks answering the phones for the school secretaries (the school’s apparent solution of removing me from the constant teasing of classmates), I threw in the idea that both AARP-generation secretaries (prim and proper in their heels, skirts, and pantyhose) used black belt Karate moves to defend Mr. Rossi. Of course, I triumphed over evil by sunrise and collected a trophy of hairs from my English teacher’s overly ample eyebrows.

On the last day of English class before middle school graduation, Mr. Rossi allowed me to read my story aloud to the class, and I basked in the spotlight for a moment, with classmates often scrawling comments about how much they liked the idea in my yearbook. Mr. Rossi joked he would lose his job if I ever published it, but I appreciated him for being a good sport. Moreover, one boy wrote, "I hope to see your name on the best seller's list." As is often with fourteen-year-old girls, I had hoped for something more personal from that boy, but even then I realized that was a rather worthy goal.