Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Mr. Brush

Brush. That was the name of my high school poetry teacher. Mr. Brush. He had a small-ish body and a big mustache. He was a huge inspiration to me. I remember sitting on top of the filing cabinet and talking with "Jay-Bird" Myers. I could write about anything that crossed my teenage mind. And writing about what was crossing my mind was so much easier when I was sitting on a file cabinet like a bird than sitting in a chair. And those dittos of poems. Yes, of course they were dittos in the 70's. Buffalo Bill's defunct....and how do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death? And that's when I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and about the atavistic boy in the Catcher in the Rye, and about the red-haired swaggering crazy in One who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The real authors, and the real stories. Not the amputated versions. Yes, you have adult feelings when you are 16 and 17. Adult and sharp as a razor blade.

Brush. Mr. Brush. Mr. Thomas Brush. Kent-Meridian High School 1975. Thank you for the benefit of the doubt. Thank you for making climbing the stairs worth it. Thank you for the memories. Thank you for letting Jay Meyers be Jay Bird Meyers in the aerie of youth.

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