I got an award

This award came from LegalMist (thank you, LegalMist) while I was out of the office, and it also came with a set of rules. But I don't have to follow them.

Here are the original rules:

• List 10 honest things about yourself - and make it interesting, even if you have to dig deep!

• pass the award on to 7 bloggers that you feel embody the spirit of the Honest Scrap.

But since LegalMist is an attorney, she made a compelling argument for changing the rules. Here are the new ones:

1. Follow the original rules if you like, or these amended rules if you prefer.

2. Post the award on your site if you want to.

3. Write some honest things about yourself if you want to. Make them interesting even if you have to dig deep.

4. Pass the award along if you want to, to any number of other bloggers from 1 to 10.

So technically I'm done, but that's not really keeping with the spirit of the award, so I'll make a stab at saying some honest things about myself.

1) I've got a good sense of humor and a quick wit, and I can make you smile or have a whole room full of people laughing without even trying. But I am no good at humor on demand. If you expect me to make you laugh (or if I think you expect me to make you laugh or if you look like I think you expect me to make you laugh) you'll probably have a jollier time reading Macbeth's soliloquy lamenting the passing of his wife. I once was invited to give a speech to a college club made up of economics students. The topic was exploring alternative careers. (I understand economics majors do that almost as much as English majors do.) I wanted to be entertaining and make the audience laugh without getting too far off topic, so I told my diving story that I had told a couple weeks earlier to a class of freshman English students. In the classroom it worked perfectly because I wasn't really trying to make the students laugh. I was teaching by analogy, and they forgot they were in a class they didn't want to be in and had a good time. The economics students, though, just sat there and stared. The next day I went into the English class. One of my students had been at the meeting and I heard another student asking her how I had done. When she said I told the diving story the first student asked, "Did they laugh?" "Not so much," was all the student who'd been there said.

2) I once introduced myself at a poetry reading celebrating Black poetry during Black History month by saying, "I'm not Black. And I'm not a woman."

3) I write because I think there is something very wonderful about making people cry. When I was eight or nine, I was sitting on the porch at my grandparents' house with my cousin who was a year younger than me. She asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I said I wanted to write books about Jesus. She clapped her hands together and said "How wonderful. My mother will read them and cry." I was hooked. What could be better than putting down words on paper that made people cry?

4) I had my first kiss at age five. I was sitting on the couch with the little girl who lived across the street. (Her name was Peggy, and she was also five. We went to the same kindergarten.) I had a book in my hand and was reading it to her (or maybe making the story up as I went along). Right in the middle of a sentence, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I looked at her and leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Then she ran into the kitchen to tell my mother what we had done.

5) I like to dance. Not very meaningful, and I'm not really that good at it, but it's honest.

6) I don't know which is the bigger incentive for writing -- making people cry or getting kissed.

So that's enough about me. Let's talk about you. Anyone who comes here to read what I post or what other people say about it deserves this award. So please, consider yourself a recipient of the honest scrap award. And have a wonderful 2009.