Vagabonds Drum&Bugle Corp1963

Vagabonds Drum&Bugle Corp1963, originally uploaded by Reva49.

I belonged to this group all too briefly in high school. Didn't know about them until my junior year and membership ended at age 21 because it was technically a JUNIOR d&r corp.
At that time it was the Pennsauken Vagabonds, and though it's no longer in Pennsauken it's still thriving somewhere a little south of there---I forget where exactly. Most of those I knew came from other areas around Pennsauken, but I never got to know them very well because I wasn't driving yet, so couldn't get around all that much. Anyway, college ended most of my friendships, as we all split up and headed in different directions. Too bad. It was my fault; I should have realized then that life wasn't going to be a series of interchangeable people, to be befriended and left behind casually, like the stuffed animals in one's room. Unlike those tchatchkes, people don't stay put until you decide to ring them up again. Sigh. I lost so MANY of them.
At any rate, this entry is an introduction to my NanoWrimoBlogMo (if I hadn't mentioned it in a previous post), and I'm hoping you'll have a look at it sometime. God help me, but I've decided to begin with a retelling of my senior year in high school, even though I KNOW semi-autobiographical novels can be risky. The truth is, it's been almost 40 years now since we graduated, and so many of the posts I've read on Classmates.Com seem to confirm the fact that people just forget sooo much over time. Naturally, I've changed everyone's names, but I don't intend to write a strictly factual account at all; after all, none of us would remember anything the same way even so, as we filter the world through our own experiences and biases, and no two people have the same exact experiences and biases---not even siblings in the same family!
So I've decided to write about MY "take" on a particular teacher whose class really changed my life. NOT another cheap tear-jerker knockoff on "Goodbye Mr. Chips", I hope, and DEFINITELY not another one of those maudlin "poor misunderstood teenager could have been successful if she hadn't been so mistreated" scribblings. In order to be fair to everyone, I MUST give myself the most "warts" of all, and my character will be sneaky, dishonest, etc. at times---just as we all are when we think no one's looking. Yes, I'll be honest about myself and others, but I will try always to give others the benefit of the doubt, and you must remember that NONE of the characters will be totally based on one person; as I'm writing "backwards", so to speak, I'll be reinterpreting events in the light of my adult experiences---both as teacher and parent---and so I will be re-creating characters as much as describing them. Also, "my" character and that of my "teacher" will reflect my teaching experiences and the many students I had over the years, which will effectively "DE-autobiographicize" (I'm coining a new word here, and I know it's probably not all that good) the novel to a great extent. I'm not restricting myself to what "really" happened, or in what order. If I feel the story demands changes in certain places, I'll do it. For example, while I have no way of knowing whether or not the teacher's husband WAS drafted, if I feel the story benefits from having him drafted I'll do so. If I feel a certain character is best chosen for a certain statement or act, even if in reality it had been someone else, I will do that, too. Sometimes an author is forced to "condense" characters, as it were, in order to avoid a confusing narrative where hundreds of "dramatis personae" are zipping in and out of each paragraph faster than the reader can tell them apart. One thing I'm NOT is one of those Russian novelists who can have 400 characters and each one is an individual! I may not be terribly talented (or, if that modifier is taken LITERALLY, maybe so), but I'll try to write as well as I can---keeping in mind, of course, that writing "well" means different things in different genres. And I have NO intentions of "getting even" with anyone. God knows I've said and done my share of thoughtless, sometimes spiteful, things, so who am I to fault anyone else?
One last thing, however: as every novel must have it's Antagonist, I've chosen the Art teacher for mine, but in NO way do I intend to imply that this teacher is Mrs. Kellaway, who did teach Art at that time. I have deliberately taken great pains to make this character completely different from ANY teacher I have had. Mrs. Kellaway was a great teacher, and although there are some unavoidable comparisons between my character and her, I want to stress that she would NEVER have said or done ANY of the things my character does. Yes, I have known people like this character, and like all the rest she is a composite, but she resembles no one person and is intended to be merely a "fictional creation" only. I can't assert that my novel is entirely a "work of fiction", with the usual disclaimers that "all characters, etc, are purely creations of the author, and all resemblances are purely unintentional", but I've done my best (I hope) to make it as "fictonal" as possible. I suppose there is a legal formula for stating all this, but at least I've been honest here. I hope you like it.
Oops, almost forgot: my other blog is ---www.likemakingkishka.blogspot.com