Miserable thing to Feel Ashamed of - Charles Dickens

The Old Machine

1^st February 2015

Dear Cassi,

       

I recall I once told you of my first computer. I cannot recall if I mentioned the events leading up to the fail of my word processor which was an old silver gray thing with a blocky body. In short it broke and needed fixing in length it wasn’t worth keeping around, but an important part of this was my depression.

       

It took me forever to do anything at the age of fourteen. I could hardly lift my hands to type and so it would take me all day to write anything. A great question is ‘why I lived my life as a cold sack of meat?’ and I haven’t any real answer. One possibility is that I had a vitamin deficiency, another that I was just depressed, but the question is irrelevant now.

       

There was an assignment over the summer, the first assignment of high school English, to read ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens and then pick out quotes to talk about in a paper. I remember having to build a fort of books to get this done. I couldn’t lift my hands far enough to type and so made a structure that would permit my hands to rest on the keyboard while I was lying down.

       

Now the old word processor was a hand me down from my two older siblings and it should have been a few years past its life expectancy. It didn’t take well to my slow workings and all that time running and conked out.

       

My homework was trapped on the proprietary file format of that old contraption, and we had to get if fixed. I did try showing my teacher the disk and having him try to open it, but that proved fruitless. We had the machine repaired, and I got my work turned in but the word processor failed a second time.

       

It was at this point I pushed for a computer and got Alan’s normal response ‘now is a bad time, there’s too many new things coming out.’ I looked at him and said ‘there are always new things coming out’. In a week I had a computer.

       

As an odd note, he took the word processor to be used by my step siblings and I never saw it again. Good riddance, they had a computer but it was rather old and, as I recall, had no hard drive.

Never fear change, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

ALD and other stuff

This is a letter sent by email to the department chair of the Theatre Arts department of my college. I recall that I received no reply. My success was never a goal of that department. They felt that the thousands of dollars I was paying wasn't reason enough for me to be looked after.

They were still willing to take my money, but at no point did they say that I didn’t belong or wasn’t good enough. The opportunities to practice my art simply never came my way.

By the time I dropped the Theatre major I had a good number of reasons to do so. I was angry and felt cheated. When I tried to talk to people within the department they treated me as if I was worthless and refused to hear a word I said.

You tell me, was it right for a state funded school to ignore this letter?

12^th of May 2008

Subject: ALD and other stuff

Dear (Department Chair),

At this point, I’m not opposed to doing anything light related. I have two years left at (State College), but as I will be taking advanced sound next spring my last year will likely have more to do with that side of design.

I’m still shaky on the Vector Works stuff, but I’m improving.

I have presently planned a 15 unit semester involving three days a week without (the 2 unit lab class) so I can take two sections of it, but I only need one more to put towards my degree. I’m always angry when there are units that I’m paying for and not taking, but the situation is what it is.

I’d also like to know who I should talk to about what the department is looking for in terms of plays. Like I said, one of my full-length plays is a 25 character monster and might suit the needs of the department once I clean it a bit. I had planned to write three full-length pieces of theatre in playwriting last semester and only failed to do so because I was refused in-class readings. I did turn in more than one hundred pages of never before viewed work. I know I can write to the needs of the department. I can’t promise that the plays will be good, and I know the likelihood of the school putting them on is still very small, but if I don’t try then I have no one to blame but myself.

“Nothing left but trying cept’in lying down and dying” Charles Dickens