By The Bowlegged Blogger

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Every now and then, a reader of my blog reaches out with a kind word about my story telling. I treasure these messages more than folks might imagine. But recently, a classmate, friend and subscriber asked a question that caused me to pause and reflect:

“Donnie, Who taught you how to write?”

It was a simple question, but it sent me wandering back through my own story. The truth is, no single person shaped my writing or as I prefer to think of it as simply storytelling.

It was a chorus of women…each with her own voice, her own lessons, and her own way of seeing something in me before I ever learned to see it in myself.

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Sister Joan

I was a boy who had repeated the fourth grade, heavy with shame and convinced I was not as smart as the other kids. My goal back then was simple: stay small, stay unnoticed.

But Sister Joan saw me anyway.

One afternoon, she asked to speak with me in the hallway outside our classroom. I wondered what I’d done wrong and braced myself for the bad news. Instead, she placed a hand on my shoulder, looked at my essay paper, and then at me.

“Donald, you really have a special gift for writing. Your essay is wonderful.”

No one had ever said anything so complimentary to me. Her words cracked something open. She gave me permission to believe that maybe…just maybe…I had something inside me worth listening to.

Decades later, when anyone compliments my posts, time folds back on itself. I become that boy again, standing with her hand on my shoulder… only now I understand that the light she ignited in me then, still burns all these many years later.

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Mrs. Eisenhauer

If Sister Joan gave me a voice, Mrs. Eisenhauer taught me how to hear the voices of others.

She was tall, proper, almost regal…one of those classic beauties who carried herself as though she’d stepped out of a black-and-white film. In high school English, she opened the door to the classics, but more than that, she showed us how characters breathe.

She taught us how to feel their courage and their frailty, their joy and their sorrow, their private wounds and quiet triumphs. Under her guidance, characters weren’t names on a page…they were people we knew.

She helped me see that stories come alive only when the people inside them do.

To this day, whenever I write a story, I hear her reminder:

“Make your characters real. Make them human.”

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Miss Florence Munson

And then there was Miss Florence Munson…tall, slender, stern, and famously allergic to nonsense.

She ran the letter-writing office at Polaroid Corporation, where I worked as a young customer service representative. Our job was to respond to customer correspondence; her job was to make sure we did it right.

Every reply…every single one…passed under her sharp, unforgiving red pen. Tone, clarity, accuracy, and above all, brevity. Extra words were suspects. Flowery language was a crime.

This was a business letter. Get to the point.

Whenever she returned one of my letters bleeding red ink, I’d feel a knot tighten in my stomach. My ego for writing had begun puffing up around that time, and I started to believe she was targeting me.

So one day, determined to prove it, I dug up a customer letter she had written many years earlier. I swapped her name for mine and submitted it for her review.

And sure enough…she red-lined her own writing.

When I revealed what I’d done, she smiled… a rare, fleeting thing.

I joked that she owed me an apology. She looked up from the massacred page and said something I’ve never forgotten:

“The beautiful thing about writing is there is always room for improvement.”

“Never let your ego stop your heart from loving a better word, line, phrase, or story.”

That was Florence: tough, fair, and always right.

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The Gift They Gave Me

When people tell me today that they enjoy my posts, they are hearing echoes of these women…each one leaving a fingerprint on my voice.

Sister Joan gave me belief.

Mrs. Eisenhauer gave me characters.

Miss Munson gave me discipline.

I didn’t have one teacher. I had a council.

Women who stood beside me at different stages of my life, shaping the storyteller I eventually became.

And just perhaps:
The true gift wasn’t writing at all, but the simple miracle of being seen.

PS. For those asking… The readers I’m wearing in the photo are from the “Elton-Don collection available at your finer Costco Club outlets….