Quentin Lucas is still writing to explore storytelling’s roll in his journey to manhood.
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On occasion, I’ve served as a volunteer blogger for a nonprofit organization which advocates parents reading to their young children — specifically from birth to six years old — because doing so advances cognitive development. Some of the gains for the child are flat out remarkable, such as an earlier command of language, and achieving both higher problem-solving capabilities and IQ scores by the age of three. Moreover, a stronger sense of identity and self-confidence come with a child’s advance use of language — resulting in additional benefits that serve them for the rest of their lives.
One motivation for volunteering for this organization is remembering how my self-esteem dwelled somewhere just beneath sinkholes as a child. Manifold elements contributed to this. Being black in Boston was a looming challenge — feeding me an eclectic spread of racial slurs before I was old enough to even understand them. Furthermore, being black in Boston with pronounced African features — including dark skin — exacerbated the situation as it provided a target vulnerable enough for black Americans to seize as well.
A mind tangled up in a story is proof that sometimes getting lost is the best of things.
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However, my mother read to me often when I was young — and vigorously encouraged me when I took over reading around the age of four. When I reminisce on that childlike greed for new adventures, I tend to think now that sometimes there’s no escaping the pains of life, but many of those stories I consumed — whether from books, comics, the encyclopedia, or the Bible — taught me that there’s more to life than the pain I feel, more than the bully with his finger in my face.
A mind tangled up in a story is proof that sometimes getting lost is the best of things.
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And apparently, our minds truly do become entangled by narratives. According to an op-ed written for the New York Times, research conducted by Dr. Raymond Mor, psychologist, and Dr. Keith Oatley, emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, reveals that fiction-readers display a higher ability for understanding other people, empathizing with them, and seeing “the world from their perspective.”
But what’s always struck me as even more interesting is that the science of storytelling shows that even though the average reader understands that fiction is just fiction, the average brain does not. When reading a scene about a loud concert, that part of your brain that activates in the presence of sound does so while you read that scene. The same marvel occurs when reading about smells, or elaborate imagery, or textures, the olfactory, visual and sensory cortexes all light up with activity. Our brains react as though we’ve literally been swept away to another world when we read stories.
In this sense, during childhood, stories gave me the superpower of flight — and at times invincibility.
Every so often, it was just too difficult to focus on a racist little league teammate when you’re at the plate, determined not to let a good pitch get by you like Might Casey did. And, indeed, Treasure Island supplied an occasionally optimistic outlook on life — fueling my indifference to the pervasiveness of inner city poverty and leading me to the backyard, where I dug up plots of earth that might have been hiding buried gold. Sometimes, a child may believe that he’s capable of doing anything when he doesn’t see much difference between him and the boy who was able to pull the sword from the stone.
In this sense, during childhood, stories gave me the superpower of flight — and at times invincibility.
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I don’t remember much about my teenage years. A handful of therapy sessions have convinced me that this is because of the child abuse I sustained. My brain just isn’t ready to recall chunks of my life — and perhaps never will be. Often there are flashes, like crumpled pages ripped from a diary that you stumble upon when cleaning out your basement. So I remember reading fairly regularly, but I don’t remember a lot of the stories I’ve read. I remember writing a lot, but I couldn’t tell anybody what I wrote about during those days — and I’ve no idea where all those notebooks went.
But there are those crumpled pages.
I remember trying to write a book when I was about eight years old. It was going to be about a group of kids battling a pack of monsters, like Dracula and the Wolfman — essentially, it was the plot to this movie I had seen a few years prior: The Monster Squad. I liked the movie, thought it was cool, and simply wanted to write something cool of my own. But I never got past the first paragraph.
Nevertheless, here I am today, a writer, wondering what led me here. The only piece of writing I truly remember putting together before the age of 18 is a college essay. I don’t remember the content but I remember feeling happy while I composed it. And then after I finished, I reread it and thought, “This isn’t bad.”
The only piece of writing I truly remember putting together before the age of 18 is a college essay.
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That certainty of being good at something kind of lit me up inside. Then when my English teacher agreed, I felt like I had found something true within myself.
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An oddity about growing up for me is that I was often known as a “smart kid” but didn’t really see it in myself — or maybe I saw it but didn’t see it as anything special, or relevant. Honestly, I’m not totally sure because of the spotty memories. However, I do know that when I was really young I did see my intelligence clearly because I always earned A’s in school. But once puberty hit, my grades tanked and I didn’t even care. My parents grew frustrated. Teachers would say I was lazy — because apparently it was obvious I could’ve done better. And life just kind of passed by me.
But I didn’t care.
But now I do care. Or I assume I do because honestly you can’t be a writer and not care — or, at least, not an effective one. Still, I sometimes wonder, “How did I get here?”
I don’t wonder because there’s anything particularly unpleasant about being a writer. I actually love it. It’s just that out of all of the “When I grow up, I want to be …”moments I’ve ever had, I don’t recall inserting the phrase “starving artist … who eventually works his way up to being slightly less ‘starvy.’” When I ask “How did I get here?” I do so in the same spirit of, “When did people start referring to me as an adult? And when did I stop protesting that accusation?”
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A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a friend whom I met a writing conference. While we talked, she mentioned that she thought I was still writing so many years after we met because I need to — like, I’m a sailboat without water otherwise.
“Probably,” I thought, mystified.
But of all of the crumpled pages from that lost diary, one about a wordless moment stands out to me. During my initial visit with a new doctor, I was confronted with strange questions about my medical history. They weren’t invasive. They just seemed intimate, and almost tailored for men who were once poor black boys.
“Did you know anybody who died when you were a kid?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sure. A few,” I answered, confused.
“Did you ever want to die yourself?” the doctor then asked.
I remember feeling offended, like he had crossed some line — not one that I was particularly defensive about, but one that seemed like it shouldn’t be crossed since nobody else had ever dared to.
“It’s okay if you did,” he then added. “It’s not uncommon among people who’ve had experience with death at an early age.”
I answered that I have, in fact, had periods of my life when I’ve wanted to die. But there were other words I didn’t speak which may have fit just as well in that moment. I started to wonder how deeply my thirst for death ran, and what a person might do to combat that desire.
I remember feeling offended, like he had crossed some line …
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I don’t remember actually answering myself. But now, years later, for reasons I’m not yet brave enough to fully explore, I look on that moment more than others — more than any time I felt engrossed by a book, or when I wrote something I truly loved — and say to myself — with something that feels like that college essay certainty — “I think that’s why I became a writer.”
Photo Credit: Child.org/Flickr