You will find moments within our past that shape our vision. Under-going my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna in the early grades, a basic girl who, if she remained as alive, does not know how even during grade 4, she was pointing the right way to freedom of expression. There is a lesson here which will come in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.

We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life could have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties when the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the use of ink blotters in school. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in to a mud-bath. It took us months to master ale compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you really wanted to avoid wasting time, you’d be far wiser to play the tortoise.

But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring ways to Bali once we remained as stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she may find anything passionate than Japanese prints.

I recall Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God understanding that the true writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. Of the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends upon how you control the ink.” There was clearly much else that would have to be controlled too, based on Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down in the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a quick, thin line over Anna’s script; the blotter followed; there came more red lines, more words slashed away.

I watched Anna after she returned to her desk. She began writing, dabbing the blotter after her pen in true Sister Mary Michael fashion. For a time, it seemed like Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it was the blotter that has been absorbing her interest. She had dribbled an area at the top right-hand corner of the sheet; she stuck the nib in the heart of the area and watched the darkness grow; a few details together with the nib as well as the blotch had been a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in to a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper and much more dabs before the entire blotter turned into a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to another location; she paused just for a specified duration to thicken the very center stretch without having to break the flow before the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat on her behalf desk just like a chocolate web.

It had been an earlier type of Blotter Art Company, so distinctive it made nice hair climb onto end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite see that.
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