I love dinner parties

My college writing professor and his lovely wife came for dinner tonight. It was a little bizarre – in school he was my mentor, my elder, my authority. But tonight, sitting in my living room, we turned into friends. We enjoyed hearing each other’s stories, and I especially loved seeing pictures of their now very grown children. Two of their four children were born when I was in college (Yes, I felt sufficiently old)

Listening to him tell his stories, I remembered why I loved his classes. He made me want to write. He made me want to be a great writer. And he told me the only way I could write well was to write with utter honesty about what I believed, what I loved.

Generally I was too afraid to write that honestly, so I never became a star writer in school. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed writing for the newspaper and yearbook and there were times I felt sparks of inspiration. But too often I would squelch it and write about something more, well, safe.

I’d do much better in school now. I’m too old to care about safe.

As they were leaving he noticed our school room and our three PCs. He said he felt like a failure because he didn’t convert me to Macintosh computers. Oh, no, dear professor. I love Macs, and have ever since he taught me how to use one my freshman year when I tried out for the newspaper staff. But I married an engineer who thinks Macs aren’t real computers, so I’ve had to go the way of the PC.

Considering said professor may be reading this, I would very much like to find a creative way to say what a grand time I had tonight. Perhaps if I were writing on a Mac it would be coming more easily…