Uno. Write a letter.

An old school skill. Writing a letter. Penning it. By hand. Phenomenal.

Mr. Lawrence, you are the snappy, snappy winner.

Cue, my Grade 11/12 English teacher.

It seems fitting that I should choose such an unassuming yet enormously influential person to include in my first post. Blogging. Blog. A word that didn’t even exist when last I saw him. Most of my assignments, and certainly the entire 280-page exercise book full of journaling genius were certainly hand written. Absolutely no shred of consideration for PC-processed rubbish. Yet here I am.

This man, along with very few others, is the reason and influence for my relentless, if not obsessive, preoccupation with the English language. From (all-too-often) time-to-time, you will have, undoubtedly, rued my many-uttered soliloquies on English pronunciation (as per Adelaidean convention, of course). A sideways glance, a murmured correction, Mr Lawrence is seldom far from my thoughts.

On my last day of high school, I gave Mr Lawrence a card. Scrawled in my 17-year-old hand, were the words:

Come to the edge, He said.

They said, We are afraid.

Come to the edge, He said.

They came.

He pushed them.

And they flew.

And never has it been more apparent, the impression a teacher leaves upon his student than the one this teacher has left on me.

So pedantic am I about pronunciation, punctuation and all other particularities of our beautiful language, that these are constantly the, ahem, talking point of choice in our home. You consolidated the teachings of my mum, my dad, and in more recent years, my sister. So for that, there’s one thing I want to say.

Thanks, sir.