[00:00.00]When we are writing we are often told to keep our readers in mind,
[00:05.49]to shape what we say to fit their tastes and interests.
[00:11.10]But there is one reader in particular who should not be forgotten.
[00:15.96]Can you guess who?
[00:18.10]Russell Baker surprised himself
[00:21.24]and everyone else when he discovered the answer.
[00:26.49]WRITING FOR MYSELF by Russell Baker
[00:30.85]The idea of becoming a writer had come to me off and on
[00:36.00]since my childhood in Belleville,
[00:39.24]but it wasn't until my third year in high school that the possibility took hold
[00:45.66]Unit then I'd been bored by everything associated with English courses.
[00:53.03]I found English grammar dull and diffcult.
[00:57.29]I hated the assignments to turn out long,
[01:02.85]life less paragraphs that were agony for teachers to read and for me to write.
[01:09.83]When our class was assigned to Mr.Fleagle to for third-year English
[01:15.47]I anticipated another cheerless year in that most tedious of subjects.
[01:21.68]Mr.Fleage had a reputation among students for dullness and inability to inspire
[01:28.45]He was said to be very formal,rigid and hopelessly out of date.
[01:35.53]To me he looked to be sixty or seventy and excessively prim.
[01:42.90]He wore primly severe eyeglasses,his wavy hair was primly cut and primly combed
[01:51.86]He wore prim suits with neckties set primly against the collar buttons of his white
shirts.
[02:00.11]He had a primly pointed jaw,a primly straight nose,
[02:06.17]and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct,so gentlemanly,
[02:12.13]that he seemed a comic antique.
[02:15.39]I prepared for an unfruitful year with Mr.Fleagle
[02:19.62]and for a long time was not disappointed.
[02:24.59]Late in the year we tackled the informal essary.
[02:28.74]Mr.Fleagle ditributed a homework sheet offering us a choice of topics.
[02:34.98]None was quite so simple-minded as "What I Did on My Summer Vacation,"
[02:41.91]but most seemed to be almost as dull.
[02:47.16]I took the list home and did nothing until the night before the essay was due
[02:52.72]Lying on the sofa,
[02:56.48]I finally faced up to the unwelcome task,n
[03:00.85]took the list out of my notebook,and scanned it.\
[03:05.99]The topic on which my eye stopped was "The Art of Eating Spaghetti."
[03:13.15]This title produced an extraordinary sequence of mental images.
[03:18.43]Vivid memories came flooding back of a night in Belleville
[03:24.90]when all of us were seated around the supper table-
[03:28.74]Uncle Allen,my mother,Uncle Charlie,Doris,Uncle Hal-
[03:33.71]and Aunt Pat served spaghetti for supper.
[03:39.06]Spaghetti was still a little known foreign dish in those days.
[03:45.44]Neither Doris nor I had ever eaten spaghetti,
[03:48.96]and none of the adults had enough experience to be good at it.
[03:55.13]All the good humor of Uncle Allen's house reawoke in my mind
[04:00.17]as I recalled the laughing arguments
[04:04.32]we had that night about the socially respectable method
[04:08.87]for moving spaghetti from pate to mouth.
[04:13.54]Suddenly I wanted to write about that,about the warmth and good feeling of it
[04:19.50]but I wanted to put it down simply for my own joy,not for Mr.Fleagle.
[04:25.38]It was a moment I wanted to recapture and hold for myself.
[04:31.62]I wanted to relive the pleasure of that evening.
[04:37.19]To write it as I wanted,however,
[04:40.14]would violate all the rules of formal composition I'd learned on school,
[04:46.51]and Mr.Fleagle would surely give it a failing grade.Never mind.
[04:52.57]I would write somehting else for Mr.Fleagle after I had written this thing for myself
[04:59.02]When I finished it the night was half gone
[05:02.29]and there was no time left to compose a proper
[05:06.42]respectable essay for Mr.Fleagle.
[05:09.26]There was no choice next morning but to turn in my tale of the Belleville supper
[05:16.92]Two days passed before Mr.Fleagle returned the graded papers
[05:21.88]and he returned everyone's but mine.
[05:26.24]I was preparing myself for a command to report to Mr.Fleagle immediately after school
for discipline
[05:33.82]when I saw him lift my paper from his desk and knock for the class's attention
[05:40.58]"Now,boys,"he said. "I want to read you an essay.
[05:45.31]This is titled, "The Art of Eating Spaghetti."
[05:49.99]And he started to read.
[05:52.55]My words!He was reading my words out loud to the entire class.
[05:58.11]What's more,the entire class was listening.Listening attentively.
[06:04.67]Then somebody laughed,then the entire class was laughing,
[06:09.82]and not in contempt and ridicule,but with open-hearted enjoyment.
[06:17.05]Even Mr.Fleagle stopped two or three times to hold back a small prim smile
[06:24.13]I did my best to avoid showing pleasure,
[06:27.97]but what I was feeling was pure delight at this demonstration
[06:33.40]that my words had the power to make people laugh.
[06:37.45]In the eleventh grade,at the eleventh hour as it were,
[06:43.62]I had discovered a calling.
[06:46.57]It was the happiest moment of my entire school career.
[06:51.64]When Mr.Fleagle finished he put the final seal on my happiness by saying,
[06:59.68]"Now that, boys,is an essay,don't you see.
[07:04.44]It's-don't you see -it's of the very essence of the essay,
[07:09.79]don't you see.Congratulations,Mr.Baker."
[07:14.13]off and on\possibility\take hold\bore
[07:20.66]associate\assignment\ turn on\ agony
[07:27.32]assign\anticipate\tedious\reputation
[07:32.88]inability\inspire\formal\rigid
[07:38.53]hopelessly\out of date\prim\primly
[07:44.20]severecktie\jaw\comic
[07:49.76]antique\ackle\essay\distribute
[07:55.64]finally\face up to\scan\spaghetti
[08:02.59]title\extraordinary\sequence\image
[08:09.43]adult\humor\recall\argument
[08:17.58]respectable\put down\recapture\relive
[08:26.36]violate\compose\turn in\command
[08:33.80]discipline\what's more\contempt\ridicule
[08:41.06]open-hearted\hold back\aviod\demonstration
[08:49.11]career\seal\essence\congratulation
