THANK YOU!
COLIN, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Start at the beginning. 1980. First grade, Green Hedges Elementary School, Vienna, VA. Exterior establishing shot of an intimate, single story clapboard school, a half dozen classrooms strung together in a meandering train from kindergarten on one end through to a modest library and meeting room on the other.
Medium shot, first graders march to the library for weekly assembly. There I am, tortoiseshell corrective lenses and a tan velour pullover, waiting for us to recite the pledge of allegiance. Tighter as I approach a sky blue wooden shelf holding books for the little kids. Close up on my fingers running along each book spine, feeling for the mysteries they contain.
Interior, our suburban living room. First grade me leaning on coffee table with markers and paper, drawing a story about my stuffed animal, Floppy the Dog. Scribble the hell out of this paper with blue brown and red. One page leads to two becomes four and eight. It is so perfectly clear what I am saying about Floppy. It should be so perfectly clear to EVERYONE.
Interior, first grade classroom. My marker stained hands hold the jumble of pages that is my first book, or it would be if Mrs. Munn would just help me bind it. Bind it with a cover like the other books on the blue shelf in the library. Bind it and put it there next to them. Please Mrs. Munn, it can’t be that hard to do. Make it a REAL book.
End scene.
Or don’t end scene. Thirty-eight years later I guess I’m still that same kid.
WHAT’S YOUR DREAM PROJECT?
Colin Devonshire
Colin is an emergency physician in Boston, Massachusetts. The seeds of his comics project were sown when he took a sabbatical from the ER for creative writing. His creative non-fiction has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.