It All Started With One Hundred and Forty-One Books....
By C. Jewel Watson

She was a dark-skinned African-American with platinum blonde cornrows; a dark black girl with platinum blonde hair-- that should have been my first clue that there would be trouble (and since I'm black I can say that). This particular bottle blonde was a teller at the federal credit union that I've been using for nearly four years; recently the federal credit union moved to new location just around the corner from the old one; it is now sandwiched between Kinko's and the post office. With the new move came new employees, one of whom was "Blondie"; well, they should have left her where they found her because her attitude turned my stomach:
 

       Blondie: Yes.
       Castina:  Hi.
       Blondie:  Uhmmmm…
       Castina:  I'd like to make a withdrawal, please.
       Blondie: (deep sigh) Where your ID at?
 

Let me give you an example of how this credit union works, before the move there were
three tellers; since Mom and I have been using this credit union longer than most of them have worked there, they all know Ms. Watson and her daughter with the same first name. So we never bring IDs to the credit union, or should I say I never bring my ID (my mother is always prepared).
       

        Blondie: Look if you ain't got no ID, I ain't giving you nothing. Does Chrissy know you? Who is you? Well then you have to verify it with her, because I want ya ID.
       

I stomped up the newly carpeted floor and shoved my way out the door and into the March wind; you could have made Eggs Benedict on my head-- I was steaming. It wasn't her abrasive tone that made me so livid, I was angry on behalf of English majors worldwide. I would have loved to have told her that if she honestly believed that "ain't" was a word then she was Queen of Dumbville and whoever promoted her from grade school with that type of thinking should be christened the court jester.

Would have loved to tell her that she looked like Phyllis Diller before the gray hair and plastic surgeries... but I couldn't, and that's why I write. See, while as a writer I come off as a materialistic, self-assured princess, walking right on the line of being classified a pit-bull... you know the female kind, in reality I'm just Jewel, a shy bookworm from the Mid-Atlantic. Writing has given me an opportunity to vent the anger, shout the glee, and laugh my head off about everything that would otherwise remain tucked neatly in a corner somewhere inside me, turning into spoiled anticipation or an ulcer depending on said emotion.
 

I'd be a pediatrician right now if writing had never found me, instead it all started with a book, as the Wizard would say on Disney's "The Proud Family." During the summer of 1993, Mom enrolled my in the Shepard Park Library Summer Quest Program. I was nine. The Summer Quest Program's purpose was encouraging reading in the inner city neighborhood where most of the city libraries were located. Living through my childhood, which gleefully included evictions, being bullied at school, and sharing a one bedroom apartment with my mother and our dilapidated building's resident rat, I was all too happy to escape to the world of make-believe that I found in books. Thus, I excelled at Summer Quest and downed books like cola on hot August day, finishing the program with a whopping 141 books, a record that I'm still very proud of.
 

The city was proud of me, everyone with the exception of my cousins but that's a story for another day. Joseph, an exchange student at the local university contacted my mother in hopes of doing a piece on me. She gladly accepted and forced me into pigtails and a horrible jumper dress at which point she dragged me by the ear to the shabby digs that the college kids called "the newspaper office." I spent more time spinning around on the computer chair than asking any questions, but my tune changed once I received the first job offer in my life. Michael Tucker was the kid's editor; he was heavy man, a look-alike for Will's Uncle Phil on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

"You know, Castina, good readers can be good writers, too. We'd love to have you here as an intern, do some writing for us." I'd never entertained the thought of writing, I was going to be a pediatrician just as soon as I got over my fear of blood.
 

My mother wouldn't hear of letting me turn the job down. She saw me as the "Great Ebony Hope." What my mother said was law; she told me I was officially a writer and so I was. I loved it… eventually, and eventually I couldn't see my life without it. I spent a long time thinking that it was a good omen that my first writing job fell in my lap when I was still in fourth grade and it was an internship at a college-level newspaper to boot. I thought it was all some sign that I was designed to become a professional writer, that I'd one day be a Seventeen Magazine columnist with a BMW Roadster and hundreds of pairs of Manolo Blahniks; who would have thought that my longest job to date would be as a super college senior/Barnes and Noble bookseller?
 

The ability to be my "authentic self" (to use a Dr. Phil-ism) as a writer when I have such difficulties being real as a writer has been a God-send, finally I have some voice! What I didn't anticipate was that becoming a notorious writer is about a easy, and as likely, as Connie Chung becoming a Las Vegas lounge singer; and given her recent rendition of "Thanks For The Memories" we know how unlikely that is. Getting past the notion that talent is all it takes has been my biggest challenge as a writer. Finally, I think I did and all it took was getting rid of my hopes of one day being a coveted author as a guest on "The View." I replaced the hopes for notoriety with a deep-seated passion for what I am, a creative nonfiction vixen. I've finally reached a point where at the end of the day I could walk away without ever getting one thin dime to do this, just as long as I've produced work that is going to proudly live on after I go to the big home for nonfiction vixens in the sky. Plus, I really don't care about going on "The View" anymore now that there's no Meredith. Ironically, this new leaf turned over at the same time that I'm finally writing for something besides "free samples" and "exposure." Go figure.

Do you know what really bothers me about being a writer? "Writing is an acquired skill, not a talent"; this is the oldest wrong assumption in American history, that and the belief that Elvis is alive and well and living on another planet. Okay, okay, maybe writing in complete sentences without the use of "ain't" is an "acquired skill," but not passionate, committed writing… you've either got it or you don't (and yes, I know that wasn't proper English). Riddle me this, if good writing is a skill (something that can be taught) what's the excuse for all of the summer stink bombs also known as motion pictures? If good writing is a skill, why hasn't anyone taught "screenwriters" how to produce a quality film that doesn't include animation or forty-year-old virgins? I mean, isn't it punishment enough that bad writing ruined Garfield...twice?

Castina Jewel Watson is a twenty-something college coed from the Mid-Atlantic. A self-proclaimed spoiled Ebony princess, Castina is fascinated with Louis Vuitton bags, Coach sunglasses, hair extensions, and other things that college students/freelance writers from single parent households can't afford. She has been writing professionally for thirteen years and has aspirations on someday becoming a New York City columnist. She loves fashion, dogs strawberries, and anything "Law and Order."

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