The Dragon Story

I don’t know my new neighbor well, but he has a small, fluffy grey dog named Lulu.  Crossing paths with Roo the other day, he stopped me unexpectedly and asked if I was a writer.  He’d read a recent article of mine online and was intrigued.

Although I hadn’t realized we were digitally social friends and neighbors, I stepped forward into the conversation saying, yes, I am a writer. We continued chatting while our pups became frenemies, challenging the leashes, and friskily sniffing their canine hellos.

I have been a writer all my life.

In high school, I entered a writing competition at the American Legion and won first place. While I don’t remember which story I submitted, the trophy impressed me. Small, but surprisingly heavy, a bronze eagle perched on a marbly base, its wings pointed high. Trophies like the kind I’d only seen practiced athletes receive.

There was another story I’d written in high school that, when finishing the read-through, my little sister’s face opened up with tears and she hurriedly left the living room shouting behind her, “Why did you make him die??”

There was no answer I could give her, except that death made the story a good one and my writing helped her feel the tragedy of it.

However, it was in 8th grade English AP class when I first truly lassoed the power of the written word.  We were given a writing assignment surrounding the story of St. George and the Dragon.

This was a tough class for me because while I loved the subject, the others in the class were intimidating, and staunched my enthusiasm. My teacher was stern. A thin, tall woman who wore no make-up, and offered few smiles.

The bullies in the back were girls who wore too much make-up too soon and were louder than the other kids, dragons themselves. Friendships were not easily forged for me back then. I was smart, chubby, wore glasses and had stupid hair.

Our crowded classroom was populated with low-ish income 13-year-olds.  We sat in cracked plastic chairs behind graffitied desks aligned in rows on a dirty, stained linoleum floor. The open windows were high and dusty, and the buildings were too undermaintained for fans to function efficiently.

But we were still expected to learn.  Enter, St. George and the Dragon.

During one warm and stuffy school day, the famous Renaissance painting was projected up on the chalkboard. St. George flashing steely armor atop a white stallion, his lance high and firm.  Every bit of his knightly essence colored the painting with bold reds and shimmering golds.

As our eyes traveled down the length of his weapon, the pale, dying dragon came into view, curling under his horse’s cascading hooves. Scales pierced, her fire out.

The assignment was to write the story up until the point portrayed in the painting.  The moment when St. George sliced through the dragon’s fading green flesh; victorious for Georgie, tragic for the dragon.

Dragons and knights and maidens . . . My imagination was on fire! I went home that day, and I wrote and wrote.

Mighty steeds, flesh-tearing claws, sweaty heroes, swooning beauties.  I wrote of the knight’s heart-pounding attack, the fearsome dragon’s fight, the gallant horse, and the rescued damsel. The story was bloody, tense, scrawling with hissing and screams of agony. By hand, I wrote all I could, which was over 5 pages, even though the assignment called for only 2.

The teacher had chosen to grade each assignment first and then read the best-scoring stories out loud to the class that afternoon, keeping each submission anonymous.

Perched on a stool at the front of the desk, the teacher held a stack of the best 5 stories, and we sat in silence (mostly) ready for storytime. She lifted the top paper from her lap and began to read.  As the minutes ticked by, she read each version of the pre-painting narrative that a few of us inspired kids had scratched up the night before. Some were quite good.  After about 30 minutes, she came to the last story in her stack and began reading the first line to her class. The story was mine.

Nervous and excited, my head stayed down so as not to give anything away to my peers while my words filled the heavy air. The adventure, the danger, the romance – the action playing out in each of our heads as we listened.

She ran out of time before she got to the end. The school bell rang, interrupting her (my) story. And as all teens do in 8th grade English in America, the class, which had been quietly listening to the narrative, switched from attentive to auto-pilot. We closed our plastic binders, stuffed our backpacks with our grubby school things, and began crowding out the door under the screeching of the bell.

The teacher sighed in exasperation at not finishing and returned to her desk. But amongst her departing students there rose a buzz.  The popular boys and girls exchanged how good the last story had been. A chitter-chatter of excitement pinged from one to another, the students still swept up in the adventure they’d all been a part of for a little while. One kid even said as he casually cut in front of me to head out, “That was the best one.”

Thirteen-year-old me won’t ever forget that indirect applause and admiration. One I think may not have been voiced if they knew it was me who had been the author.

I remember leaving that 1990s classroom, following my schoolmates into the hall and out into the smoggy day. My story severed by the bell. But I felt okay about it.  It didn’t matter that the teacher couldn’t finish reading every word or that the others didn’t know the story was mine.

I was beaming.

~ Christy

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