Why do they always wear clogs, or, Why do they have to sit next to me?

I took my second fiction writing class on Saturday. I think I learned enough from the first three hours or so that it was worth half the money I paid for it, but part two of the class was a wash. We read our stories and works in progress, and the instructor insisted we only say nice things about each piece to each other. Nothing negative. When the woman to my left read a disjointed story with no transitions, the instructor asked what competitions she had submitted it to because it was just so darling. Really, it was an obviously ethnic piece, and according to the instructor those are just so hot right now that if you can write it you should. I’m not saying her story was without merit, but the instructor was a little too friendly, when what we really needed was helpful guidance.

As only my second experience with a writing instructor, I feel I shouldn’t extrapolate from my small sample size to make judgments about all writing instructors, but they both shared an irritating quirk: they wore clogs.

I really have nothing against clogs in general, but these instructors slipped their feet out of their shoes and played with their clogs. When my latest instructor wasn’t standing up, she scooched her feet back then used her toes to push the empty clogs around. I just couldn’t concentrate on the few nuggets of good advice she had to offer while she dangled her clog from her toe, dispensing saccharine “good jobs everybody!”

If I become a writing instructor one day, do I have to trade my old-lady shoes for snappy clogs? What’s the deal, is it a club? I pray it’s just coincidence.

By far the most distracting element of the course was the woman seated to the right of me. She sat down and told me, “I like children’s writing because I’m still a child at heart; I’ve never grown up.” Really? Because I figured out in college that making statements that summarize your affected personality usually means you’re immature and won’t be taken seriously. By me at least.

I tried to make the best of her “free spirit,” and I joked, “Really? I’ve been told I’m childish.”

She responded, very affronted, “That’s not the same thing.”

Hmm, child-like, ne’er-grown-up, fairy-land chick has no sense of humor. I’m going to call that “childish.”

And she really was childish. She wanted to be coddled and Oohed and Ahhed over because she’s so darn precious.

She told me three times, “And look, I even have my pink backpack like a little kid, ha ha ha!”

The first time she said, I responded, seriously, “I carry a pink back pack to work, too, but I’m using my smaller satchel today.”

Then three times she told me, “And look at my little kids lunch. I made peanut butter and jelly and chips, ha ha ha!”

I looked at my lunch. Tuna salad on bread with carrot sticks. That didn’t look like a children’s lunch? It certainly looked exactly like what my mom packed for me in grade school. But I guess I wasn’t “child-like,” only Robbin, who dotted her “i” with a heart, was affectedly naïve enough to advertise her “little kids lunch” and a “little kids backpack.

Then it was her turn to read her story.

“I really don’t know what I’ve written, I’ve just been writing it and I’m not sure what it’s about or where it’s going.” Then commenced the convoluted story line of someone discovering who the biological mother is of someone else, made more convoluted by her affectation of innocence.

The instructor asked, “What’s your one sentence summary?” something everyone should be able to say about their work.

“Gosh I don’t know,” she said as she waggled her head around, loosely on it’s child-like stalk. I know, I’m judgmental, but I rolled my eyes at her and groaned, quietly.

She started reading from her 78 page rambling children’s opus, and it was all exposition. No dialog, no action. She said the first 12 pages were like that so you’d like the character. Oh god, spare me over from forced sitting through lengthy bad writing.

At the end of class, the instructor came over to her and said, “I think what you’re doing is great and you should keep working at it. You really can be quite humorous, and you’ve really got something there.”

I nearly died. Irritating, affected, “I’m so child-like,” Robbin with a heart, with her sub-amateur first attempt got the highest praise. I wish I had known in advance that this was the wrong class for me. It would have saved me a lot of time and rescued me from Robb(heart)n.