“Even anyone foolish, when keeping silent, will be regarded as wise.”The Feature Editor for the high school newspaper asked me to write a column for the next issue.
“Sooner the better,” she said. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. And it can be about anything about Australia.”
Today, I don’t know why I agreed to write that column. The editor wasn’t the type of girl I’m attracted to, but I had decided a few weeks before I wanted to be a writer. The column was one step on my projected two year path to writing fame.
My idea was simple. Write a passionate political piece about the Australian Aborigines. Compare the mistreatment of Aborigines to the mistreatment of Native Americans.
Mistreatment, a mild word, did not appear in my essay.
I wrote the 500 word long hand opinion article in five minutes. Then I didn’t proofread it. I gave it to the Editor. Told her to make up a title and change whatever was wrong.
I didn’t care.
The day the newspaper was handed out in the school, three or four weeks later, I wasn’t at school. This wasn’t unusual; I was a senior and went to less than a quarter of my classes by the end of the year.
It was a day later I found out what being a writer meant: proofreading.
The Editor, I use the title to withhold her name and with some irony, didn’t change anything in my column. I would guess she didn’t read it, but she must have. Long hand to printed type means she looked at the words once. But everything was the same.
See, I’d left out quotation marks.
In the last paragraph, in my most passionate and political passage, I had made a statement meant to reflect a racist stereotype. In my mind it was in quotation marks. The audience would read it, realize I was referring to a generalization in our society, and come to the conclusion this generalization was wrong. Stealing the land of native peoples was wrong. Hate was wrong. War was wrong. Love one another. Keep an open mind. Et cetera.
But I gave the opposite message. Without the quotation marks, I was saying all Native Americans are lazy drunks. And that you should remember the Australian Aborigines every time you see an alcoholic, jobless Native American.
That isn’t exactly what I wanted to say.
My Biology teacher and friend Dave had a discussion the day the paper came out about whether I was racist or stupid.
My Editor told me I could write a correction and put it in the next issue. “But that won’t appear until next year. And nobody reads the paper anyway,” she said.
I was sick to my stomach about it for two days. I didn’t eat anything. My friends told me not to worry about it. No one will read the column. No one reads the paper anyway.
I still felt sick and guilty. Hell, I feel guilty and sick about it today.
I told my friends, “now I can’t be President. Someone will dig the column up, label me racist, and I’ll lose the critical Native American vote.” Then I’d say, “no wait. Now I can be President.
This will give the red and swing states a reason to vote for me.”
Because even when I’m passionate and open minded, I can be an asshole.
The moral of this story is I learned to proofread everything I write and make sure the words are telling the story I want them to. Editors are great, but you should never let them do your job.
So I started to proofread every story, essay, or column I wrote...
...three years later. When a professor wrote “You’re too smart to have so many stupid typos” on an essay.
But the principle was there.
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