First grade. I vividly remember. Our teacher would hand us all those thin blue composition books with wide-ruled lines (which I’d have happily traded any day for the smaller, college-ruled lines, grr), and told us to write whatever came to our mind…most of the class took months to fill up their composition book, but much to the surprise (and sometimes envy) of others, I’d fill the notebooks with thoughts that would only come to an over-imaginative six-year-old's mind, childish poems and nonsensical stories and drawings, starting out with super neat manuscript writing, quickly morphing into messy hieroglyphics as the pages turned, going through God knows how many of those composition books that year.

“No fair! She just writes too much so she can get a new book.”

“Why do you purposely write in bigger handwriting on the last few pages, Amanda?”

 Hmph, such sadde hue omelettes I had in the name of co-students, only I didn't know Hindi at the time so I wouldn't have used that phrase :-)

Yeah, I guess I really did find something very exciting about being handed a brand new composition book to write in after filling up the previous book…Each time, every time, writing my name once more upon the cover of the blue marble composition book was a joyous accomplishment. I guess that’s just about the only thing I really miss about those elementary school days…those notebooks (Oh, and I guess I also miss reading chapter books and novels cleverly hid behind the textbooks in class, haha). Opening the cover to reveal a crisp, untouched, untainted page waiting for me to spill thoughts onto with my #2 HB wooden pencil gave me a high I just can’t explain…But, then again, not all feelings require an explanation, do they?