It was my good fortune to spend some time at the Boys & Girls Club in Victoria yesterday. My mission was to encourage and hopefully tutor young writers. My opening comments included, “I’m here to learn from you and hopefully you’ll learn something from me.” Boy, was that an understatement about my learning from them.

Besides listing some of the reasons we write and discussing various kinds of stories, we did the KICKED DOG exercise (after they wrote their first two stories). We highlighted, and counted, all the times the word “I” appeared in an article, column or letter to the editor. The kicked dog moniker came from “I, I, I, I, I, I, I “. The kids counted some 33 or 34 “I”s in one item. Then they figured out how to eliminate so many of the pesky words and then rewrote those sentences. They even found one such infraction in one of my old Amblin’ columns.

While it’s customary to give full credit to an author by listing his or her name, we’re going violate that rule here to protect the identity of the family involved in this story because we don’t wish to embarrass them. The assignments here were to write sad and happy stories. We’ll combine both in this piece done by a fifth grader.

“The saddest day of my life” When I was small, about the age of five, I saw my dad get taken away to jail. I felt very sad. Seeing my dad get handcuffed was the worst I’ve ever seen. I was useless, there was nothin’ I could of done to help him. I kissed him good night and they took him away. My mom, my sister, my brother and I went home.

“I went to bed crying. I cried myself to sleep that night. I felt so lonely because I always slept by my dad but tonight was different. Without him near I felt unsafe. I was very scared.

“The next day we went to town to see him. When I saw him I pored into tears. My dad said, “Don’t cry my child. I will be out soon.” When we went to see the judge he said my dad was going to be transported to Mexico. I ran out of that room and into the girls’ restroom. My mom found me there crying. She said, “Everything will be better.”

“When my dad saw me he also started to cry. We had to leave but I refused to leave my dad there. The next day he called to tell us he was leaving. I didn’t want to talk on the phone because I would start crying all over again.”

The second part went, “The happiest day of my life.” The day my dad came back was the happiest day of my life. When he came back I didn’t know who he was but then I knew it was my dad. He promised me he would never ever go back to jail. But he broke that promise two weeks ago.”

That prevented old Rusty from having dry eyes while eating his lunch.

HOW DO YOU LIKE US PUBLISHING THESE STORIES FROM KIDS?