I need stuff you wrote as a kid

Posted: February 6th, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, Toronto | 7 Comments »

Update: Looking for information about Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids? Visit danmisener.com/read

Do you still have anything you wrote as a kid? A poem? A book report? A diary?

I want you to read it out loud. In front of people.

I think most of us have a collection of stuff from our younger days sitting in a box somewhere. We cart it around from apartment to apartment, strangely attached. We have no practical use for this stuff, but at the same time, we don’t have the heart to throw it away.

So let’s put an end to that, shall we?

On Monday, February 19, 2007 at 8:00 PM, upstairs at The Victory Cafe, I’m hosting an evening of drinks, laughs, and adults reading funny, sad, and/or embarrassing things they wrote as children.

Here are the rules:

  1. You have to be the one who wrote it, as a kid
  2. You have to be the one who reads it, as an adult
  3. It has to be short (<5 minutes-ish)

It will be free. And it should be fun. But it will only be fun if people actually attend, and bring things they wrote as kids.

So clean out your closet. Dust off that shoebox of grade school love letters. Call up your mom in Newfoundland and get her to send you that old book report. Then show up, with cash for a drink from the bar downstairs.

Backstory: Over the holidays, Jenna and I were visiting her parents in Kingsville. She came across an old diary, and we spent a good chunk of the afternoon reading it aloud to each other. On their own, the entries were really sweet and funny, but they were even sweeter and funnier out loud. So I made it a New Year’s Resolution to start a reading series. This evening of reading is the first step towards that.

P.S. I also need a clever name for this evening. Got one for me?

7 Comments on “I need stuff you wrote as a kid”

  1. 1Tod said at 9:51 pm on February 5th, 2007:

    Great idea! How about I host a similar one in Vancouver and we can start a trend!

    http://www.fray.com has some great stories that I thought would always make excellent readings at this kind of thing.

  2. 2Hilary said at 7:32 am on February 6th, 2007:

    This sounds cool! What age range should it be from?

  3. 3Avery said at 8:14 am on February 6th, 2007:

    I can't make it, but that's a super fun idea. My sister roasted me huge at my wedding by reading from my childhood diary.

    Somebody made a book of things like that… check out
    http://www.amazon.com/Mortified-Real-Words-People…

  4. 4AngeInOttawa said at 4:01 pm on February 6th, 2007:

    Sounds like fun! Wishing I was in TO…as I have LOTS of silly/sad/dramatic/horribly embarassing writing left over from early years. My suggestion for a title: Play-Writes (aka: stuff I wrote then,now)

  5. 5Lydia said at 6:23 am on February 15th, 2007:

    This is such a great idea.

    A friend of mine was thinking of something along the same lines.

    I don't know if she originally came up with the title, or if it's borrowed from someone else with a similarly-themed event, but we were thinking of calling it Cringe-fest…

  6. 6Dan Misener dot com » Blog Archive » Straight back to ‘88 said at 5:37 pm on February 16th, 2007:

    [...] Just in time for my poorly named evening of reading (Adults Read Things They Wrote as Kids), a package from my Mom arrived in the mail: Inside, I found five scribblers.* They were all journals from elementary school at Sackville Centennial. There’s some great stuff inside, and I’m looking forward to reading from these on Monday. Too bad I don’t have an overhead projector, because there are some great illustrations inside. [...]

  7. 7Craig said at 5:16 am on February 18th, 2007:

    as a matter of fact Dan, I think I may still have not only a story I wrote when I was a kid, but a story I wrote about you! Do you remember Daniel and the Maniac Pizza? best story ever!

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