During my junior year in high school, Mr. Reynolds, my English teacher, handed each student a list of thoughts or statements written by other students, then gave us a creative writing assignment based on one of those thoughts. At 17, I was beginning to wonder about many things, so I chose the statement, “I wonder why things are the way they are?”
That night, I wrote down in the form of a story all the questions that puzzled me about life. I realized that many of them were hard to answer, and perhaps others could not be answered at all.
When I turned in my paper, I was afraid that I might fail the assignment because I had not answered the question, “I wonder why things are the way they are?” I had no answers. I had only written questions.
The next day Mr. Reynolds called me to the front of the class and asked me to read my story for the other students. He handed me the paper and sat down in the back of the room. The class became quiet as I began to read my story (continue on the next page for the letter):
