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The Dream That Came True
‘True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? This disease had sharpened my senses, not dulled, not destroyed them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story.’
The Tell Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe
I was thirteen or fourteen years old when my GCSE English teacher introduced the class to Edgar Allan Poe. I remember the year but not the month, and I remember the way the sun came in through the Victorian windows with their metal panes and the dusty smell of the old wooden floor. The story enthralled me. I’d never encountered writing like that before. Poe had me hooked.
One or two of my friends, the ‘smart kids’, also seemed taken by the text. We discussed the story enthusiastically, repeating the best lines in our most dramatic voices and laughing aloud. I fell in love with the story and for the first time in my life, I said with the rare conviction of a naive dreamer “I want to be a writer.” That was the birth of a dream that would never completely go away.
Maybe my enthusiasm pushed me to try hard, maybe I was naturally gifted. Something made me shine in English. I didn’t mind handing in my…
