The Power of the Pen

Lee Crain

            “Have you learned your lesson, Lee Crain?”  I was being publicly scolded by an adult who wasn’t even one of my parents!  My ten-year-old self was practically dripping with tears.  The fires of ink had raged for weeks while I sat in my room reading the local papers and suffering.  The aforementioned quoted headline was from a letter to a local paper, and it proceeded to explain that I was a menace to society, that the ice cream I produced and sold every Sunday was produced with dirty hands and salmonella-infected eggs, and that I should be paying income tax to the town for my profits!  I felt hurt – and a little terrified – that this man wasn’t on my side.

The problems began when I established an ice cream and lemonade stand on the sidewalk along the main road heading to the beach and, more importantly, adjacent to the town’s golf course.  It was a perfect location – too perfect – and when the local vendors complained that a school kid was competing with them, parks and recreations officials tried to shut me down.  A fierce battle ensued through the local papers, the Westport News and the Minuteman; it was adult vendor versus child entrepreneur.  But my town came to the plate for me, using their pens to hit bureaucratic curveballs right out of the park.

            My love of the power of the written word was born as week after week I saw my name in print and the fervor it generated in the minds of my fellow Westporters.  I realized that the press and the pen were powerful things to be reckoned with.  I still have the articles about my stand and me sitting above my desk, reminding me of that first experience with the written word.  When I reread the traumatic headline recently, as I tried to figure out what my “defining experience” was, I realized that that man had composed a satire. But for years, my memory tortured me with thought of the mean old man who lived on Kettle-Creek Road and demanded that I, a 10-year-old kid, pay income tax.

            This clash with the Parks and Recreation officials showed me that I didn’t need to fight these men; I merely needed to use words to gain the community’s backing.  In the end, I was forced to move across the street from the golf course, but I continued to sell to golfers who yelled their orders across the road.  It was this fight; this fight for my right as an American capitalist that introduced me to the strength that words can have over the hearts and minds of my fellow man.

I went on to join and now lead my school paper, writing articles on school policies and national elections along the way.  Last year, I was booed in the hallways when I wrote an article bemoaning “public displays of affection” at school.  The power of the written word is something that has affected my life from elementary school to now as I write this essay.  I am infatuated by its authority, and I revel in its graces.