Recently, I sat down with my ten-year-old son at our fifteen-year-old dining table at around four o’clock on a Monday afternoon. It was after school, it was still sunny outside, and he was cheerfully slurping a glass of cold Milo, while I was clutching my second cup of coffee a little too tightly.
My son had an important writing task to complete. Not a writing task from school, mind you. Instead, it was a writing task from his own mother. In fact, it was the first writing task he received from his mother, which baffles me, because his mother used to set writing tasks for her other sons all the time. Way before they were ten years old.
The specifics of this inaugural writing assignment were clearly conveyed in his mother’s awkward handwriting: ‘Why is friendship important?’ Nothing fancy. Nothing too niche. Just a simple and straightforward topic for discussion. On the next line in his homework book, I’d also scribbled: ‘Write three to four paragraphs.’
In other words: ‘Write a short essay, dear boy.’
And, so, on that sunny Monday afternoon, while my son was spooning the Milo powder into his glass and I was extracting caffeine from my Starbucks coffee pod using my eight-year-old Nespresso machine, we began discussing the writing task, and I uttered something along the lines of, ‘It’s basically just writing an essay.’
At which point, he looked up and asked, ‘What’s an essay?’
Half an hour later, we had gone through a mini Essays 101 crash course, in which I outlined—and explained—the basic components of a traditional essay: 1. An introduction, which states the main argument along with (at a minimum) three supporting arguments. 2. At least three body paragraphs, each delving into one of the supporting arguments in greater detail. Statistics may be cited, along with personal anecdotes and quotes from other people. 3. A conclusion, which again summarises the three supporting arguments and hammers home the primary argument.
My son dutifully nodded along, the way he does when he listens to my husband discuss more important things in life such as: Why do we need the sun? Can a tiger lose its stripes? How can we jump higher? Why are some engines louder than others? How many cars does a person need?
Of course, the entire time I was speaking, I felt a little like a hypocrite because I could not recall the last time I myself wrote an essay that included those fundamental elements.
My inner voice, however, which is ever so skilled at justifying my eccentricities and inconsistencies, responded with a simple quip.
Rules are meant to be broken, remember?
Indeed.
I didn’t mention this out loud, though, as I figured my ten-year-old needed to first learn and apply the rules before I gave him some rope to break them.
Funnily enough, five essays on, my son began twisting the rules of essay writing without any prompting on my part.
The topic was, ‘Why is rest important?’, and this was his introduction:
‘Why is rest important? Have you ever felt tired and just wanted to collapse, and then when someone accidentally bumps you, you are really rude about it? I know I have, and this is because you’re tired. On this sheet of paper, I’m going to give you three reasons why rest is important.’
Several initial thoughts come to mind.
Firstly, what a kick-ass introduction. Secondly, he sure knows his audience. (That is, his mother. Truly, ‘… this is because you’re tired’ should be on the next poster I design.) And finally, props to him for breaking out of the traditional essay mould—all on his own.
As my youngest son began reading his essay to me, he glanced at me a little nervously and explained, ‘I just wanted to do something a little different.’
‘Good on you, mate,’ I responded with a big smile.
Good on him indeed.
All this to say that the essays you find here are varied and diverse in both their format and the content they cover. You are unlikely to find a ‘traditional’ essay in these parts, although, to be honest, it would be fun to write one again some day.
‘Just for the haps,’ as my boys would say.