the innocuous

And here we have a recent composition assignment from school. The prompt was to write about how literacy has affected our lives. Here's that.

 

At the high school I attended, there was an illegal newspaper. the innocuous. It would appear in stacks in the halls at the start of every Tuesday, and before lunch the stacks would be gone. Some were picked up by students to be read and then passed along. Whatever was left was confiscated by teachers to be read and then disposed of. It was a humor publication, satire focused on school events. It was published without names and distributed in direct violation of several school policies. It was a double-sided sheet of 8.5x11” paper, easily hidden among assignments and essays. If you looked carefully, you could spot copies of it slipped into textbooks during classes or being quickly consulted in broken glances in the busy halls. Every now and then you’d hear about some student or other being caught with a copy. I don’t think anyone was clear on what the exact punishment was, and depending on who was telling the story it could be confiscation or detention or suspension. Maybe no one got caught. Maybe the teachers didn’t mind. But it was that sense of danger, that taboo aspect that made that brief weekly report so alluring. Readers got a sense of camaraderie knowing that they were part of a big underground conspiracy. There wasn’t a soul on campus who hadn’t heard of the innocuous, and to my knowledge not a soul who knew the author. At least, if anyone thought they knew, they never confronted me about it. It was senior year, and I didn’t reveal my role in the underground workings of the paper until I had graduated and was clear of any punishment the school could administrate. But whatever effect that paper had on the school, I would be lying if I didn’t admit the significant impact the innocuous had on my life.

I would arrive at 6:45am every day, just after the doors had opened and a solid half hour before the security camera operators would arrive. I carried with me a thick binder filled with school work and two hundred copies of the most recent edition. There were tables scattered around the school, in front of libraries and classrooms. Four of these tables at extreme corners of the school would receive fifty copies each.

The original plan was to have a number of contributors. Set up an anonymous email account, publish it on the bottom of the last page, and let students write in with their stories. In the one-year run of the innocuous, three people volunteered to write and not a single article was submitted. I don’t know what they were expecting to contribute to the newspaper if not news. Maybe they saw themselves as undercover reporters, sneaking around and gathering intelligence to be written up by the journalist types back at the office. As it became more apparent how unrealistic the expectations were of authorship, the contact information at the bottom of the page became  unrealistic as well. It became a parody within a parody, instructing would-be journalists to leave their name and contact info with the hidden microphones around the lockers or with our representatives on the innocuous moon base. By the end of it all every word in the innocuous was mine.

It was having an audience to the project that kept me going. There were thirty five editions of the innocuous published. Two pages a week in ten-point font. It was the longest and most involved written project I had ever attempted. The pace was reasonable on its own, but with the additional strain of a regular school schedule on top it became - at times - overwhelming. Writing a newspaper made me realize the importance of integrity under pressure. It would have been easy to have filled an empty column with lies. At the time no one knew my name, and I had no one to report to but my overworked self. It was as pure an ethical dilemma as I could imagine, and one I’m glad I had to face. I learned that the integrity of a written work matters regardless of any name attached to it. I cared about what people thought of my publication even if I could never publically call it my publication.

I’ve worked on other newspapers since high school. Legitimate ones, ones I can put on a résumé. I’ve served as a reporter, a journalist, a layout designer, and a graphic consultant for work I’ve had my name attached to. It’s a different feeling, being known by your name as well as your work. Writing the innocuous has had a significant impact on my life and my attitude towards writing. I learned that a written work should be able to stand on its own integrity, and not rely on the name attached to it.