Saturday, May 3
The "Younger Voices" series in the North Adams Transcript is one of the best ways to let young voices be heard. (No, they did not pay me to plug it.)

But the truth is, the audience I would want most to reach probably won't come in contact with the Commentary page very often. The majority of kids don't actually love reading a book, newspaper or magazine, unless it happens to have a celebrity on the cover or 100 tips on how to look good (I would be lying if I said I was any different on most days.)

But I am happy to see the contributions in the Transcript made by Conte students recently ("The Write Stuff"), even if some of the stories by sixth-graders have had more frightening plot lines than "The Sixth Sense."

And I confess I always read whatever the brilliant Johnnie Carrier comes up with each week -- because who wouldn't find it entertaining to read about his wife's salty language, his son's mistakes or his relatives' wedding parties? It's like an episode of the Hicktown male-version of "Desperate Housewives."

I'm also always a tad intrigued by random headlines, as well as the Rev. Wright's new comments or Barack and Hillary's ongoing feud, in spite of the

Advertisement
fact it's becoming more and more similar to the sound of two annoying teenage drama queens fighting back and forth over the same boy.

When I was 10, I'm proud to say I published my own newspaper, with a circulation of nine whole readers. Go ahead ... be jealous. It wasn't quite a "newspaper," I suppose. It was news ... on a sheet of paper ... I wrote once a week.

Nevertheless, my dad had set a deadline for me, so if it wasn't finished in time and rolled up in front of the bedroom door by 8 a.m., he would complain about his service. Before too long, I realized it shouldn't be termed a newspaper, therefore I titled it "Mary's Commentary." Yes, I had changed my name so it would rhyme with a title and thus made family and friends call me Mary for approximately a year. Mary unfortunately discontinued her weekly services of writer, proofreader, editor and printer in 2002, due to the conceived knowledge of child labor laws.

Although I'm extremely interested in writing, I wasn't always this enthusiastic. At one point I disliked English so much that I created my own language and was certain that when I owned my own island I would enforce it to all its citizens: No correct spelling or punctuation was required, and there would be no need for a thesaurus.

I don't remember when exactly, but at some point between then and now, a switch was turned on, and English became my favorite subject. I began correcting my dad, looking over his shoulder as he did paperwork and noticing any wrong grammar, misspellings or misplaced commas.

One of the reasons I found a way to love writing might have been because I didn't like my other options. I sat at the kitchen table in first grade with my math book in front of me, thinking long-division problems were the end of the world, and I would never get through the torture. Meanwhile, the sight of a quadratic equation makes me cringe, and I would give anything to have that book back now.

I hope that in the future, I'll look back at pre-calculus, commenting on how easy it turned out, or eventually a biology assignment will be as simple as a 700-word essay.

I would love to read other "Younger Voices" alongside Matt Kinnaman or Maureen Dowd. Because what's ... like totally awesome ... is that you have the opportunity to do so.

Marissa Zelazo of the town of Florida is 16 years old and has filed a claim with workman's compensation due to major paper cuts while working under Mary's Commentary Co. The Transcript welcomes columns from readers age 18 and under for its Younger Voices series. E-mail gdrohan @thetranscript.com or mail to Glenn Drohan, the Transcript, P.O. Box 1840, North Adams MA 01247.