Accomplice

I haven't quite figured out my writing class yet. We have homework assignments but it doesn't seem like anyone does them, so at the beginning of class people just read what they've been working on. And it's usually really good. So it's the third week of class and I still am too freaked out to read anything I've written (especially when we do in-class writing. Like in ten minutes I'm going to be able to anything other than turn the prompt into a completely horrid stream of consciousness journal entry.) I promised myself last week that I was going to force myself to read the following-- my response to our homework prompt to write about being an unwilling accomplice. The thing I liked about every other writing class I've ever been in is that everyone had to read what they had written.

Disclaimer: There is a reason I didn't want to read this out loud. The reason is that since the class is so supportive, after anyone reads the instructor says, "Now tell her what you like about it" and I just didn't want to put my classmates in an awkward position, like when someone asks you, "Oh did you get a haircut?" And you're like, "Yeah." And then there's kind of a longish silence and the person goes, "Oh, it looks nice."

“Accomplice” is a Hardy Boys word, like “ransom” or “jalopy.” Acquiring the vocabulary of teenage detective stories at an early age, however, was not without missteps. For the longest time I wondered why the makers of Twinkies and other prepackaged baked goods had named their company after a person held to make sure that demands are met. A properly socialized 6 year old girl would have recognized the word “hostess” from her tea party storybooks, certainly not confused it with “hostage.” But there I was, barely in elementary school, scanning the mystery shelves in the junior high fiction section of the library. An older boy, sizing me up, decides I’m in the wrong place. “You can’t even read these books.” I could have proved him wrong just by picking up any of the Hardy Boys or Three Investigators or Encyclopedia Brown books and reading a page out loud. Twenty years later I’m still abetting, letting supermarket clerks, baristas, bosses, restroom patrons get away with misconceptions.