“I’m a writer not a Cheetah.”—Austin Powers
In 1993 I had a little extra time on my hands so I went to college. Why not? Try it out. See if the hype is true. One of my classes was an English class, probably 101. The teacher’s name was in big letters on the chalk board PROFESSOR IMELDA CANNON. She was a spunky woman from England. Isn’t that where English started? What luck for me. She must be real good at English.
She went over the course syllabus—we were required to write one essay a week. She told us that she would read the top essay to the class, a kind of peer teaching. She said that we could then start trying to sit closer to the star writer, or maybe pick their brain over lunch. The possibilities were endless for us to become great writers. Our essays were due every Friday.
The following Monday we are all sitting in our seat staring at Professor Cannon standing in front of us with a stack of essays. There is no chance in hell she’ll read my essay so nothing to worry about here. “The top essay for week one was written by Mike Huggins.” I froze. I looked around the room. Nobody knows my name, all good. Everyone is looking around for Mike Huggins and I join in. Then she points at me and says, “He’s right there.” My face went instantly red and I started sliding down in my seat. It was only a thousand words, but it seemed to go on forever. I started thinking about the benefit of being read first—get it over with. Done.
The next week we are again waiting for the name of the top essay for week two. I’m glad I got mine over with. Now some other poor sap has to go through the embarrassment. “This week’s top essay is Mike Huggins.” No fucking way. Same as before, red face, I attempt to slide under my desk. When she’s done, she hands me my essay and at the top is a big letter A- same as the first week. I looked over at this Chinese girl sitting next to me and she had an A at the top of hers. Why didn’t Professor Cannon read hers? Doesn’t matter. She won’t select my essay next week she’ll select this Chinese girl’s essay.
“The top writer for week three is once again Mike Huggins.” I’m out of my fucking mind now. I’m seriously thinking of dropping the class. She hands me my essay after reading it and it is another A-. I decide I should challenge her on it. If others are receiving a higher grade then me then she should be reading their essay. After class I ask Professor Cannon about the minus next to the A. She tells me that I am making the same grammatical mistake on each essay. “It reads better,” I argue.
“This isn’t a reading class Mike. It is a writing class. I’m paid to teach you how to properly write,” she replied.
“It reads better,” I reply. I lose. My classmates were now rushing into class to sit next to me. I started arriving late to class. Nobody gave me a lunch invite. I would have accepted.
Professor Cannon read every one of my essays except for week #9. I couldn’t believe it. Nobody else could either. She read the Chinese girls. After class I challenged Professor Cannon. “Professor Cannon I believe my essay was better. I’m deeply saddened that I didn’t win this week’s top essay,” I joked.
“You did win Mike. But it was close,” she replied.
She then asked me if I would come to the English department teachers lounge after class the next day. I agreed. I went to her office, and she was reading some papers. She looked up, smiled, stood up and asked me to follow her. We walked down this hallway and entered a conference room. There was a long table with people sitting around it. I’d guess maybe 10 or so people. “This is him,” she announced upon entering. “This is Mike Huggins who wrote the essay.” Big smiles went across everyone’s face and I stood there very confused. They introduce themselves as faculty in the college. They shake my hand and ask if I’d be willing to join them and discuss writing. They asked me all about myself as a writer, how, what, where, why, and everything in-between. I couldn’t believe it.
In between classes I was reading a book by Stephen King. I think it was Gerald’s Game. On page 98 Stephen King made the same grammatical error as me. I found he also did it on page 118, 128, and on page 145. I marked the pages. The next day I arrive to class early with the book. I go up to Professor Cannon open up the book and show her the Stephen King grammatical errors. She takes the book out of my hand closes it and reads the title and authors name. “Mike, you aren’t Stephen King. When you have sold eight million books you earn the right to write any way you want,” she said“It reads better Professor Cannon. That’s why Stephen King writes it that way.” I lose again.
When I handed in my final essay to Professor Cannon, I said, “You have to give me an A on this week’s essay. I earned it. I have 10 A- essays and you’ve read all of my essays except one. I practically taught the class for you.” Professor Cannon laughed and said, “We will see Mike. We’ll see if you have learned to write.” Professor Cannon handed me back my final essay and at the top there was a giant A-. I lose again. She smiled and pointed to the note at the bottom, Mike, if you don’t pursue a career in writing I will hunt you down and kill you. --Imelda Cannon
I became an extreme paranoid after this English class. My wife started calling me Mr. A-. She still does.
A few years out of collitch I began thinking about this 60+ year-old English teacher who may be lurking somewhere waiting to kill me. How would she do it? Stab me to death while in a check out line at Safeway? Run me over in the parking lot? I decided I’d better pursue this writing career. The year was 1999, or 98.
I found an internet site for writers. It was called Themestream. They claimed traffic to their site was 500,000 daily. I decided I would just submit my 11 essays that all received A- and see how it goes. I selected two that I thought were my best and created an account and published them. After about three weeks I had zero subscribers and around eight reads. I added two more of my essays. I now had zero subscribers and 12 reads. I sent an email to the owners of the site. I wrote that a starving author could starve to death writing on Themestream. They wrote me back and said they reviewed my published articles and liked them. They told me that I can publish my articles in multiple categories and recommended a few. I did as they recommended. My readership grew and the subscribers were soon flooding in. After only a few months I received their five-star contributor rating and I was now able to receive money. My payment was ten cents per view on any article. It was raining dimes. I’d check my account before going to bed and discovered I made $38.20 while I slept.
I was twice voted top humorist writer on Themestream and my smiling face was featured on their home page. Many of the 500,000 daily traffickers clicked on my smiling face and were taken to my 300+ published articles. A hurricane of dimes rained on me. Themestream had a writing contest. First place paid $50K. I entered. I finished second. Probably a grammar error cost me the first place prize. It reads better.
Many contributers / authors wrote reviews on me. Here is one that Jim Huck wrote. I don’t have the full write up. It’s lost on one of the many crashed computers between 2001 and 2022. I one time had all of them. After Jim’s write up on me I believe I did do an article on him titled, WHAT THE HUCK IS THIS ALL ABOUT, or something like that. Jim is a High School teacher in Oregon.
A professor at the University of Kansas also published a review on me. Her name is Tina Blue. I’ve tried contacting her but she ignores me. I discovered she is retired. Maybe she wasn’t ignoring me.
I wanted to get her permission to tell this story. I think she’d say yes so I’m publishing it. Professor Blue’s article on me almost got me a job as a English college teacher at her university. In the article she mentioned that she was using my articles to teach her students. This sounds exactly like what Professor Cannon did. I should be getting paid for this. I emailed Professor Blue with an idea. Why don’t I come down and teach your class for a week--meet the author in person. She liked the idea. She submitted a request to whomever has the authority to say yes and pay my airfare, hotel, car rental, food and bar tab and it was immediately shot down. Shit. It sounded so fun. I’d like to hear Professor Blue’s take on this story. Here is a student review on Professor Tina Blue.
Here is where September 11, 2001 comes into this story and it gets real sad—for me as a writer. Prior to 9/11/2001 I was making around $650.40 a week as a writer on Themestream. Dimes were scattered throughout my house. To this day the dime is my favorite coin. Then three buildings in New York fall to the ground like a stack of dissolving pancakes. Fucking assholes. All of you know the story so I don’t have to go into it. Stock market crashes and so does Themestream. They owed me $869.30. That ended my career as a writer, but the fear of Professor Cannon attacking me for not pursuing a career in writing is always there.
I am now writing again so if Professor Cannon is still alive she can put away the knife. I don’t know who the speech writer is for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris but I think there’s some good opportunity for me as a political speech writer. It’s easy, set-up, punch line, set-up punch line, repeat and close with a strong promise.
Thanks to all of you who have subscribed to the Vaccine Reaper Report.
Author note: With the recent flooding of subscriptions that has boosted the number of subscribers up to 8, let me please introduce myself, and my writing credentials and anything else I can narcissisticly slide in so you know you won’t be waisting your time reading a fucking amateur writer. I know narcissistcly isn’t a word but it should be. And, I can never be considered a narcissist. A true professional narcissist would never admit they received a grade mark of A- on any written essay. I admitted to eleven of them. I’m a researcher, investigator of all things hidden and we all known these deviant fuckers like to hide things. In addition to being a very famous writer at the defunct Themestream, I also wrote for Zinos.com, The Whimsical Review and a few others that I can’t remember. I also had a very successful blog called the Homeless Comic. I am also the creator and Caretaker of the very famous Ghost Gardens in Washington State. Since the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine it is filling up fast. If you die suddenly, please come visit me. Now let’s go kick their fucking ass and stop this because I don’t have any more room in my garden.
1993