Chapter Fourteen - The Art of Saying Something Real

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Art of Saying Something Real

“I’M NOT GONNA look at a yellow door and tell you it means sadness. Maybe it’s just a yellow door.”

Let’s be honest: I hated English.
Not the language. Not writing.
Just… the class. The overthinking. The symbolism. The yellow doors.

You know what I’m talking about.
You’re reading a story, and someone says, “The author made the curtains blue because he was depressed.”
Maybe he just liked blue. Maybe the curtains were blue because he had blue curtains.
Not everything has to be a metaphor for existential dread.

That’s what made English frustrating for me. It often felt like a guessing game where the author was already dead and we were just projecting feelings onto inanimate objects. It didn’t feel like learning. It felt like decoding.

But sometimes… it clicked.

Take To Kill a Mockingbird. That book didn’t hide behind metaphors. It showed you the world. It didn’t make you guess what life was like, it handed it to you. It said, “This is what it was. Look at it.” And that? That’s powerful.

Same with books like Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and even The Old Man and the Sea (which I didn’t love, but I respected). When English gave us stories that painted pictures and let you feel something instead of dissecting it like a frog, that’s when I started to care.

And then… sophomore year happened.

I had a teacher who brought English to life in a way I didn’t expect. He showed us the opening scene from Inglourious Basterds, with Hans Landa and the farmhouse. You know the one. And he broke it down. Not in an annoying “What does the yellow mean?” way, but like a film director walking through art. Through rhythm. Tension. Subtext. For the first time, I saw English as something crafted. And it hit different.

Dude could also draw. I’m talking photorealistic dry-erase dragons and faces that didn’t even look like they belonged on a whiteboard. I still have photos on my phone. Don’t know how he did it. Total mystery. But major respect.

Then came senior year.
You had two choices.

Basic English: projects, presentations, and crafts.
Honors English: just papers. So. Many. Papers.

Everyone who’d been through it knew: if you wanted peace, take honors.
No dioramas. No shoe box scenes. Just write.
And I loved that.

See, turns out I’m a good writer. Always have been. Didn’t realize it back then, but now I’ve written books, so I guess that checks out. When I had something real to write about? Something I could express? I could go off. Give me a prompt and a reason and I could light that paper on fire with my words.

That’s what English is really about.
It’s not about analyzing curtains or color-coded sadness.
It’s about how humans express themselves through stories, structure, and voice.

That’s why the right books matter. That’s why the right teacher changes everything. Because when it’s done well, English becomes more than grammar and symbolism, it becomes a mirror. It shows us who we are, and how we communicate that to the world.

It’s not just a class.
It’s a language we’re all trying to get better at.
It’s saying something real and hoping someone hears it.