I recently did an activity in one of my public writing classes that focused on making sense of the past through writing. Basically we were asked to write a memoir about our experience within a specific social institution (school, work, church, family, clubs, organizations, sports, etc.) and how that experience influences the way you see the world.
The brainstorming process consisted of writing three pocket memoirs about three different specific experiences. In the pocket memoir you recall the details of what happened in one moment, who was there, what was the setting, and how it affected you. The difficulty for me was picking one specific instance from years of experiences within social institution.
My three choices that I wrote about were (1) nearly spitting up the “body of christ” at my first communion, (2) falling off a horse for the first time, and (3) the day my teacher yelled at me for holding a pencil wrong in the 2nd grade. I chose the first option to write my final longer piece on--but the others were potential stories for future memoirs and I really enjoyed this activity! What would your pocket memoirs be?
