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The last four days of my life have been incredible because of Steemit.

How can that be? I hear you questioning me.

Steemit is a platform to post what you think is quality work and get paid for it.

The market is down and everywhere you look people are either up in arms about how much money they are losing or the flip side of that coin, posts telling people to calm down. With all that happening, how in the Steemit world, with your middle of the road posts, have four incredible days been in your life?

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Magic.

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There is a hidden secret buried in Steemit that not many know about. The ones that have found this treasure, this magical beam of light, will know what I'm talking about. It has nothing to do with the money you make while using Steemit, just to give you a clue.

To make one thing very clear, in case you think otherwise, I am very poor financially in my real life. No need to say more.

My moods go up and down like any normal person but because I am mostly housebound, my moods go down more than most. I'm one of those wives when her husband comes home, he just hopes he walks in the door to a smile. Yes, he is a keeper.

Most of you know that I am a huge advocate for @mariannewest's Freewrite Challange. I will try not to bore you too much with all the details again.

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What does have to be said, is that I grew up with a very poor 1970's education.

What does that mean? It means that we were given too much freedom in school. The teachers didn't have to teach unless you asked for help. I don't know about you but when your eleven years old, can read and write, know some mathematics, what more do you think you need to learn? Nothing.

The thinking behind the learn at your own pace was to give children the freedom to feel less pressure in the classroom when someone was smarter than them. Without the pressure of always feeling behind, you, in turn, would have more confidence and ask the teacher for help if you didn't understand something. Right.

There was not one kid I went to school with, that asked a teacher for more work. As long as you were getting passing grades you were as happy as an eleven year old can be. and I was.

Passing a class back then and maybe now too, does not mean that you learned all you should have. All it means is that you get to go on to the next level, still having the same kids in your classes next year. Which I did.

Except for the year I flunked second semester English class. Failing the class because I never wrote the required tome with 100 footnotes plus the other 900 rules attached to that paper.

To graduate from high school that English class was mandatory to pass. This meant my Senior year in High School, I had one last chance to pass second semester English class so I could graduate.

No pressure at all for someone receiving D's all her life in every English class she was made to take.

Lucky for me, I was assigned the hardest, meanest English teacher in my High School to teach the class I needed to pass, to make my parents proud. No pressure there.

The second semester came. The joy of being a senior, walking into a junior class was so delightful. Every kid seated in that classroom knew why I was there. I didn't know any of them, was not looking for a new best friend, but it doesn't make it any easier walking in a room full of thirty kids, all thinking you are not the sharpest tack in the box.

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Walking to the seat farthest in the back of the room........

Yeah, I never got that far before the teacher called Battleaxe, honest I'm not making that stupid name up, said my name and pointed to a chair right in the front row. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow, she nodded back at me. Knowing it wasn't worth the fight, I took the front seat, to the left of the one she had pointed at. The lines were now drawn.

That first day, after class, I was asked to stay. Imagine that. I was not very happy about it. This was my last class of the day and needed to get to my job, which was an hour walk away. I stayed to hear what she had to say.

The hardest English teacher in the high school, that everyone dreaded to see on their class list, now held my life in her hands. She knew it and knew I knew it.

Mz. Battleaxe sat down next to me and with genuine concern asked me what I wanted out of her class. I looked her in the eye and even back then I never lied. I told her my English class story.

I told her about the crazy teacher I had for two years. How she spent the whole class talking about Julius Caesar as she was his long-lost wife. How she would spend the hour talking about everything and anything but how to learn English. Each week giving us the answers to the workbook questions. This way we had something to study from to be able to pass the weekly tests. Hmmmm.......

How after two years of her, I finally saw a male teachers name on my class list. Unfortunately, he had been to Vietnam. He had more than a few problem when he came back to the USA and resumed teaching English classes. He spent the year talking about everything and anything but how to learn English. I learned a lot from him but none of it had to do with an English class.

Having heard enough, the very smart Mz. Battleaxe asked the questions:

• Are you willing to do the work?
• Show up on time?
• Not disturb my class that all look up to you and to you for direction on how to act in a classroom? This question I rolled my eyes on.

The last, but by far not the least question she asked me, was spoken in a tone one adult would use to another. What was that question? The one that earned my respect for her that day and always.

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• Do you want to pass my class or do you want to learn, in the time we have, as much as you can about using proper English?

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The answer was a no-brainer. To finally have a teacher that cared, knew how to teach, was willing to not mark you absent from class because you had the only car to drive your best friend to the hospital to have her baby and the next day hand you a gift to give to your friend for that baby.

I worked my tail off for her.

I sucked everything up I could. I stayed after class asking 5th-grade questions I didn't know the answers to about English class.

I earned the respect of all those 30 other kids in that classroom when I wasn't afraid to show I didn't know something and needed the lesson for the day repeated once again. The kids that were too scared to show how much they didn't know were also grateful for that.

In one hour, I learned more about the English language then I had in the last twelve years of schooling.

To say Mz. Battleaxe became a friend to me would be wrong.

She was the best teacher I had ever had. She earned my respect. I earned her's.

All these years later, I still, like tonight, think of her, but friends? No.

She knew how to be a great teacher. It defined her. It was what she was meant to be. She offered you self-worth and respect if you earned it. She was the only person I ever went out of my way to earn respect from.

I was saddened by the fact that it had taken until my last year of school to finally know a real teacher. I was also grateful that I finally had a real teacher.

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What does this all have to do with Steemit, hidden secrets, and magic?

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Everything and nothing but I will let you figure out which is which.

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Four days ago I was chatting in the comments of a post with a new Freewriter. Zombies came into the conversation. I made a dare to this new freewriter. A person not new to writing. The dare was to use that days prompt, along with the words dead and zombie in their freewrite story.

For whatever reason, they never did. Being very polite they had drawn their line on what they were willing to do. Something I do almost every day and happen to respect.

With three words swirling in my head that needed letting out on paper, well, screen, monitor, a shiny thin box that holds all the worlds answers if you know how to ask the question, yeah that thing.

I then started to write. Knowing somehow I had to fit in the words ski, dead and zombie into my story. Hmmm......maybe I should have picked just one extra word! did happen to swirl through my mind.

Taking a deep breath, I set my timer for five minutes and wrote my little heart out using all three prompts.

Did I write a masterpiece? Nope.

Did I make it to trending with my post? Nope.

Did I get 100 votes? Nope.

Then why are you even bringing this story up? If you didn't make 100.00$ and it's not being talked about as the best story around in all the Discord groups why in heaven's name are you're writing a 2066 word story about it?

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Because.

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The tiny, middle of the road story, wrote by someone that learned the most they ever will about the English language, from a teacher thirty-five years ago, was the start of something magical. Something I have only ever come across on Steemit.

From that nothing story, sparked another story, written by another freewriter, that happens to be a very good friend of mine, that I was lucky enough to meet here on Steemit.

Their story was a wonder! They are a real writer. They do have the education to know mine isn't written as it should be but they respect the story anyway which in turns means they respect me. Just me. For who I am, as I am. That is not found in many places.

I find myself surrounded by many of this same kind of person when I am on Steemit. There is no, "Hey!" that's MY story!! get your hands off of it!"

What there is, is a person that see's beyond the errors, is inspired to add to the story, that just happened to make me laugh for a good twenty minutes, then leave that story still open-ended or not.

Over the last two days, I added Part 3 and tonight I was given the gift of the final Part 4. Again laughing for more than twenty minutes at how they got themselves out of the mess I had put them in and ending it coming out smelling like a rose. HA!

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Never have I come across a place where creative people are open and willing to share so much of themselves. How they will go out of their way just to make a person smile and laugh. How I have been excepted for who I am and how I am by so many, all in the same place, is just plain, sparkling magic!

I have had more people in my real life, in the last month, tell me how much happier I seem and I am. What is the only thing different in my life? Steemit.

Will the magic last? Will the secret get out and then as secrets and dreams spread, people try to crush them?

I don't know. What I do know is I am one freaking lucky person to have stumbled on to the people here on Steemit that I have. They have brought so many gifts into my life. I will never be able to thank them enough for excepting me for being me. All of me, not just the parts they want.

and that is my ramble for today.

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Snook

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If you are wondering about the Zombie story here are the links:

Part 1: Shimmer
Part 2: My Notes
Part 3: Pooof!
Part 4: Saves the Day

I hope if you have time and read them they give you as much joy as they have given me!

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