My Writer’s Notebook: a Summer Brennan Essay Camp Write-Along School for Ants

an almost five things essay for day four, almost serious

1. The summer that I lived in Prague alone with our cat, while my husband was starting a new job and finding a flat in a recently-referrendum-ed Brexit UK, was the summer of moth hunting. Tom cleverly installed a cat net on courtyard facing window and almost every night a huge moth would fly into the flat. The cat went bonkers and after four or five moths we had our hunting routine down. If the moth was flying low enough, I would just hold the cat by his back feet and waist, leaving his front paws and little jaws free to grab his prey. But if the moth was flying too high in our high-ceilinged central European flat I would have to whack it down, injuring it, so I could hold up the cat and he could grab our prey. We caught every one, and he ate them all. I felt bad for the moths but I felt good helping the cat get in touch with his predatory nature. That summer is in the top five best summers of my life.

2. I don’t have many regrets — so far — but one I do have is this: I should have worn more black in high school. I knew what I wanted to wear; I knew what was cool. I should have trusted my personal style instead of allowing the fear of others’ opinions overpower my instincts. But maybe that’s a lot to ask of an introverted teenage girl.

3. One of the writing prompts for today is to write about an orange. I’m in a contemplative headspace so I could tell you about how I lied to the staff at my day care when I was four and said I was allergic to oranges so they wouldn’t make me eat them. That’s the complete story. Eating oranges is supremely unpleasant. The stringyness, the veinyness, and the stabbing of raw citrus into my naked tastebuds. The flavour of orange is nice, especially paired with a creamy vanilla ice cream. Even just writing about eating an orange slice makes my mouth nervous.

4. About once a day, I think about using Chat GPT to write me a really controversial post for the Am I The Asshole subreddit. But I won’t even let myself ask the bot to write the post. I’m afraid I would have to post it and that I would derive too much delight in — what I would hope would be — the chaos in the comments. Though the genuine test of how good Chat GPT is would be to ask it to write an obvious Asshole post, an obvious Not The Asshole post, and a controversial post that would split the decision. Would the posts be received as they were intended? How many comments would cry “troll”?

5. Come on Rachel, you can squeeze one more nonsense paragraph out of your brain. Maybe this is good enough for today.