Why structure is important to language

Joed Rea was the tallest boy in my fourth grade class. He was a firefighter volunteer. At first I didn't believe it even if he showed his firefighters ID. How could anyone be in grade school and have a job already? I was convinced he was lying. I told myself not to believe anything Rea said.

I was in fourth grade when I discovered writing. I'd buy spring notebooks and in them I wrote ghost stories, monster stories, detective stories, mystery stories, with a cover page and illustrations. I went wild about it. I mean, absolutely wild.

So did my classmates. Suddenly there was Rico, writing stories more exciting and fun to read than My Readers Book 4. What's more, I didn't end any of my stories with, "What's the lesson learned here? What's the moral? What's the theme?" I didn't even need to finish a story before my classmates devoured it. They'd ask, "Is it done yet?" I'll say, "I'm done with a chapter," and then they would read and pass around the notebook. I'd get it back later with them asking, "Then what happened? Write some more."

This happened for sometime until one day Rea (we called him by his last name) came up to me and said, "In your next story I want to be the monster." I thought he was kidding. Why would anyone want to be the bad guy in a story?

I did write Rea out to be a flesh-eating aswang in my next story. Halfway through the story, he said, "Each time a character says something, put quotation marks and start a new paragraph. That way it won't be confusing to read."

I said, "What?"

"That's how it's done in our books."

I looked and he was right. That was when I started to believe in Rea. It was a kindness that he came up to me and showed me what my work needed. That incident also started me on a journey of careful reading. No more was I reading our assignments just to be able to answer the teacher's questions that followed. I was really digging. I thought how come other writers tell stories better than others? How come there are characters and plots I can never forget, that make me sad or laugh? I noticed words for what they are, in their dignity and weight. I noticed choice of words, turns of phrase, punctuation marks. I took parts of speech and figurative language to heart. And as I read more, I wrote more. I wrote and I wrote, into high school, through college, and even after I dropped out of University. I went on writing.

Second year high school, I saw Rea on a noisy firetruck as it chased a blazing fire in the city. He was a firefighter after all! I yelled, "Hey, Rea!" but the sirens drowned out my voice. But I already believed he was one. I've believed it for years. Ever since he talked to me about quotation marks and paragraph indention, I believed him.