Memorizing Macbeth
McNeney, Arley

>>ARLEY: So my name is Arley and my story is about learning and being forced to memorize Shakespeare when I was a baby and learning how to read that way. When I was born my dad really wanted one of his kids to be a writer, that was sort of his kind of dream in life. So he would read to me from the time I was a brand new baby, like a week old, we'd read Macbeth. I ended up talking at a fairly age, I started talking early enough that babysitters would think that I was possessed by the devil because I woke up and I was like, "I want my mom." So my parents came home to this babysitter kind of cowering in the corner. So I was fairly precocious, ridiculously precocious as a kid and memorized from - underachievers were all just over a year and Macbeth tomorrow soliloquy which I would recite at parties, my parents would bring me out to recite this Macbeth soliloquy for quarters, not that I knew what a quarter was, or like chocolates or whatever. I think that's probably one of the reasons why I love writing today but also why I can still remember it, I still know it off the top of my head. I learned to read fairly quickly and would memorize other stories and stuff. I learned to write when I was three which ended up being a big problem when I went to school because I would devise my own way to learn how to write. I would start with my pen in my left hand and when I got halfway across the page I would switch the pen to my right hand or I would write with both hands together because I'm ambidextrous. So when I got to school there was a lot of forcing me to sit on my hands and forcing me to sort of pick a hand that I wanted to write with because I'd figured out in my mind it made perfect sense that when you got to half of the page you'd just switch the pen over to your other hand and keep going. So still when I'm stressed out or writing really quickly, I will look down and have both my hands on the pen while I'm writing with both hands at once. Or when I'm stressed out I'll start writing with my left hand. I actually cut my thumb open a couple of weeks ago slicing vegetables and the only way I could write on the board was to write with my left hand. The students didn't actually know that difference so it ended up being good that I could write with both hands. At the time when I was in kindergarten my teachers were very frustrated, there was a lot of tying my hands behind my back and making me sit on them. I think that's one of the reasons that I'm a writer today. My dad likes to take credit for the Shakespeare idea.

>>SPEAKER: Thank you.