No. 6,670

Wow!  That's the first word that just went through my mind as I looked at my blogger dashboard and realized that today would make the 6,670th posting on "Slight Detour" since it was launched more than nine years ago.

In fact, I just went back and looked to see the date of my first posting, and Blogger hadn't yet added dates to the format.  They started showing up in the format a few days later.

Hard to imagine that I've written so many postings with so many words.

To think of the good ol' days when we sat in those high school English classes and stressed into near panic when a teacher would assign us a 300-word theme.  

Yup, that's what they were called back in those days, and I don't know how long the 300-word themes lasted before the big change to a five-paragraph essay.

Eventually, we graduated to the 10-page research papers, and, in some cases, we had to produce more. 

In my writing career, I've gravitated from wondering how the heck I was gonna come up with 300 words to doing my darndest to write a short feature in fewer than 500-600 words.  

Back in high school, I can recall inserting a lot of "the's," just to add to the word count.  And, when I was in college, I learned the trick of changing the margins and adding extra spaces after some words (before we had machines that would justify the text)  so that ten-pages worth of stuff would happen much faster. 

In those days, I didn't realize I was so ahead of the times by adding those spaces within a string of words.  

Those were the days when we didn't really care much about quality because our minds were so focused on quantity.  Still, I received a lot of A's on my themes, essays or papers. 

In fact, I often shared the following story with my students, just so they'd know that I'd know what they were up to if they tried to plagiarize their way through a research paper. 

In our drama class at the U of I with Edmund Chavez, we were assigned research papers about famous playwrights.  

I picked George Bernard Shaw because I already had some information about him in a playwright notebook Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Moliere, etc. produced for Miss Ann Curtis' speech class in the ninth grade.  

Since that information was pretty minimal, I went to the library and checked about about 20 books with information on Shaw. 

Always enterprising but occasionally not so ethical, to reach the required page count for my paper, I used half the pile of checked-out books for information to lift directly or, as some people call it, plagiarize.

Aside:  I know now that I can never run for President because this and my mail stealing could be brought up to besmirch my reputation.

Then, my bibliography---as "Works Cited" was called in those days included only the books in the other pile.  I pretty much figured that if Mr. Chavez checked my sources, he would find nothing typed word for word from the original. 

So, I finished the paper, turned it in and waited.  Well, we did not get our research papers back until the day of the final.   Before the final, Mr. Chavez announced that we could pick up our papers AFTER the exam.  

Then, he announced that there was one paper in the stack which would have to be redone.  It was obvious, he said, that this person had just typed information verbatim from a bunch of different sources and that the entire paper was plagiarized. 

I cannot find the words nor could I even steal the words to describe my bodily and mental and emotional reaction to that announcement.  I can say that while taking the final exam, which counted for about one third of our grade, I lost my focus---to put it mildly. 

My mission from the time of Mr. Chavez' announcement was to find a way to turn in my test, sift through the pile of research papers, grab mine and run for my life. The opportunity eventually came when a bunch of students got up at the same time to turn in their tests.

Never mind that I had not even made it halfway through my final-----I bolted from my seat, scurried to the front of the room, threw my test on a table, found my paper and raced from the room, much like I do when Nature is calling loudly. 

Once outside the door, I took a breath and a look at my research paper.  

A+

Wonder how bad that other paper was, I thought as a giant wave of greatest relief up to that point in my life consumed my body.  

I walked back to my dorm thanking God and whoever else intervened in what I considered "my lucky day."  Reaching the dorm, however, I suddenly thought of another aspect of "my lucky day."  

I HAD NOT even finished my final exam. 

And, that was always the moral of my story whenever I retold it to students.  Until that day of that final exam, I had an A in drama.  After that day, even with the A+ on the faulty research paper, I earned a C in drama. 

Taking shortcuts, or as some would call it "cheating,"  will get you every time.  Next time I had a research assignment, the emotional turmoil of that drama class experience came back and reminded me that it's always best to get your grades the old-fashioned way:  to EARN them. 

Anyway, I got off on a tangent, thinking about posting on this blog 6,670 times.  Now to be truthful, back in the early days, every picture was an individual post until I learned that I could put the photos all on the same clipboard. 

So, those postings ran the numbers up, but I must say that for me to cringe at a 300-word theme these days would only happen because to boil it all down is hard work.  

Plus, I do like to put a little quality in with the numbers. 

Don't know how far the numbers will go as far as posts on Slight Detour, but it's still kinda fun, so stay tuned. 

Happy Friday.