500 Words/750 Characters

LinkedIn invited me to write about my thoughts on mediation to settle conflict resolution. I picked the section on establishing rapport and trust. What I wrote isn’t important, even though it’s attached here. People like pictures, even if the images are more written. After starting, I found the exercise was limited to 750 characters.

In school, maybe around seventh grade, we sometimes wrote. As homework, an assignment would be a 500-word essay. Classmates would moan and groan about the length.

My first was as punishment assigned by the principal in seventh grade. On the first day of school, getting off the bus, another boy and I had a slight disagreement, witnessed by the principal, Mr. Walter K. Legg, a reasonable man, from his third-floor window. Expecting swats, he assigned us to write 500 words on the evils of settling disputes in a manner other than rational discussion. As I write this, I realize Mr. Legg was expecting my project for LinkedIn. We not only had to write it, it had to be signed by our parents and turned in the following day.

I took a piece of notebook paper and the whole 500 words on one 8 1/2 x 11-inch sheet and gave it to my parents for signatures. My dad squinted to read it without comment. I wasn’t sure of his reaction when I handed it to the principal. Maybe swats, after all. It was an act of defiance, after all. But, nothing. He read it and sent me on my way with some words I can’t remember but to admonish me.

As a side note, I learned nothing except that principals can be unpredictable. He was sent to seventh grade that year for a reason. The seventh-grade class was incorrigible the year before, and he was there to fix it. We would have him in again in high school. He was strict but fair. I respected him, not something I can say about other principals I had over the years.

As I grew older, the writing assignments grew longer. They were usually a certain number of pages, sometimes typed. Then came college and law school—always longer. Then came the practice of law and briefs, but now with a limitation on length. I had to cut words to keep it to twenty pages. I wouldn’t say I liked it when we were limited to only ten pages. But each challenge, each limitation, was a step in my personal growth as a writer.

And now I’m limited to 750 characters. This whole thing is 2736 characters, 497 words, and what have I really said? Essentially nothing. This is only slightly less than what Mr. Legg wanted in seventh grade. I would have preferred swats rather than to write 500 words for him. Today, it’s easy and doesn’t have to be signed by my parents.

Anyway, the whole point is how things have changed for me. I don’t expect anyone to find this as fascinating as I do.

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