I'm still a journalism junkie

One day, I was on the phone with my momma reading her a blog post that I had written when she replied, “Lacy, you’ve had a pen in your hand since before you could read words. I used to always tell your father, ‘I don't know what it is about Lacy, but she is naturally drawn to pen and paper.’”

Unbeknownst to me at the time that I was born with the gift of writing, a really good memory and wit, just to name a few. However, despite the fact that I was born with these gifts, I had no recollection of the times of which she was speaking. In my immediate family, I am the second of two children, and almost the youngest in my graduating class. I started school a year earlier because it was private, my tuition was free and my father was insistent that my brother and I receive a great education.

After two years in my private school, everyone was allowed to take their desk home and my parents decided to place both my brother and me into the public school system. I grew up in a time before Google, AOL, Yahoo and other search engines existed. I, as every other child in my and previous generations, asked our parents, other adults and/or searched dictionaries and encyclopedias at the house, school or local library for answers to endless questions for our unquenchable curiosity.

In second grade, my curiosity eked a little bit higher when a guest speaker wrote the word “purpose” on the board. She asked, “Does anyone know what this word says and what it means?”

Without any hesitation, my classmate Christi raised her hand and replied, “Yes. I know what that word is and what it means. It means what you were born to do on the Earth.”

Unconsciously, from that point forward,  the word “purpose” stayed with me.

By the time I reached fourth grade, Princess Diana passed away and I began to learn and apply critical thinking and writing skills. The entire class wrote about this fictitious bird named Pancho. After the assignment was finished, my teacher informed my father: “Lacy does not write like your average child writer. She writes like this is her gift.”

After fourth grade, I got a new desk and continued writing stories about whatever my adolescent mind thought about.    Several catastrophic events, such as the mass shooting at Columbine High School, 9/11 and the Virginia Tech tragedy occurred between middle school, high school and college that kept me glued to the television, listening to the radio and occasionally reading the newspaper. I wrote my very first newspaper article as a freshman in college. It was the thrill of a lifetime. When I would go home for breaks in college, my father had saved up every newspaper and magazine from that fall or spring semester and I would not stop until I finished every single newspaper and magazine.

Almost 20 years later, here I am — a  proud millennial, Black woman with natural hair and dark skin who is still a journalism junkie.