Greetings, fellow Post readers. My name is Leah Mailloux. I am a petite human who enjoys Simon and Garfunkel, banjos, beards, glam rock, acting, and photography. I also love words. That’s what brings me here.
It’s not just writing and reading them, but the way they fit together and create something that wasn’t there before. At least that’s what the palm reader at the Renaissance Faire told me about how I feel about words.
I love the way that letters become words, words become sentences, and sentences make you think, feel, laugh, and cry. I love the way they create stories, songs, poems, literature, and directions for board games. Let’s face it, if we didn’t have directions to board games, the world would cease to exist as we know it.
Whether my palms know things that I don’t, my Renaissance Faire mystic was absolutely right. I can’t begin to count how many cheesy, heartfelt poems I’ve written about guys that I now wish would be banished to a land where the floors are made of scattered Legos.
I have notebooks full of every kind of list one could think of: things to do, pros and cons, potential cat names, tattoo ideas, song lyrics, recipes, books to read, love letters, and bucket lists.
I like to keep and cherish simple words that cheer me up or make me feel loved. I have saved every single text and a very special voicemail from an old fellow of mine, and I have shoe boxes to the brim with birthday cards and graduation letters that I like to look through when I feel homesick.
These words keep me going when I feel I sometimes can’t.
My beloved bookshelf is just overflowing with words. Well, words and knick knacks. Sometimes the cat finds his way up there. Flapjack Tom Hanks Mailloux loves a good read, apparently.
I like to think he goes up there browsing for something to read while I’m at school; maybe a play script or a Dick Van Dyke biography, or a classic like Catcher in the Rye or The Great Gatsby.
Maybe he likes something not so classic like Soul Pancake or Is Your Straight Man Gay Enough? (Great gift, mom.) Somehow he knows to stay off the Harry Potter shelf. The “restricted section”, if I may.
Maybe he just likes to look at the pictures, you know, because he’s a cat. But I digress.
Overall, this is how I feel about words and what I want you to get out of my opinion pieces for the UWM Post. I want to make you think and I want to make you feel, just like all the things above have made me.