By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; B01
Nine-year-old Craig Wanda sat cross-legged on the rug in an Arlington County schoolroom, rapt as his mother described the most terrifying night of her life.
It was 20 years ago. Rebels had taken over the Ugandan government, and the fleeing army of the old regime was raiding towns, burning out homes and shops, and terrorizing the populace.
On this night, they attacked the town where Craig's mom, Joyce, was attending a girls boarding school. She and 800 other students were in their dormitories when school officials quietly rounded them up.
"We all just took a blanket and went into the auditorium," she said. "We were told not to utter a word or else we could be discovered. . . . Then myself and my cousin thought, we can't die in a crowd. We thought we should sneak out and hide elsewhere.
"We proceeded to climb on top of the building. . . . We could clearly see smoke from a distance and could hear some gunshot-wounded people running across the road. . . . I was so scared and so frightened, fearing that that might be the last time to live."
Craig frowned in concentration. He had never heard this story.
It was another breakthrough moment in Donna Sacco's memoir class in Room 203 at Arlington Traditional School -- a class designed to get fourth- and fifth-graders and their parents in touch with their inner autobiographers.
It would seem that America's obsession with the memoir has trickled down to even the Lemony Snicket set.
The class, which has about a dozen members, meets bimonthly and spends a couple of hours brainstorming, writing and consulting, and reading accounts aloud.
The children are not fending off literary agents -- their tales of homework and family vacations are more Reese's Pieces than "A Million Little Pieces." But the exercise is helping them forge bonds with their parents and putting them more at ease with writing.
Unlike James Frey, the author excoriated by Oprah Winfrey after parts of his drug memoir turned out to be fabricated, the writers in Sacco's class are encouraged to be creative and not worry about the structures usually imposed on them by work or school.
"I've seen so many kids who in class can't produce any writing because there are just so many rules," said Sacco, who teaches at the school and started the evening writing class five months ago. "In this writers workshop, I want the students and parents to find their voice and a flow to their writing. . . . There are no rules other than 'Respect your fellow writers and their work.' "
True to the no-rules rule, some children stray far from memoir into fiction. Boys, especially, tend to write about monsters or animals rather than reveal their thoughts, Sacco said, although Craig often writes about his father.
It is the parents who are the most enthusiastic memoirists. "I've seen them get even more excited [than the children] about their writing and taking time to think about the writing and developing a voice," Sacco said. "The parents are telling me they've always wanted to write, and it's a great outlet for them, something they didn't give themselves permission to do."
Some of their pieces are lighthearted. The quick takes on suburban life by Mike Rollin, a trade analyst for the U.S. Commerce Department, have titles such as "Laundry as Art" and "Ode to the Plumber."
Others dive to greater emotional depths. Mike Brock, a self-described "computer geek" by day, writes so his sons will know something about his life before they were born.
Brock has written about the first time he went fishing and about how afraid of the dark he was when he delivered papers as a boy in rural Rohnert Park, Calif.
"When you're rich and famous, you have people who kind of become chroniclers of your own history," he said. "But for the average Joe, there's really no one who's the chronicler."
Brock said it is especially important to share his childhood fears and anxieties with his sons, who have osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, and must limit their physical activities.
"A lot of the time, kids' image of their parents is that they're bulletproof. They'll live forever. They're the fastest, the strongest," he said. "I want to show that having fear and self-doubt, that's okay . . . to let [his son Miles] know that the journey that he's taking is not a solitary one."
On a recent Monday night, after coming up with "seed" ideas, parents and children scattered -- a boy curled up in the corner; a mom sank her elbows into a giant stuffed bear -- and got to writing.
Brock's son Miles Crank-Brock, a slight, bespectacled 11-year-old, approached Sacco for a consultation. In the past, he had written about Megorlon, the "ancient bug-like cyborg" that disrupts his family vacation to Japan. Today, his work combined his admiration for a song by the rock group Green Day and his disdain for the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But he spoke with such rapid-fire excitement that Sacco interrupted.
"Okay, now just think about just quieting your mind," she said. "Now think about just lying in your bed and listening to the song. You don't have to even answer, just think about what comes to mind."
Miles returned to his corner, and Sacco switched her attention to Rollin's wife, Miriam, 45, who was writing about her experience snorkeling in Hawaii. A few seats away, her 9-year-old daughter Sammi composed poems about dolphins and homework, and Mike Rollin, still in his work suit and tie, scribbled a stream-of-consciousness riff on slang words.
Grinning at his finished piece ("So off to the gym to get 'ripped' -- sounds too painful for me."), Mike Rollin explained the class's appeal.
"I do a lot of technical writing at work, but it's kind of fun to do something that's kind of offbeat," he said. "At home, you don't often have the time to escape."
Sacco, who is also a writer, likes to listen to older people share their stories. She had done similar work with her two daughters, who are 14 and 10. The three would go to a museum, split up and write, then reconvene and discuss their writings over tea.
Finding it a good way to connect with them, she decided to try the same approach with parent-child teams, including with her daughter Sophie Frank, who attends the class. "I just got a feeling like this was a good thing to do," Sacco said. She has also led an after-school writing workshop for boys, which, as with this class, she taught for no pay.
Miles says his father's writing has opened his eyes -- although not necessarily in the ways his father expected.
"He's never actually told me much about his past, so for me it's kind of a way to figure things out," he said. "Like how $5 would get you two big toys and one big expensive thing. It makes me wonder. Why does the economy now [make it] that $12 gets you a cheap brush that breaks?"
