A life's story, in six words

Before Twitter used brevity to speak volumes, SMITH Magazine launched what became a mini-phenomenon called the Six-Word Memoir.

Old mixtapes foreshadowing my postmodern troubles.

And before popularizing haiku-like autobiographical writing as fun for the entire family, magazine founder Larry Smith was the student council president at Moorestown High School.

"I was cursed with a happy childhood," says Smith, a 1987 MHS grad who remains friendly with several of his teachers and often visits his parents in the Moorestown home where he grew up.

Smith now lives in Columbus, Ohio, where his wife, writer Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black), is working on a book about the criminal justice system.

Asked for his six-word take on OITNB - the acronym for the Netflix show based on Kerman's autobiographical book about women behind bars - Smith offers:

An unexpectedly wonderful return to prison.

"My whole mission in life is to encourage people to tell their stories," says Smith. He encouraged Kerman, who did time on a drug-related charge, to tell hers. "I'm very proud of my wife."

Since SMITH Magazine issued a Six-Word Memoir challenge to readers in November 2006, it has received about one million submissions (sixwordmemoirs.com).

Smith's storytelling enterprise showcases its user-generated content online, at live events, and in print (an eighth book, The Best Advice in Six Words, will be published in September).

Personable, energetic, and blessed with great hair, Smith markets the Six-Word Memoir as a teaching tool in schools and a team-building technique in corporate settings.

The memoirs can be found inside iced-tea bottle caps (I have Asperger's, what's your excuse), on T-shirts (Threw spaghetti at wall. Some stuck), and on (where else?) Twitter, the 140-character social-networking tool that Smith credits with spreading the word on Six Words early on.

"It really was a game changer," he says. "Twitter had a tiny audience [in 2006] . . . but all of them had blogs."

Smith also solicited six-worders from celebrity friends such as Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert (Me see world. Me write stories!) to promote the project.

"But the heart and soul of it isn't celebrities," he insists. "The heart and soul is everyone."

Though some might attribute the popularity of the Six-Word Memoir to the digital enabler of attention deficit disorder known as the Internet, Smith sees it as an heir to the deeply and sometimes quirkily personal journalism of the 1960s.

The format, he insists, represents a democratization of what was the territory of literary types in 1920s Paris or writers for serious postwar men's magazines.

Now, "everyone gets six words," Smith says. "Including the librarian in Indiana who's never even written a letter to the editor."

Whatever one may think of the Six-Word Memoir (I find many mundane, but some are sublime), it's "a really brilliant idea," says longtime MHS Latin teacher David Rhody.

Smith credits Rhody, a beloved faculty member who retired in 2001 after 34 years, with deepening his appreciation of language. "My inherent love for words was amplified by Latin," he says.

So Smith was particularly pleased when Rhody responded to his request for a six-worder with a thought-provoking line from Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid.

Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit (Someday even this may be a good memory).

"It's a little sad, but ultimately, a perfect little bit of optimism," Smith says. "What do those words say? They say: Just keep turning the page."