Fin

The end of the semester is here. Already. I am ecstatic that I will no longer be following the same schedule and reside in the same place (I think I may be a nomad as I never remain happy being in one place for too long of a time...perhaps this comes from living in the same state, same town, in the same house, going to the same church, and doing the same things since I was three before I entered college?) Anyway, I'm really depending on the change for my own sanity, but I can't help but feel a small sense of loss. Like...even if I take another writing course, it will never be the exact writing course with the exact people in the Spring of 2009. Once you leave something behind, it's never the same when you go back. I've really enjoyed my writing courses this semester, but I fear that with the hustle and bustle of beginning a summer job my writing will eventually dwindle to nothing. I hope this doesn't happen, but like a New Year's Resolution or a weddings vow promises and dedications always start out strong until someone gets discouraged.

The Messenger

Yesterday I took a ride
On a robin’s back

The autumn weather was growing dark
And a sweater was required

I held the feathers on his back
As we took off into the brisk air.

Then something magical happened—
People shrunk!

And someone must have spit
Where the old pond used to be.

Below us littered colors of fall,
Golds, browns, and reds.

We followed the curve of the earth
Chasing the sun

I whispered, could sit on a cloud for a bit?
But he said we had no time.

For winter was at his tail
And summer was towards the sun.

A decaying leaf bitterly kissed my face
A jealous attempt to disrupt our mission.

We swooped near the ground,
And a little worm danced an invitation for breakfast.

What a friend, I thought,
To dance for your devourer.

The air became warmer,
And I shed my sweater.

Below us brighter colors now claimed the earth
And I thought I saw a daisy wave.

I asked why we had come this far
And he said it was his job.

To live on earth
As a symbol of change.

Creative Non-Fiction

Some had vacation plans to visit beautiful beaches, or even sit in front of a television for a week, but my spring break did not prove adequate in supplying me with my much needed escape from an already long semester. I had worked at the daycare every day since I left school for my spring break, and although I was completely broke, I began to regret making the commitment to work everyday. Instead of the children being tiny little imitations of larger runny-nosed people from when I had last seen them, they now marked tiny little imitations of runny-nosed people who talked too much.
I was supposed to be changing diapers, but had to instead work on getting Cameron’s temperature. He had complained of not feeling well, and there was a stomach virus going around the daycare. Dante, a two year old with large brown eyes and soft, curly, unruly, dark hair that stuck up everywhere giving him an afro, was learning to be potty trained. I asked him if he wanted to use the bathroom…a mistake on my part. He replied that he did, which meant that he really just wanted to sit on the toilet for about 10 minutes before realizing that he already peed in his diaper. I called in another worker to help him while he waited in the bathroom since his height was equal to that of the toilet, and he would probably need assistance. After about 30 seconds, however, the incompetent moron left him in there alone. I tried keeping Cameron still on the changing table while I held the thermometer under his right arm. Meanwhile I tried keeping an eye on the other children to ensure they didn’t kill each other. They were climbing on the shelves, pulling each other’s hair, and probably running around with sharp objects. I don’t really know. I didn’t think Dante would be too long, and I didn’t think…well, after a long day of screaming children, I just didn’t think.
I was focused on taking Cameron’s temperature with a broken thermometer when I suddenly heard Dante’s chipmunk-like voice echo a loud, “Ohhhh ma-a-a-an!!” from within the bathroom. I immediately pictured the worst. I could see myself walking into the bathroom with Dante standing in two inches of water as an entire box of Legos remained in the toilet which had caused it to overflow. I could’ve killed him, even though I didn’t know what the problem was yet. My tired mind raced as I glared at the other brats running around screaming in tiny circles and throwing every last possible toy off the shelves. A headless Barbie flew past my head; her poor naked body was no where to be found. Several page-less books littered the floor, and amongst all of the other mess, someone had thrown up in the corner. Maybe I could just close the door and pretend that I had forgotten about him. In fact, maybe I could put the other kids in there too. What was I thinking? People get arrested for things like that, and I would probably cause the poor kid unknown emotional disasters. Years down the line I would probably read about a young boy who erupted with many psychological problems, and no one would know where his emotional distress evolved from; but I would. By the way, kids make you crazy and cause you to go on random tangents like the above.
After I heard Dante’s cry for help, I immediately snapped.
“Dante, I’ve had it! Get out of the bathroom now! You’ve been in there for too long!” I yelled.
I took the thermometer out from underneath Cameron’s arm who up until this point had just stared at me with uncertainty through the tops of his eyes like I didn’t know what I was doing. I carried him off of the table and as I turned around, Dante waddled through the bathroom door. His gray sweatpants were down around his ankles, and he was holding his arms out rigidly. His eyes were wide and held a look of shock, and his little jaw was chattering.
“I cold!” he squeaked.
“Dante! What in the world did you do?” I asked confused, but trying not to laugh.
“I-I c-cold! I w-wet and I cold!” he replied as he looked at me with wide eyes, and as his rigid body shook.
“You’re wet? Why are you wet?” I asked as he stood there nodding at me. I turned him around and glanced at his back. His pants down at his ankles revealed a bare bottom which had water dripping down it. The back of his shirt was soaked and had turned from a bright red to a darker shade.
“I-I falled in da toilet!” he stuttered wide-eyed.
I turned my face away so that he couldn’t see me laugh. He wasn’t crying or upset as I later thought he might especially after facing what he probably saw as a near death experience. After all, wouldn’t you be terrified if you were only about two feet tall and almost fell into the seemingly endless abyss of the toilet? He was a tough little kid, and I was happy he wasn’t upset over the incident because although I was ready to get my tubes tied after that week, tears would have broken my heart. I cleaned him off and got him a fresh change of clothes. I took a sip of water from my water bottle and silently wished it contained alcohol when the next teacher came to take over my group. My shift was over, and I practically threw kids out of my way as I ran out of the building to my car.

Today's Class Critique

As I mentioned in class I was really frustrated with my story after I wrote it. I think I had certain expectations and ideas and NOTHING came out on the paper. I really just wanted to rip it up but the deadline was near and so I turned it in anyway. The comments in class were VERY helpful however. I got a lot of really helpful tips from everyone in class and I feel a little better about where my story may go. It made me realize how much I truly value the workshops that we do in class. It not only greatly helps me with my individual pieces, but also helps me with my writing when I can evaluate and critique others' work as well. I can't believe how quickly the semester has gone and I'm really going to miss this class. I think it idea of having writing workshops is a vital aspect of the writing experience.

Another Attempt at a Poem

Waves

The ocean’s rhythmic waves are like a dance.
The art of making love;
Deep sighing in and out.

The push and pull of both the earth and sea;
Two body’s give and take;
Most powerful release.

A pulsing in the air that burns the throat and nose.
It is the sweat of sea,
And saltiness of skin.

A small blue tear that blocks what is my sight;
Bright sun that does reflect,
Green ocean of your eyes.

Roused moaning and soft crying of the sea;
Its hum which give the night
Sweet rhythmic sounds of waves.

Story for Monday 4/20

That’s What Friends Are For
“Everyone is meeting at my house at six,” Doreen had said. “Everyone” referred to a small group of us who had remained close friends since high school. January 2nd was a brutally cold and windy night. I pulled onto Doreen’s small dead end street a few minutes late, and to my surprise I was the first one there. With my teal-colored low-cut cocktail dress and red leather wallet in hand, I walked up to her door and rang the bell. My bare arms immediately erupted with millions of little goose bumps, and I regretted the decision to leave my jacket in the car.

After several minutes, when no one came to the door, I started to become very frustrated. I was tired, cold, hungry, and had the worst migraine but I knew these dinner plans were really important to Doreen. I walked back to my car and turned the heat on as I pressed the speed dial on my phone to reach Doreen. Before I could bring the phone to my ear, a knock at my car window startled me. Louisa stood outside with a cheesy smile and waved frantically as she pointed to the inside of my car. Her father dropped her off as her car was in the shop, and she asked to wait in my car. She was wearing blue jeans and a stylish scoop-neck t-shirt with a pair of yellow heels that seemed a little too big for her. Louisa always had a unique sense of style and it matched her unique personality.

Doreen finally picked up on the other end of the phone, and I placed my index finger to my mouth and asked Louisa to hold on a moment.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hey babe! I’m on my way home from dinner right now, I’ll be there in about five minutes. Sorry I’m late! I’ll see you in a little bit?” She spoke so fast I didn’t realize until after she hung up that she had said “on my way home from dinner.” Frustration began to fill my car as the smooth jazz over the radio attempted to sooth my temper.

We both agreed that we were starving, and that the last we heard we were all going out to dinner…although now it sounded as if plans had changed. I wasn’t too surprised due to the common knowledge that plans often changed at the last minute with Doreen; however it was cold, and we were hungry, and I wasn’t thrilled about going out in the first place. Several minutes later, Louisa and I watched the rest of our friends as well as Doreen pull onto the street outside Doreen’s house. They were all dressed in cute pants and tops, and I glanced down at my classy cocktail dress and the high heels on my already sore and suffocating feet.

We all got out of our cars and began to meet in the middle of the road. Apparently Louisa and I were the only ones who were not aware of the change of plans, and everyone else filled us in that we were not going out to eat at a nice restaurant, but to a club instead. Normally I would have enjoyed going to a club, but I knew that clubbing meant we wouldn’t be back home until very late and I had to be at work at 6:45 the following morning. I was so hungry stomach was beginning to eat itself, and when I realized I didn’t have the proper attire for a club, I really began to wish I stayed at home. When she mentioned that the club was about an hour away-in Pennsylvania I almost turned around and got into my car to drive home. I’m fairly certain in a few years that will be the new typical ironic and sarcastic saying. Conversations will begin:

“I really am going to start going to the gym more often this year.”

“Oh yeah right…when there’s a good club in Pennsylvania”.

I put my frustrations aside, and followed everyone into Doreen’s house where we all prepared to get ready. I borrowed some of Doreen’s clothes, and they promised Louisa and I that we could make a stop at a McDonalds or something. McDonalds certainly wasn’t the fine dining I was hoping for, but it would keep my stomach from growling at me. They also promised that we would be back by one o’clock. I reminded myself that it was Doreen’s birthday and she was a good friend, and that it was important to her that I was present.

After about an hour of playing with our hair, makeup, and wardrobe all seven of us crammed into two cars, and made our way to the club pitifully known as Montana West. The outside was surrounded my cornfields and the smell of cow manure, and I knew this was going to be a long night no matter how early they promised to leave. We walked into the door, paid the cover charge, and got our hands stamped. Some of us were still under 21, including myself, which meant that the stamps on our hands signified humiliation and a miserable night to come.

We walked into the club and I glanced around. It was still early, and the place was pretty empty. The walls were decorated with cowboy hats, beer labels, old country records, bull horns, and various other items that I didn’t look at long enough to notice. There was a dull lingering smell of old cigarette smoke and booze. The bar was roped off from the rest of the club, and it was impossible to get in unless your hand bore the right mark. In one corner was a mechanical bull which greatly added to the country “in-the-middle-of-nowhere” feel.

The time seemed to drag on, but an hour or so later, the club began to fill up with what looked like a bunch of kids who recently turned 18 and were overjoyed at the prospect that they could now go to a club. The typical girl had bleach blonde hair, a mini skirt, and a little tight top with love-handles hanging out as an added accessory. The typical guy was skinny and wore Abercrombie or American Eagle gear. One of the skinniest of them all assumed that he could come up behind me and dance with me. Although I moved away from him, he continued to follow me, dancing like a dumb slug that hasn’t used the bathroom in a while. I finally managed to get rid of him. I realized I was in some farmer’s land daycare, and I couldn’t even escape to the “big kid’s side” because I was a few months short of being twenty-one.

Those of my friends who were twenty-one escaped to the bar, and had been there for a while when I went to sit down at a little table on the side, along with Louisa and another friend of ours who also both bore the confining mark on their hand. We sat at the tiny table for almost an hour and a half before we finally saw the rest of the group. They clearly all had fun drinking, and came back laughing, some of them with random guys hanging on their shoulders. We tried being nice, but I’m fairly certain everyone wanted to start throwing punches. At least I did.

“Aww…are you miserable and sober?” The question came from another girl who slurred her words, whose eyes were glassy, and she had to lean on the table to hold herself up.
The much desired drive home wasn’t any better. We had to pull over several times so another friend could throw up. She sat in the front passenger side and moaned and complained the whole ride home. By this point I was majorly PMS-ing and was not only bloated, and extremely moody, but also feeling extremely sick myself. I didn’t have a single drink in my system, but every time I heard her choke on her vomit, my hand fumbled for the door handle in fear of my own stomach revealing its insides of the McDonalds I had eaten earlier. I tightly closed my eyes and tried to block out everything that was going on around me. When we finally reached the familiar bumps in Doreen’s dead end street, I opened the car door, and without so much of a good-bye, got into my car and cursed the night and Pennsylvania in the silence of my car.

Attempt at an Off-Rhyme Poem

Music

David and Solomon;
Their sonnets are a song.

Songs that come from your lips,
Spill like the lit night’s light.

The rose wraps the bud like
A robe. I wrote it down.

A script marked in strong stone;
Once a stone in the storm.

The whining of the wind
Played the whim of my words.

This show drops its curtain
Like a shawl that falls short.

This music hits my heart
Like hot running water.

The Psalms sing the many
Songs I wish I could write.

To Write or not to Write...but What?

I've been realizing more and more that every time I sit down to write something, I have a million different thoughts, ideas, emotions, and even genres that I want to explore. For example sometimes I don't even know if I want to write poetry, non-fiction, fiction, or try a play or children's story. I think that this stops me a lot of times simply from writing at all. Rather than just writing out the mess that is in my head, I let it all sit in there (in my head) and rot. I feel like all of my writing this semester and lately in general has been dry and bland.

Writing use to be something that was so engaging and intoxicating that I couldn't stop. Then one day I did for some reason. Maybe I got a really time-consuming job or something, I don't really remember. The point is that I stopped writing and now I have an overload of ideas that are all rather dull and can't really find a direction once I set them on paper. (If I even get that far.) I keep telling myself that this winter break, or this spring break, or this summer, etc...I will really buckle down and start writing again; however I never seem to get to that point. Therefore I think I just need to start writing right now. I feel anxious but excited. Maybe once I clean out the clutter in the attic of my mind (cliche, I know) and weed through all the junk, I might be able to find something in there that is worth saving.

High Concept?

I'm not so sure this idea would qualify as a "high concept" but it is something I am considering writing about. Many stories, predominantly fairy tales, begin with "One upon a time" and end with "happily ever after", but what happens after the "happily ever after" part? Does life suddenly end? Or does the fairy tale have to end because it is after all not so happy after the romantic prince wins his beautiful princess, and the two marry and ride off into the glistening sunset on a white horse? I think it might be a good premise for a short story, although I could be wrong. The title I have in mind needs quite a lot of work, but for right now it remains "Happily Never After".

Angels and Alley Cats

I suppose my mother truly does love me, and if you want to know the truth, I love her too. After several years of some serious contemplating, I know she really is not crazy either. There have been many times when she does not leave things alone, and cannot seem to allow fate or destiny to take care of certain situations. Perhaps you know a mother like this? Don’t get me wrong, my mother is not one of those over-protective moms who chases after her gawky kids with a crinkled old tissue and an inhaler while tripping over her ankle length, floral skirt which seems to scream “I have nothing better to do than to ruin my child’s life!”
No, my mom was never that awful, but there were those occasions when the phrase “mother knows best” became such a painful ring in my ears and a pain in my stomach that it was as if I had just eaten month-old tuna casserole. I don’t mean to complain. I know that I was blessed to have had a mother who was so involved in my life; it’s just that there were those times in which she was too actively involved. There is one incident that sticks out in my mind like an annoying thorn inside your sock.
I was thirteen years old, and I was prepared to begin my sixth year playing softball. It was late March, and the cold harsh winter months were finally melting away, becoming more and more like a bad dream for those of us who counted down the days until we could run freely outside again without worrying about millions of layers of clothing. The ground was soft and the air was cool but sun felt warm on my face and it promised an early summer. The trees were beginning to bud and there were a few plants and flowers that had broken through their earthy prison. I had just gotten notice of the name of the softball team that I would be playing on for the spring season. Usually there was only one team per town, but we had so many girls who thought they could play softball, that the town board had to start another team. The first team was known as the Alley Cats, and the second team was known as the Angels. That particular year I was an Angel, and I could not have been happier with the decision.
I had walked out to our shed and found my trusty old softball mitt. The brown leather felt soft and warm, and if it could have talked, would have said, “Welcome back!” Some of the edges were worn and in some areas the stitching was beginning to come loose from all the years of hard games and the hundreds of spills and slides to scoop up a grounder. I could smell the mixture of leather and dirt from the glove and when I slid my hand into it, it fit perfectly as if it was made for my hand. I held my glove in my lap while I looked over the team roster for my new team. Most of the girls on the team were good friends of mine, and good ball players as well. I could already tell that the season was going to be a good one. My friend Beth was a power hitter and had hit many homeruns in the past, Robin caught every ball which made her a great first baseman, Katelyn was the best pitcher in the whole town, and I was the fastest.
Besides the girls on the team, the coach was in our minds the best. The Angels’ coach was a well known man around our town, known as Coach Palmer. He spent many hours with his softball team, which had me believing that he really cared a lot for his the girls on his team. Several girls played softball due strictly to the fact that they heard the rumors of the coach who would take all the girls out for ice cream or pizza after every game. He would have the team of girls over his house on certain nights for “pajama and pizza night” where we would gather with sleeping bags and watch movies until 10 or 11 at night. He would also offer to work one on one with girls to help them improve their skills. Everything had looked great. And then my mom called me to come back inside.
“Clair!” she called.
“What do you want?” I answered; annoyed that she had pulled me from my trance.
“Where are you? Are you still in the shed? Come on inside. You can help me with dinner.”
By the way, if you want to ruin someone’s good mood, ask them to set the table.
I trudged into the house with my mitt and roster in my hand. The house smelled sweet of garlic, and sausage, and warm rolls. Mom was always a really great cook. She was bending over the oven taking the rolls out, and careful not to burn herself quickly put them one by one into a basket lined with a small white dishtowel. She took her attention off of the rolls, and turned towards me when I had opened the door.
“Please take your muddy shoes off outside. I spent all day cleaning this house, and scrubbing this kitchen, ---“
I interrupted the rest of her statement with the slam of the door. I had heard the same exact statement every single day since I was old enough to be able to recognize words. I now know in my older years and in my own experiences as a mother, that there was no way she ever could have cleaned and scrubbed the house every single day, unless of course she truly was superwoman.
After leaving my shoes and glove by the door, and after washing my hands of course, I had started to set the dinner plates around the table. We had a family of four, but my older brother was not going to be home that evening, so I had only set three settings around. Although the days had begun to get a little longer, it was dark by seven and Dad would be home shortly.
“Are you excited for the start of a new softball season?” Mom asked sweetly.
“Oh yeah! I can’t wait. We got the best team this year! Beth and Katelyn are on the Angels too, so--“
“You aren’t playing on the Angels this year.” She said it as if I should have already known.
“Yes I am, I got the roster right here! See, here, right there’s my name,” I pointed to my printed name on the wrinkled paper.
“You have the roster.” She corrected me. “Yes you were on the Angels. I don’t have a good feeling about your coach, and I don’t feel comfortable with you being on his team. I was talking to some of the other team moms and this new coach for the Alley Cats sounds like a really great guy. They must have sent you the old roster before I called and asked them to change it.”
My eyes began to swell with tears, and she must have noticed because she followed with, “I guess I should have asked you first.”
I didn’t let her go on any further. “Ma, you have to change it back! We had the best team! It’s not fair!” I felt the tears spill out from my eyes and roll embarrassingly down my cheeks. I wiped them away quickly before I began again. “Why are you always doing this? You’re always ruining my life! You have to change it back!”
“The deadline ended yesterday.” She stated as she wiped the streaks of mud-stained tears from my face.
I hadn’t expected her to understand. She had probably never picked up a softball or a bat or glove in all her life, except to throw mine out on the porch from time to time. My mother was the all-American mom. She always tried to put her family first. She gave up a career to stay home with her children and had a specialty in, and among other things, cooking, cleaning, walking the dog, making school lunches, and making boo boos all better. Her hair curled at her shoulders and she always complained that she never had time to make it look nice. She had a slim figure from running around and chasing after the duties of being a stay at home mom, and she maintained a healthy diet not only for herself but for her family as well. I couldn’t remember a holiday when she wasn’t busy over the stove for at least two days, cooking and preparing a homemade meal fit to feed an entire town full of kings. She also always knew exactly where her children were and what they were up to. She was a great mother, but when it came to sports and friends and other things which any pre-adolescent holds dear, she just didn’t seem to understand.
The next day I walked home slowly from school. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. When I walked up to our driveway, mom was already in the green minivan, and waiting with the engine running.
“I was just going to go look for you! Hurry up or you will be late. I have your gear in the van already. What took you so long? You aren’t still moping are you?” I might have answered her if I could, but she continued to ramble on like a motor boat in need of a good tune-up.
I sighed as I got into the front seat of the van. As we pulled up to the field, girls that I had gone to school with, but was not particularly friends with, were playing catch in the field. After my mom had driven off with a friendly and encouraging smile, my new team members gawked at me as I walked up with my sad mitt in my hands. I was less than enthused. Coach Blunt walked towards me and introduced himself. He had a cheesy grin on his face which I believed to be artificial, and I immediately did not want to like him. I knew that if I was on the Angels’ team I would have had a coach who was fun and who cared about his teammates.
I had continued to refuse to talk to my mother for the rest of the night. She had picked me up from practice, and I barely looked at her as I got into the minivan. I looked out of the window the entire ride home, and when she asked me a question I completely ignored her. I continued this form of punishment all through dinner as well. It wasn’t until before I went to bed that she finally questioned my silence.
“You have been awfully quiet tonight. Did something happen at school today?”
I ignored her obnoxious and naïve question. I might have replied, “Of course Mom…it was school. School is the detriment in a person’s life, and is by no means their parents,” but she probably would have believed it to be the truth, and would have taken it as a compliment.
I walked past her without even looking at her. If I looked at her, her angry glare might scare me out of my act of stubbornness, so I quickly brushed past her without saying a word and went to my bedroom. I heard her demand that I come out and explain to her what the problem was, and I could picture her out in the kitchen with stains from cooking on her apron, hands defiantly on her hips, and a frustrated facial expression.

Our first game of the season was in two days and as fate would have it, was being played against the Angels team. Considering it was the beginning of the season, my team was pretty good however I knew we were not good enough to beat the Angels. At the end of practice, Coach had our team huddle together while he discussed the positions we each had to play for our first game, but I had not been listening. All I could think about was how embarrassed I would be. All of my friends on the other team had become my rivals. I knew they were going to laugh at me, and never let me forget how poorly some hit on our team, or how funny we looked trying to catch fly balls which never seemed to be caught. I knew they would point and laugh because I used to be one of them. I wished so badly now that I could turn back time and stop the laughter and the mockery of other less fortunate teams. Perhaps then they would have had mercy on me in the upcoming game. I was more furious with my mother at that point than at any other time.

The next day I arrived at the field to find my team alone standing around in a huddle, and looking dazed. As I ran up to my team with my mitt and my lucky bat in hand, the coach announced that because the other team was cut that we would simply have a short practice in place of the game for the afternoon.
What did he mean “cut”? My mind raced. Why weren’t we having a game?
After spending the previous night and the past morning coming up with nasty and catchy comebacks to spew off at the other team, I wasn’t going to settle for a lack of answers. As the rest of my team started for the field to practice, I ran up to my coach and began to ask questions.
“Hey coach!! What d’ya mean the Angels got cut? ”
“They don’t have a coach anymore. You can’t have a team without a coach.”
“What happened to their old coach?”
He turned and said in a stern tone, “It’s really not a subject that is up for discussion.” Then he smiled and stated, “Let’s go practice, eh?”
I didn’t ask any more questions after that, although I still had my curiosities, and many rumors began to spread. Regardless, I didn’t have to hear from Robin, or Beth about how bad our team was, and to be quite honest we actually did pretty well throughout the season. We won all but 4 of our games, and I think that even I improved a little that season. I really ended up appreciating my teammates, and by the end of the season I knew I was actually going to miss them. I was actually happy that I ended up on this particular team, and although I would never admit that to my mom, I figured that it would be alright to forgive her.
At first I had no interest in giving Coach Blunt any respect, and I believed he felt the same. During one of the first practices I stole and slid into the bases repeatedly after he had said that he wanted us to run through the bases. He apparently was just as stubborn as I was, and in turn made me run around the bases a few times while the team watched. We continued to have these battles as I would look for ways to make his job harder, and he in turn made me practice harder. As the season continued however, I began to like Coach Blunt. He made us run and he made us work, and we became better because of it. I remember one occasion in which I kept striking out during one game. I was near tears because it was the bottom of the ninth. I knew the fate of the game was in my hands and so far I had not had much luck. Before I went up to bat, Coach Blunt pulled me aside and told me to simply pretend it was nothing more than another practice. After all due to my rebellion I had a lot of practice hitting balls. I hit a double after that. I’ll never forget how excited I was when I ran full speed to the second base, and I turned and looked at the coach who gave me a smile and a thumbs-up.
Regardless of my initial stubbornness, Coach Blunt was really a great coach. We learned a lot from him and our teammates created good bonds and friendships amongst each other. Throughout the first few practices, we had already begun to develop a family out of our small team. We practiced hard, and played harder, and every individual on the team put forth a great amount of effort. We all worked hard, and we appreciated the fruits of our efforts.
I could remember how most of the mothers, mine included, did not seem to like the Coach Palmer as much as we all did. I didn’t really understand at the time why they wouldn’t like him, however not every one of the girls liked the coach. I remember one girl in particular, Jennie, who was much more physically developed than the rest of us girls at that early age. I remember I was jealous of her curvy body. One day after practice during the prior year, Coach asked her to stay after everyone else left in order to work on her swinging. The next day Jennie did not show up to practice, nor did she show up for the rest of the season. I heard rumors that her parents made her quit the team due to the fact that her grades were suffering, and many other rumors spread too.
That year many rumors spread as to what happened to the team, to Jennie, and to the coach. Some kids said Jennie was his long lost daughter, while others claimed that he was actually part of the CIA and had to escape to some lost island immediately for protection. More and more rumors spread, although as the years continued the rumors eventually died out. Still, most didn’t want to believe the truth that such a nice guy could be capable of the crimes he was convicted of. After a while the issue was dropped completely and people moved on with their lives. There were boyfriends, proms, and cars to worry about, and that one softball season was forgotten about. Several days ago however, during my weekly conversation with my mom, the topic was brought up after many years of being stifled.
We began the conversation with our hellos and she inquired about my past week.
“Oh, it was busy.” I held the phone between my cheek and shoulder in order to free my hands for washing dishes. “The kids had the flu, and Rick had to work late all this week to finish a project,” I sighed. Rick was my husband whom I was married to for 8 years already.
“Well why on earth didn’t you call? You know, I could have made soup…have they been eating? And…”
“No mom,” I cut her off. “I find joy in starving my children.” I didn’t feel like listening to what I should have done.
At that point, I looked at my own children watching the baseball game on our small television screen in the living room. Both of them, Emma and Michael, were sitting together. They were twins and were inseparable and had been since they were born 6 years ago. I smiled not only at the fact that they were close, but because they were watching baseball, something both my husband and I greatly enjoyed. My vision drifted to the TV screen where there was a close up of the pitcher. He reached down and scooped some dirt into his hand and crumbled it until it fell back to the earth. He then wiped the dirty hand on his white game pants, leaving behind a light brown smudge. Seeing the smudge on his pants reminded me of the stains I would come home with after a game of softball when I was younger.
The winning team was up by 6 runs, and it occurred to me that they were doing much better this year. A year ago they lost their coach due to illegal distributions of steroids, and the team fell apart and had ended the season with many more losses than wins. My thoughts then turned to the last year I played on the Alley Cats and how the Angels had lost their coach, and I brought it up in the conversation with my mom.
“Hey mom, you remember that year I played softball on the Alley Cats team?” I inquired.
“Oh let me see…sure, uh huh. You seemed to have a lot of fun that year. I’m glad you didn’t end up on that other team.
“What ever happened to Larry Palmer?” I asked.
“You never knew? Many parents felt uncomfortable with him to begin with, but after he was convicted of molesting that poor girl…” her voice began to drift, whether in dismay or loss of memory I was unsure. “Anyway, he pleaded not guilty in court but there was too much evidence against him. I don’t know how he thought he was going to get away with it. Out of respect for that poor girl and the rest of the girls on the team they decided not to start another softball team that season. Oh, remind me to give you a recipe for this great…..”
She continued to ramble on but my mind had drifted. Although many years had gone by since I had played that season, I never understood how my inattentive mother knew enough to take me off of the Angels’ team. While I had believed that softball was something she knew nothing about, she somehow knew better than I what was best for me. At that point, I looked back to my own children whose faces were only inches away from the television screen. Cutting of my mom mid-conversation I yelled at them to back away from the TV screen; that they were going to ruin their eyes if they sat too close. My mom began to laugh on the other end of the line and exclaimed,
“Goodness, you sound just like your mother!”

Lois Lowery and Her Writing

I recently finished “The Giver” by Lois Lowery. I read the book many years ago, however needed to read it again in order to design a lesson plan for a middle school or high school level class. When I read the novel through this time, I found myself reading it as a writer rather than a reader. I paid close attention to the different techniques she used, and one thing that really stuck out to me was the way in which she used descriptions and euphemisms within her writing. Many of her euphemisms include words such as “stirrings”, “Newchild”, and “Elsewhere” which she uses to demonstrate to the reader how protected and guarded the community that she writes about is. She also describes “memories” of feelings by describing certain scenes. For example, she describes the feeling of love through a description of a warm room with a glowing fireplace, a lit Christmas tree, colorfully wrapped gifts, happy children, and smiling grandparents. She also describes the feeling of excitement through a sleigh ride downhill as the brisk cold air hits your face and the scenery whirls by. Overall the novel was better than I remember it being. I found myself becoming engaged in the storyline, but also interested in the way in which she presented her ideas and descriptions.

The sensational un-sensational

I think I have to make dinner by six o’clock tonight. That’s when the kids will be home from after school sports, and my husband doesn’t want to eat too late. The house has to be cleaned too. I still have four loads of laundry to wash, dry, fold, and put away neatly. My husband doesn’t like when things aren’t put away neatly. I hope I have enough to make a nice salad tonight. I completely forgot to pick up tomatoes at the grocery store today. I might have time to run out quick while the next load of laundry is washing. I can’t forget to polish the furniture in the family room and vacuum through the house. My husband, Jim, he has such good vision. He was actually able to tell that I forgot to vacuum the house yesterday. I really should be more careful. He works hard at his job to provide for his family, and I am honored that he allows me to make dinner for him. I heard on the news this morning of a woman whose husband stayed home with their children while she went to work during the days. I really don’t know what this world is coming to. Honestly I’ve already wasted so much time today and there is still much to do.
I am so lucky to have a husband who lets me work in my house. I do wish that I could spend more time outside of the house, but Jim would disapprove. I know I shouldn’t be so selfish, but I think I would be a little more content if I could go with him when he takes the children to the park on Saturdays. I understand though that the windows need to be washed on Saturdays. He works so hard during the week, and he needs his relaxation during the weekend. I should light the candles for tonight. Jim really loves relaxing candle-lit dinners. I’ll just have to make sure to buy more matches when I stop by the supermarket. Perhaps if I light one now the aroma will fill the air and greet my husband and children when they walk in. I have so many dishes yet to wash up before dinner. I can’t believe I forgot the tomatoes. Jim hates it when his salad doesn’t have tomatoes. I have to find time to shower and look presentable too. I don’t want Jim losing interest after all. After having four children my body is certainly not what it was when Jim and I were first married. He doesn’t always seem as interested in me as he used to, and I often see him talking to other women. It’s not his fault of course. I should be exercising more so that I look better, and I am beginning to show signs of age. I really must shower and make myself up before he gets home tonight.
This candle smells lovely and it has already begun to fill the house. It’s resting under the kitchen curtains, and curtains just engulfed in flames. I am surprised at how quickly the small flame spread and covered the entire curtain surrounding the window. The blaze is so beautiful. It is interesting how it makes the kitchen even brighter than the sun that was coming through the window earlier. I still have to wash a lot of dishes, and do the laundry. I suppose I won’t have to worry about washing the kitchen curtain though. I am now watching the blaze from my living room. The entire kitchen is engulfed, which means I won’t have to worry about the dishes. The heat is almost unbearable, and I think it’s time now that I should go to the supermarket and pick up those tomatoes.

Notes to my Biographer: Review

I greatly enjoyed Adam Haslett's "Notes to my Biographer". The narrator in this fictional story is so engaging in that he truly believes that everyone one around him is wrong and crazy, and he is the only one who has everything together. The reader is able to see, however, that he has many issues that make him less than normal. The story starts out with the narrator, an older man, explaining how he stole his niece's SAAB, and isn't sure yet if he'll return it at some point. What makes this character so interesting is how he states certain things that shock the reader so matter-of-factly. He visits his gay son and claims to the reader, "Nonetheless, I am briefly shocked by the idea that my twenty-nine-year-old boy has never seen fit to share with me the fact that he is a fruitcake—no malice intended—and I resolve right away to talk to him about it when I see him." Haslett's story is riddled with this type of irony--just by this one sentence, the reader can understand exactly why the man's son hasn't shared his sexual orientation with him. Haslett also engages his reader in the emotions that are present. While the reader wants to dislike the marrator, the end of the story produces a sense of sadness and sympathy for the old man. I got the impression that part of his ironic character was due to the fact that he had to convince himself that he truly was a good person and a good father, even though deep down, he may have known that the accusations made against him were quite true.

An Incident I'd Rather Forget

It was my sister’s tenth birthday, and my mom was taking her and a few friends to the movies. I was not only allowed to go as well, but was allowed to bring friend of my own. It was a frigid day in the middle of January, and the renewing feeling of the New Year still hung in the air. My mom was always conscious of trying to save money, and although taking a small group of girls was generous, she did not want to spend a fortune on snack stand candies and drinks from the theatre. Being almost two years older I felt it was my duty to run into the nearby Wal-Mart and grab drinks and a bag of candy which we could sneak into our small purses. My mother dropped my friend and I off at Wal-Mart as she along with my sister and her friends all went to pick up the movie theatre tickets. My friend and I were instructed to wait outside of Wal-Mart until my mom came back for us. That’s at least what I heard her say. The movie was supposed to start at one o’clock and we had been waiting for ten minutes already when we noticed that it was1:05. We were cold and anxious to see the movie and the seven or so bottles of water in addition to the bags of candy were making our arms grow tired. My friend suggested that she thought she heard my mom say that we were supposed to meet her in the theatre. It made sense to me—after all, the movie had already started. We walked across the street and parking lot and as we reached the doors the intoxicating smell of popcorn and butter mixed with an intense feeling of warmth hit our bodies. We walked towards the room where the movie was being viewed and I thought I would be extra responsible, so I stopped and asked the ticket collector if a group of girls and one woman already went in before us, and if so if they mentioned that there were two more of us. He sort of nodded and waved me on, and my friend was already several steps ahead of me. We walked in and I tried to scour the full seats for the familiar faces we were supposed to be sitting with but it was too dark to make out people’s faces except for when they looked at us with annoyed face as we were disrupting their movie. We found two empty seats next to each other at the end of an aisle and sat down. I glanced around the room once more but couldn’t see very well, but tried to settle the strange pit my stomach that had appeared by reassuring myself that my mom was already in the theatre, sitting somewhere and wondering where her bottle of water was.

About halfway through the movie the lights in the theatre flashed on. The movie screen dimmed and the sound was covered by the audience’s murmurs and immediate complaints. I immediately knew why the lights had gone on, and as I slumped down in my seat and looked across the room to the door I saw a young ticket collector and my mom standing by the light switch. My mom’s face was beat red and her face as soaked with tears. Her eyes were wide and frantic, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I stood up quickly along with my friend who had a dopey expression on her face. She had a very sheltered life and held no concept of reality. She didn’t understand how worried my mom must have been, or how upset she was. But I knew. The movie theatre was completely full and everyone looked from my frantic mother, to us two young girls walking as quickly as we could. I felt my face turn bright red, and I felt a mixture of shame and embarrassment. I couldn’t look at my mom as I got closer to her. I didn’t know whether I was going to throw up, cry, or punch my friend in the face for having such a dumb look on her face. As I got closer to my mom she began to sob in front of our entire audience. She grabbed me by my jacket and harshly pulled me outside while she tried to regain control of herself. She yelled and cried the whole walk back to the Wal-Mart where my sister and her friends, and a handful of cops and concerned employees were waiting. I wanted to explain to everyone that it was truly a simple mistake, but instead I received many looks and comments that signified that I was a selfish brat. We were apparently missing for an hour and a half, and the cops were called and everything due to the longest “Code Amber” the store had ever witnessed. I later found out that my mom wasn’t able to get tickets for the 1:00 show, and so they were planning on going to a later show. I not only practically ruined my sister’s birthday, but was also unable to walk into that particular Wal-Mart and theatre for about a year.

1st Class Critique

As I sat in my writing fiction class today I began to think of all of the mistake I might have made with my story that was about to be critiqued. I felt my stomach turn, and I immediately wished I would have left the dialogue out, or perhaps changed the entire story. As the comments began and continued however I felt my anxieties slip away. Most of the comments weren't exactly "positive" in that they praised my story, but I greatly appreciated that. The last thing I wanted was for people to lie to me. I got a lot of great feedback, and most of the comments answered several questions that popped into my mind as I was writing the piece. Instead of feeling discouraged and beaten, I rather felt refreshed. I'm excited for future drafts, and how I might learn to improve my writing.

Cliche Characters with a twist

Lillian the Librarian:
Lillian is a thirty-four year old single woman who spends every Monday through Friday as well as every Saturday morning in the Wellington Public Library where she works. Her poker straight brown hair is always pulled back tightly into a neat pony tail, as she prefers that her hair stays out of her face. From many years of reading her eyes had already grown weak, and she wore a cheap pair of wire framed glasses. Her eyes were green and almond shaped, and looked small behind her round wire glasses. She is tall and very thin, and wears a grey pencil-skirt and blazer everyday as she finds gray colored clothing the most practical. She lives by herself, and when she isn’t in the library, she is at her small one bedroom apartment. She has a nasal sounding voice and the most used word in her vocabulary is a harsh “Shhh!” Her pale skin and gray suits make her look like a dreary charcoal painting. Her nights are spent however in flashy and skimpy clothing as she works two towns over as a prostitute.

Buck the Bodybuilder:
Buck the Bodybuilder eats a strict diet of raw eggs, bright green vegetables pureed, and a great deal of protein. He is about six feet tall and weighs 250lbs of pure muscle. He has soft brown hair, dazzling white teeth, and sparkling blue eyes. He spends seven hours a day, seven days a week at the gym. When he is not working out at the gym, he is either participating in his classes at college, working as a part-time coach for younger kid, or starring as the quarter back of his school’s football team. Every girl that has ever brushed past Buck has experienced love at first sight. His positive personality is displayed as he flashes every awestruck girl with his bright smile and a sly wink of his eye. He also has a 3.9 GPA and is attending his school on a full scholarship. As confident as he appears, he often goes home and struggles with the secret that he is gay.

Randy the Redneck:
Randy is sixty-four years old, lives by himself in a small trailer in northern New York. He does not have running water and the electric only partially works, but he prefers things this way. His only companion is his old mutt dog named “dog”. His wife left him years ago, and his kids no longer talk to him. He spends his afternoons making moon shine, and his nights drinking it. He is short and stocky in stature, and his gray hair is balding to reveal the shiny part of the top of his head. He doesn’t own a computer, and drives a pick up truck that won’t work when the temperatures go below 10 degrees. He wears the same flannel red and black shirt every day with a worn and faded pair of blue jean overalls. He acquires his own food by hunting and gardening, and hasn’t been inside a store for nearly two years. Years ago he graduated from his college as a neuroscientist.

Charity the Cheerleader:
Charity is 5’ 3” with a tiny waist, think shapely arms and legs, and large breasts that hypnotize all of the boys both young and old with her cheer moves. Her long, platinum, blonde hair hangs past her lower back, but is often tied back in a bouncy ponytail. She has naturally rosy cheeks, cherry colored lips, and big brown eyes. She is the head cheerleader of her squad, and she dates the MVP football player. Her weekends are always busy—not with friends and school functions—but with long visits to the local hospital where she receives treatment for leukemia.

Pete the Pastor:
Pete graduated from a strict Christian university where he met his beautiful wife. They married and had three children, and Pete serves as a very religious pastor at their local church in town. They go to church every week and they have never missed a week. Pete and his wife do not allow their children to play with other “non-Christian” children, and their children are homeschooled as to avoid the “sinner’s world”. They prayer before every meal together which Pete’s wife prepares for the family as he believes that a woman’s place according to the bible is at the home to cook and clean for her husband and children. Pete believes everything the bible has to say, and spends a lot of time with missions work. Pete spends a lot of time in his office at the church where, unknown to everyone around him, he shoots up with heroine.

Desrcription: Washington, NJ

Nicole Smith
February 9, 2009
Writing: Fiction
Town Description

The town of Washington has rarely been heard of. In fact, the county it resides in known as Warren County is not even well known in the popular state of New Jersey. The town is small and quiet, but most that live there never seem to leave. Not many like the town of Washington, yet even those who leave seem to come back. Most do not make it through high school, and even fewer make it through college. Half a mile of old stores and shops line both sides of the street that is considered “down town”. Many live in apartments and collect welfare, and their children run around town with runny noses and dirty jackets.

The town generally smells of cow manure and garbage, but on occasions the smell of a new season will carry through the air. For example, the first few cold days of winter most light the fireplaces in their homes and the sweet smell of burnt wood intoxicates the bitter air. Other than the small stretch of “down town” there exists a few elementary schools, and a regional high school that has been growing in size for the past several years since many development homes have been built over old farming fields. Nothing ever happens in the town I grew up in, and no one ever expects anything to happen. One event last spring however created one of the town’s biggest recognition in the news for the first time in years, and began rumors and gossip that still get around today.

One of the stores in town was an old store that had been the town’s hardware store since the earlier 1900s. A few years ago the old man who owned the store sold it to someone who turned it into an antique shop where people would both sell and buy antiques. The reality was that the antique store was an eyesore and made the town look even more run down than it had before. The building sat on a corner in between a parking lot and a branch of smaller stores. It was made of wood which was beginning to rot, and the numerous coats of white paint were dirty and chipped from years of neglect. Several pieces of antiques overcrowded the inside of the store and spilled out onto the curb. No one wanted someone else’s old junk, and even if they did, they probably didn’t have the money.

The town began renovations in the winter of 2007 in hopes of creating a more ascetically pleasing town. The need for business and money was dire, and this was also among the reasons for the renovations. One cold night in the beginning of spring 2008 every person in Washington heard the scream of sirens and fire trucks race to the old hardware store. The store was completely engulfed in flames, and within a few moments the entire town was coming out of their homes, warming their hands by the large fire, and catching up with each other. It was a funny sight to see the entire town of people huddling around the burning building, and having an excuse to talk to each other. The firemen worked around the people, and the crowd remained well into the early hours of the morning.

The next day the building was completely gone and the smell of burnt wood still hung in the air. A black charred pile of wood and what were once antiques lay scattered on the ground, and yellow police tape encased the area. Everyone was talking about the incident, and the newspaper shelves were bare. The widely believed rumor was that the fire was intentionally set by the owner, because the town was going to tear it down anyway due to the renovations. He refused to sell it to the town because of the price he was offered, but unfortunately he did not have much of a choice in the matter. It was reported that he waited until the perfect time and set the fire so that he could collect insurance on the building, which he did.

Many weeks later, my mom was running down town past the spot where the building used to stand when she passed an older gentleman standing by the still taped off area, and scratching his head. She asked him if she could help with anything and he held up a slip of paper with an address scribbled on it. He explained that he bought an antique chandelier from the store many months prior, and was given the address as to where he could pick it up. The man admitted to spending 1000$ on the chandelier before my mom explained to him that the place and everything in it had burned down several weeks before.

Dialogue

“It’s my turn!” whined 7 year old Lucy. Her older sister Thelma Dudley had been occupying the swing for more than her allotted time now.
“Go away.”
Thelma looked towards the side of the house where the window she broke only an hour earlier lay in pieces all over the damp grass. No one else had found out yet.
“Mommy said that when the big hand on my watch gets to the 5, then it’s my turn to play on the swing! She said!”
“It’s almost time to go inside anyway. Mom’s going to call us in for dinner any minute.”
It’s almost time to go inside. Mom will find out. She’ll know that I broke her window. She always knows when something is wrong. She thought to herself.
“But that’s not fair!!!! It’s my turn!!!”
What I am going to do? Maybe I can fix it quick. No I can’t do that. Maybe she won’t see it? No no, of course she will. Maybe I can tell her a bird flew into it? No she always knows when I’m lying. Maybe I should just tell her before she sees it for herself?
“I WANT A TURN!” Lucy screamed at him before kicking at the air in a tantrum.
“Stop being such a baby.”
Thelma jumped of the swing and pushed it towards her sister who almost caught it with her face. “Fine, just take it. Brat.”
Here goes she thought as she made her way to the house.

Thelma Dudley: Action Scene

Thelma Dudley could barely hear her dinner bowl being filled with the dry dog food she had been used to for years. She slowly got on all fours and began slowly walking to her bowl. Amy, the human twelve year old, scratched a spot behind Thelma Dudley’s ears as she briskly walked past her.

“Thelma Dudley you’re getting fat!” Amy squealed.

“I should bite her,” thought Thelma, but she was hungry and soon forgot the girl’s comment.
She chewed slowly on the hard, round morsels that were supposed to provide her with energy and nutritious value. It hurt her teeth to chew on the hard morsels, and she would have done much better with a softer food.

“What’s the matter girl?” Bob, the father of the humans inquired enthusiastically, “not hungry today?”

Thelma slowly lifted her head and looked at him. The skin and fur hung loosely around her face, as it did the rest of her body and made her appear even older than she felt. There was no need for her to respond. She was tired again. She slowly walked back to her big pillow in the family room. The pillow was like her—old, warn, and faded, and she found her spot perfectly in the middle. The joints in her legs popped and cracked as she lowered herself onto the pillow and drifted off to sleep.

Whippoorwill: an amateur’s critique

I found Michael Nethercott's story Whippoorwill to be interesting. He begins "I need to reach back over two decades for this, but I believe his name was Gabe." I found this introduction to be a both intriguing and clever way to start the story. The introduction makes it more convincing for the reader that the narrator is intent on telling his story. In the second and third paragraph of his story, Nethercott does a good job giving insight to the narrator. Without actually describing specific traits, he is able to portray the narrator's personality by his thought process and actions such as, "Hitching as many miles as I had, I knew how to offer up conversation". In the third paragraph however he uses a phrase that I found to be cliche' when he notes the popular saying "the kiss of death". On the second page he offers more good insight to the character of the narrator especailly when he writes, "I saw my role as that of the traveler seeking safe conduct, vulnerable to the caprices and compassion of those who offered me passage."

I feel that the first sentence in the 5th paragraph which states, "Gabe was not rushing towards intimacy, in any fashion." However I felt that this was already implied earlier in the story. I also felt that this changed too quickly in the next paragraph, and the line, "Could he truly be romancing me?" seemed to come out of nowhere. Again on page three in the last paragraph, the line, "I wished I were already home" also seemed to come out of nowhere as it is indicated that the narrator is a traveler who doesn't seem to have a permanent "home". I enjoyed the first paragraph of dialogue and I felt that it was true to the characters. For example, the slang that Gabe uses further displays his rough trucker personality. Nethercott's writing is also descriptive and this is evident in areas such as on the third page when he writes, "During that mute interval, my eyes drifted on the current of highway lights, white and red flames curving upon black miles, and my thoughts fed slowly on images of friends and family." He also provides a good description on page four when he writes, "Gabe let his memories play out for a minute or two, then continued." However I felt that this scene could have been even more descriptive by explaining HOW he let his memories play out...what was his facial expression? How does the narrator know he is doing this? I also thought the line on page six, "A blended wave of regret and melancholy now curled over my heart", could be shown rather than stated. Overall though, I felt that the story was interesting through the development of the characters and the imagery and descriptions.

Thelma Dudley: Part 1

Thelma Dudley
Thelma Dudley was one-hundred and five years old—in dog years. The Basset Hound was once an energetic and playful pup. Now her skin hung loose over her broad shoulder blades and fell sloppily past her stomach as if the extra years had caused her coat to stretch out. Her coat was once a mixture of a bright auburn that stood out against the crisp white and sharp black that also characterized her fur. After many years the auburn and the black had faded, and the white had darkened and showed strands of grey which gave her a dust covered appearance. Her long and thin black ears hung almost to the floor. As a pup her ears were the same length as they were in her adult years, and she would trip on them constantly as she ran around.

An Attempt to Avoid Cliche': A Bank Robbery

Nicole Smith
January 26, 2009
Writing: Fiction

A Bank Robbery
The line at the Douglas County Bank seemed to stretch for miles behind the beige marbled counter. Although it was the middle of July and most were accustomed to the warm weather, everyone seemed to move extra slow that day in the humid mid-afternoon air. Outside the bank window passerby’s appeared to be a part of some modern painter’s mural. Their sluggish movements and drooped shoulders meshed with both the sun and the heat rising from the pavement in a way that made the assorted colors of their clothing and glistening skin seem to blend together.

The line at the bank was especially slow as only one teller was working. The building did not have a working air conditioner, and Eric Randal tried to position himself in front of the rotating portable fan without getting out of line. The heat made him irritable, and he wanted to rip off the thin streamers connected to the fan that seemed to wave to him tauntingly and say “we’re so nice and cool.” All Randal wanted to do was to go home and sit in his blue recliner in his cool house.

He had considered going home right after school, but passed the bank on his way and decided to deposit his paycheck. He worked at the local learning center where he ran a writing workshop. Most of his students were in their thirties and forties, and were trying, as Randal believed, to regain some part of their life that they regrettably let slip by. The truth was, he hated his job. He had wanted to be a famous author by this time in his life, and preferred to live amongst other writers in a large and bustling city such as New York. In his small town of Lawrence, Kansas however, exciting material was rarely produced, as exciting events rarely happened. Most of his students frustrated him. He had explained to them out of aggravation on numerous occasions that you had to experience the world in order to write about it.

One student, Charlie Paine, was overly pompous and often tried to impress the teacher and fellow classmates with stories in which he used a large vocabulary. The content of his stories were however dry and generic, and Randal couldn’t stand “smarty pants” who thought they were better than anyone else. Randal made sure to quickly distinguish Charlie Paine’s flame, and after a few weeks he heard less and less from the Paine boy. Another young woman in Randal’s class chose to spend her time writing about the tragedies and difficulties she had witnessed in her lifetime which Randal bashed as a poor and pathetic waste of his time.

Another student who Randal knew as Eliot Orvis was overly eager to please his teacher. He was always a disheveled mess running to and from class with armfuls of notebooks and papers that were torn and crumbled. What secretly impressed Randal was that Orvis was always writing and was always enthusiastic about writing. While Randal was intrigued by Orvis, he was also easily frustrated by him. Perhaps Randal envied the passion that seemed to envelop Eliot Orvis, but regardless right before he had left his class that afternoon, Randal angrily slammed Orvis’s latest story in front of him, and through a clenched jaw told Orvis that he would never get anywhere in life with his writing because a good writer must experience things in order to write about them.

Seven minutes had passed and there were still ten people in the line in front of Randal. Suddenly it was as if time sped up. It seemed to take only a few brief seconds between the moment when Randal heard the door to the bank door slam open and when he heard the loud crack of the gun that would carry with it a life sentence. The slammed door was followed by a man whose identity was concealed by a black and cheap looking ski mask. His voice was harsh and gruff, but Randal noticed a shaky nervousness in his voice as well. The outstretched hand of the man was also shaking as he pointed the gun at the teller’s face and warned everyone else not to move. The robber never even seemed to hear the cops enter the door behind him.

Two of the towns well known cops, Larry and Mike, happened to be across the street when they saw the masked man enter the Douglas County Bank. The masked robber jumped at the cops’ demands and made the mistake of spinning around and still held the gun which pointed directly at Mike who in turn fired his hand gun directly at the robber out of, what he would explain later, was for the safety of the town’s finest folks. Randal caught a glimpse of the robber’s eyes through the small holes in the mask, and watched as the man’s eyes went from holding a look of fear and desperation to a look of pure shock and disbelief as he placed his hand over the wound in his chest.

The blood around the hole where the bullet had entered darkened the black of his shirt to an even darker shade of black that symbolized death to everyone who saw it. As the robber pulled his bare hand away from his wound, he displayed the color of bright red before he looked with bewilderment at the cop who pulled the trigger. He gasped his last breath before he crumpled to the floor and left a trail of bright red fingerprints down the side of the beige counter. Officer Mike, who was responsible for firing the gun, slowly put his gun back in his holster and sucked in a breath of air with a sense of heroism.

“Alright folks,” he said with his hands placed proudly on his gun holster, “Everyone is safe now.”

He was answered by an echo of applauding citizens; however Randal was looking at Officer Larry who was searching the victim for identification. He overheard one officer whisper to the other that the gun was not loaded after all. As the officer removed the ski mask, Randal walked towards the victim against the cops’ orders. His eyes grew wide and he felt his knees begin to tremble. His stomach turned and his breathing quickened as he looked at the victim’s unmasked face, and recognized his student Eliot Orvis.

Next to Orvis’s still body lay a crumbled piece of paper. Randal, lightheaded and in disbelief, slowly knelt down to pick up the piece of paper. He unfolded it as he kept his eyes on Orvis’s lifeless body. Randal recognized the scratchy and penciled writing of his student, and began to read the last written words of Eliot Orvis. The paper read “A Bank Robbery” and Randal’s hands shook as he began, “His teacher told him that he would never get anywhere in life with his writing because a good writer must experience things in order to write about them.”