Filed under: I
Written as a children’s picture book. Each paragraph is where I imagine another page would start.
Wrapping paper littered the floor, and cake crumbs lined the edges of the table, but Jeremy knew his birthday party wasn’t over yet. Every year, his Uncle came to visit. He always arrived after all of the other guests had gone home. The last guest had left twenty minutes ago, and Jeremy was now watching the clock with anticipation.
It took Jeremy a full minute to calculate the time on the clock, as he was only five years old. It always bothered him that by the time he figured out exactly what time it is, or rather was, it was always another minute past. Just as Jeremy finished his latest calculation (seven, twenty-seven), he heard the door click open behind him. Out of the swirling greys of the rainstorm his Uncle appeared.
He slid off his pale rain jacket as Jeremy ran to hug him around the knees. His Uncle smiled silently and patted Jeremy on the head. Jeremy pulled at his hand and began to tell him all about the toys he’d received.
His Uncle smiled and nodded as Jeremy babbled on. Eventually his attention was directed to the large black leather case his Uncle was holding. When he asked about it, his Uncle merely smiled and pulled out a beautiful acoustic guitar. It was old and used, with a few scuffs and dents, but it was sparkling clean and trimmed especially for the occasion. Jeremy had never seen anything like it.
His Uncle held the guitar across his lap and began to hum to himself. Despite his timid personality, his fingers plucked at the strings boldly. The antique beauty sang a delicate melody.
Jeremy couldn’t take his eyes off the source of the beautiful song. When his Uncle was finished, he let Jeremy try. He stroked his small fingers down the long red wood of the neck, and traced the soundhole gently. But when he tried to play it, he couldn’t make any music come out. His tiny fingers could hardly make any noise at all, and the rough strings tore at his delicate skin. “Why don’t you keep it?” His Uncle asked. “If you practice, someday you’ll be able to play it like a master.”
Jeremy was thrilled. He insisted that his uncle start to teach him to play it right away. But his uncle was already putting on his coat. “I really have to be going, ” he said, “The next time I see you, though, I want you to play this for me.” He handed Jeremy a beginner’s guitar lesson book and pointed to one of the songs in it. He told him his mother would be able to help him when he needed it. She smiled at her Brother with a question in her eyes. Jeremy promised he would learn to play it perfectly before he came back, and his Uncle smiled with a look in his eyes that Jeremy didn’t notice and buttoned his jacket and left.
At Jeremy’s next birthday, his Uncle returned. As soon as Jeremy noticed his arrival he ran to get his guitar, leaving all of his other gifts behind. He pulled his Uncle by the hand as he struggled to take off his coat, and led him to the living room sofa. Jeremy dragged a kitchen chair into the middle of the room and prepared himself to play the song his Uncle had asked him to a year before.
He played slowly, picking at only one string at a time and changing his fingering carefully. He never looked up; he seemed to be glaring down at the strings, as if reminding them to play the song correctly. He played smoothly; he’d practiced this song every day for the past month, but there was one note where he hesitated. He stuck his tongue out as he tried to remember what came next. It didn’t take him long to remember, and he finished the short song with a short bow. Nearly perfect.
His Uncle applauded. “Very nice,” he said. “But make sure you learn that note in the middle there. It’s an important note.” Jeremy nodded. “After that,” Jeremy asked, “Will I be a master?” His Uncle knew he meant when he learned that last note. He smiled with that same look in his eyes. This time Jeremy noticed, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. “Not quite,” he said. “After you learn that note, will you learn to play this for me?” His Uncle handed him a new book and pointed out a new song. Jeremy looked up at his Uncle and nodded. Soon his Uncle was gone again.
Jeremy’s Uncle returned again the same time the next year. Jeremy smiled at him as he unbuttoned his coat and went straight to his room to get his guitar. He set up in the living room the same way he had the year before and waited for his Uncle to get comfortable.
This year the song consisted of a few simple chords. Jeremy played it proudly, though he still bent his head toward the strings. He was seven now, and he felt he was ready for something more. He could play every chord; he’d been practicing for three months (He skipped a few of the earlier songs in the book to give him a little extra time for this special song). Still, though, there was one chord he couldn’t quite remember. He hesitated for only a moment, and then guessed. The mistake was barely noticeable when evaluating the song as a whole. He smiled triumphantly as he finished the last note and his one member audience began to applaud. Nearly perfect.
His Uncle smiled and reminded him of the chord he missed, saying it was important that he practice that shift. Jeremy blushed and said it was “just so hard,” but promised he would get it. His Uncle gave him another book, and picked out another song. Jeremy nodded, but his thoughts were spinning dizzily with questions. As his Uncle stepped out the door again, he waved goodbye one last time and Jeremy noticed that same look in his eye that made him wonder.
Year after year his Uncle arrived late on Jeremy’s birthday. Year after year he slid off the same coat while Jeremy fetched his guitar. Year after year he listened intently and year after year he pointed out his mistakes. One year it was hesitating between chords. Then, it was being sure to get a clean song. Then it was reminding him not to look at his fingers.
At Jeremy’s twelfth birthday party, his headful of building questions finally overflowed. “I never will be a master, will I? Every year, I try so hard, but I’m just never good enough. There’s always something I do wrong.”
His Uncle gave his same curioius smile. This only made Jeremy more upset. Did his failure amuse him? His Uncle put his arm around him and said simply, “Your songs will never be perfect.” Jeremy found no comfort with his and waited for his Uncle to say more. Eventually he said, “Every year, you do try hard, and you do make mistakes, but you also improve. When you were six and you were playing your first song, I didn’t bother to mention anything to you about looking at your audience or being careful not to hesitate. Back then, it was enough for you to remember all the notes. Now you’re playing like a pro. You’re not quite a master, but I’m sure you’re the best guitar player at your school. Even better than the older kids. I only mention your mistakes so you can improve. If you were always satisfied with simply playing all the notes right, how would you ever become a master? The secret is, the closer you come to becoming a master, the more you notice your little mistakes. That’s how you know you’re getting there.”
Jeremy thought about it. He remembered just starting out, trying to press the strings down hard enough. He had been playing for seven years now. He was the best guitar player in his school, and probably even in the neighborhood. His Uncle was right.
As his Uncle pulled his coat sleeve back into place, he smiled down at Jeremy, but something about his smile was different this year. Jeremy wasn’t sure why. It didn’t look different. But the mysterious twinkle in his eye was gone. Instead there was simply a wisdom reflecting in the greys of his eyes. That was the difference. Now Jeremy shared the knowldege of the matser’s secret.
Filed under: Uncategorized
This is a reply to the last three paragraphs of Lars Eighner’s “On Dumpster Diving.”
As a pack rat, I find it hard to imagine when I’m going to throw things away. It simply never crosses my mind. I simply imagine I’ll have it forever. Especially anything of sentimental value. Like the bracelets on my bulletin board, or the broken birthday tiara in my bedroom. I suppose in the back of my mind I know I won’t really have it forever, (I’ll be leaving for college in a little over a year, and I’m not planning on stuffing everything in a box) but i simply can’t let go of it.
But I don’t know if that makes me any less wasteful. Having something lying around in my room that I could be using, or that someone else could be using is just cluttery, not economical. But in my hesitancy to throw anything away, I am also hesitant to throw food away, with the justification that there are people who wish they could be eating what I’m eating. But is that really of any help either? Stuffing myself full of food isn’t exactly giving to the hungry, as a few of my friends have pointed out. I suppose the one virtue I can pride myself in is giving the clothes I don’t wear to the ARC, although even those are hard to part with.
So where does that put me in the happiness scale? Am I a part of the “rat race”? I wouldn’t say I love to consume. I’d actually call myself pretty thrifty, even with all the junk littering my bedroom shelves. I have what I want (friends, a warm bed, and about 200 songs), and what I need (my family, a roof, and a fridge of food), and plenty of things I don’t need, or necessarily want, but “it was a gift,” or “it reminds me of…” or “it could come in handy someday.” But i guess those are the things that don’t make you happy. They’re just on your shelf.
Filed under: R
In Mair’s essay, “On Being a Cripple,” she explains her choice in calling herself a “cripple,” and her experiences and feelings as she became one. She made a conscious choice to call herself a cripple after considering many different terms for her condition. Her primary reason is that she feels “crippled” is the closest term to the truth when describing her condition. She feels that disabled is too vague, and that handicapped is wrong entirely, implying that someone caused her to lose the use of her limbs in order to make life more fair somehow. And “differently abled” describes no one, as no one is “abled” in exactly the same way. “Crippled” however is defined simply as having lost the use of one’s limbs. Mair’s analysis of these terms seems to be purely based on definition, then. Had it been based on connotation, surely she would have noticed the negative association the term “crippled” carries with it.
Yet, perhaps she was more concerned with connotation than she first seemed to be. As she continues, she compares these terms to the terms “undeveloped,” “underdeveloped,” and “developing” when describing third world countries. As she puts it, “realities do not obey the dictates of language” (59). In other words, choosing a softer word for a tough situation isn’t going to soften the situation. Perhaps, then, Mair’s choice of “cripple” was based on connotation as much as it was on definition. In accepting a tough word, it may make it easier for her to accept a tough situation. Growing used to a euphemism in such a situation is like lying to oneself. Like telling yourself “You screwed up.” after you catch yourself rationalizing a big mistake, or repeating “lost,” or “failed,” or “dead” just to get over the shock, “cripple” is like a slap in the face for some, but sometimes that’s what it takes to accept reality.
Filed under: I
The trees buzz by becoming a thick green line dividing earth and sky. The young man watches. He wears a tan jacket and a fedora hat. His eyes drift upward from trees to sky. What a contrast. The sky moves slowly, clouds swirling and morphing into new shapes. The train begins to slow and the trees become individual points of green once again. The man looks around aimlessly, almost in a trance, as the other passengers gather their belongings and the conductor announces the stop. The doors open to St. Albans, a small town in Vermont. The man peers out. The cold breeze rushes at him, and he pulls his tan jacket tighter around his neck. He takes a deep breath through his mouth and the cold air feels like knives going down. But he doesn’t really mind. He’s from a suburb near New Orleans, and if the air here burns your throat then he’ll let it. If that’s Vermont. He stumbles out the door and to a coffe shop up the road to get his first cup of coffee in Vermont.
About fifteen minutes later while again boarding the train, he notices a girl to his left, about seventeen, he guesses. Mascara stains her cheeks. She clings to a small tote, holding it tight into her chest. She walks straight to the end of the train, and outside on to the ledge on the back of the caboose. As the wheels begin to turn, she watches the station become farther and farther away. The movement of the train leaves her tears flying behind her, sparklinas they float to the ground far behind, a path between her and where she wishes she still was.
The man in the fedora sits back into his seat and watches the sky again. The sun was just beginning to set. He pulls out a book and begins to read, every once in a while glancing back at the sky with a smile.
In the seat across from him sit a little girl and her father. The father looks content and the girl is grinning ear to ear. “Where are we going, Daddy? Tell me!” The father smiles and shakes his head saying it is a surprise. The girl presses her cheek against her window trying to peer ahead to the tip of the train as if the answer would be just ahead of them.
A man in a suit sat in the row ahead of them. He had a briefcase at his side and a handful of bills and a calculator in his arms. He read over the bills and punched numbers again and again all the while looking at the setting sun or his watch and sighing.
By now the man in the fedora is laying back with his eyes closed, the same smile on his face. The train begins to slow and the conductor announces that they would be a little late on reaching their destination because of a problem with the tracks.
The man with the briefcase sighs again, his hand clenched in a fist. The little girl pouts and asks, “Daddy, why did we stop?” The girl in back is leaning over the railing, still crying. The man in the fedora is asleep, still smiling.
Filed under: I
I wasted plenty of time last spring trying to learn how to accurately pretend to be British. I watched movies with British accents (and some stupid you tube videos and plenty of House special features), I tried to get some friends to practice with me (though I should probably emphasize the word “tried” in that sentence), and looked up British slang on the internet (and consequently found a half a million ways to cuss in Britain). I was determined, but my British accent didn’t get any better, although I did start calling trucks lorries for a while.
My goal was to learn how to convincingly fake a British accent by the time I left for church camp. I knew I wasn’t going to know anyone there except for my one best friend, and I figured it’d make things a little more interesting. But my mom thought it was quite frankly a stupid idea.
“What if you meet someone?” She’d say. I had met a boy when I went to camp the summer before sophomore year, and we kept in touch for a few months afterwards. I had a little bit of a crush on him, but when I started to get over him, I realized he had no intentions of getting over me. It got to be a little overwhelming, so I stopped returning phone calls. It wasn’t something I was proud of. And for that reason, my mom liked to tease me about it. This year, I was determined not to meet anyone. My mom only laughed at that.
The week before camp though, I still couldn’t feign a British background adequately. In fact, my British accent sucked. I wasn’t giving up though. I continued to practice even in the car on the way to camp. But in my excitement and without even realizing it, I spoke my first word at camp in my natural American accent. After that I knew it was too late. I gave up on the prank.
And thank goodness for that. I possibly made more friends at camp that year than I had at school at the time. I still keep in touch with a few of them. Since then, we’ve even flown back and forth across states to visit each other during breaks from school. And then my mom pointed it out. “Good thing you didn’t do the British accent thing. It would have been hard to do keep it up all this time,” she teased. But she was right. She’s always right.
Filed under: Uncategorized
1. One excellent example of subjects being represented romantically is the L2K program. Although it begins with much more structure and more rules, as the program continues, there is much more space to explore. The purpose of the L2K program is to prepare students who think they may be interested in math, science, or technology careers for college and for the workforce in these fields. However, as students continue in the program, they are encouraged to follow whatever path of study they find interesting. Perhaps they’ve found that math, science, and technology are not for them; they can still continue in the program and explore ways to prepare for their futures. Many projects are constrained only to a reasonable rubric focused around any form of “research and design” or “experiment and design.” With so few boundaries, students can explore subjects that truly interest them, and thus they are compelled by their curiosity, and by their love of the subject to continue in learning.
2. Teachers are perhaps inadequately named, or at least, the “best teachers” because the teachers who will be the most effective in helping their students to learn will be those who guide and mentor their students, thus maybe they should be called guides or mentors instead. Their objective is to give a student just the right balance between boundaries and open space in order to let them explore until they find their niche, the subject in which they are interested, and then continue to guide them from there, as they need it. Their job is to spark the minds of their students, to give them ideas as to what areas to explore, simply to cause them to think for themselves. A teacher who who only teaches, only explains information and expects the student to remember it and use it on their own, then tests to see that they have, is an adequate teacher, but not the “best teacher.” Still, there are teachers who should rather be called, “assigners” who only give the page numbers of a book or the handouts for the homework. These teachers can hardly be called adequate. They are the teachers who cause a student to detest a subject, because they feel no need to explore, and find no interest in it. These are the teachers who will cause their students not to continue in learning.
3. Thanks to my parents, I developed a love of writing early on. They taught me to spell simple words like cat and dog before I even reached Kindergarten. I remember spending afternoons typing on my dad’s old Mac, CAT, DOG, ZOO, and plenty of random letters in 72 point font.
This love of writing continued into elementary school. In the second grade I tried to write a novel. It was a complete failure, but what more can expected of a seven year old? In third grade I worked so hard on my spring writing assessment that my teacher was concerned. She took me out of class to scold me for receiving the first perfect score she’d ever graded. She warned me not to work too hard, and not to expect perfection. I wasn’t quite sure what the big deal was at the time. In fourth grade I was required to work on creative writing, usually short stories. Although it was required, I didn’t resent it because of the early introduction I’d had to exploring writing. I spent over and hour on a short story that most children wrote in fifteen minutes. I once wrote a story from the point of view of a character that was the size of a mouse and crawled around on the floor to get a better idea of her perspective. My teacher encouraged me to continue. In fifth grade I wrote for a creative writing magazine that a GT organization published for our school. The LMC also started a “publishing company” where you could have any of your stories typed up and printed into a plastic bound booklet. I always seemed to be working on a story specifically to be published there.
Now, my love of writing is still strong. I experiment with writing songs and still spend many hours too many on writing assignments simply because I know I can write them well, and I want to.
Filed under: I
Her wild hair clung to the back of the love seat, but her body lay relaxed across the width of the cushion. She stared down the intimidating blank page of graph paper (a page in her green notebook, her favorite place for writing, though she knew the graph paper was to be saved for math class), but her tired eyes were starting to betray her. 9:54… no ideas. 9:59, had it only been five minutes? And Daylight Savings required her to “spring forward” in the morning. It was only an optimistic way of saying she was losing yet another hour of sleep.
Her mind wandered to thoughts of old children’s movies she still adored, the phone that sat beside her that she wished would ring… and without warning (as is the way with most thoughts) the line “visions of sugar plums danced in their heads” seemed to dance right through hers itself, leading a chain of more disjointed visions dancing by, including one of Christopher Robin and his quest for the North Pole, all concluding with a vague thought that she was still no more than a child. Somewhere intertwined were the topics that seemed always to be in the back of her mind: the trip to Utah in November, the last church dance… But her memories were specific: Walking outside with the scent of snow still on the breeze in the middle of the night without any shoes on. And then hopping around in one of Erick’s (both of her feet fit almost comfortably in one of his shoes) because they’d decided to stand out in the cold for a half hour in stead of just the five minutes she’d predicted (Wasn’t that always the way things seemed to go for her now?). Then the role play with Brandon, Hil, Tyler, and Trent. Brandon was a dinosaur, Tyler was an angry middle aged man, Trent unofficially a kickboxer, she and Hil crazy women drivers. The batch of self proclaimed roles had created the most hilarious adlibbed skit in history, and all in the middle of the dance floor. And then today, a little boy in red and gold pajama pants without a shirt on breaking out his kung fu moves on a toy shopping cart (the size for a three year old play-mother and her baby doll daughter) in the middle of the church building she’d been cleaning. And the friend of hers who had pointed the adorable little boy out. But why should that friend cross her mind? He wasn’t significant to the memory, was he? She rejected that thought and turned to the memory of her adventure to Krispy Kreme that morning, in which she had also been wearing pj pants, though not red and gold. And again her thoughts turned to the “insignificant” friend, and what he would have said if he’d seen her at Krispy Kreme in her pj pants. It made her want to smile, but again she rejected the thought. Almost.
She subconciously tried to touch the back of her pen to her lips in thought, but in the confusion of some prior twirling of the pen in her hands, she accidentally turned the pen with the wrong end up and startled herself by marking her upper lip. She sighed and checked her reflection in the mirror. The mark was obvious to her, but she figured it could pass as one of the thousand freckles that littered her face, and lay (she thought that might be the wrong word, but she liked the sound of it best) back into her armchair built for two. She glanced back at the phone lying next to her. This pseudo pair didn’t do the seat justice. She lay across the cushions again, unafraid of feet on furniture, trying to fill the space a little more comfortably.
She noticed a small tan stain near the knee of her jeans. She didn’t know what had caused it, but it bothered her. She wore a hair tie on her right wrist, the only place she wouldn’t lose it (and briefly contemplated the spelling of wrist, and how related the choice of “wr” over “r” was to the choice of “wh” versus “w”). Her left was shackled by a small blue elastic. She’d been its captive since July. Another memory. Though the bondage sometimes grew tiring, a little frustrating, a little confusing (and this was now becoming one of those times), it was not quite painful. She had not desire to be released, and though the elastic was old and ugly now she couldn’t imagine taking it off, not even for Prom.
Prom. And now she was day dreaming. But she tried not to let those thoughts take root too deep. They often led only to more confusion. She’d let a few roam a little too freely recently and now had difficulty deciphering between reality and her imagination whenever she thought of – well, the reason the phone sat by her side. But she wouldn’t dare say a name. She wouldn’t admit to it, though now she was sure there would be plenty of speculation if anyone knew these thoughts, and most of those speculations would be wrong. She knew because now even she was speculating. The owner of the name she wouldn’t say wasn’t the same “insignificant” friend she’d been thinking of earlier. But should he be? Oh, stupid Prom. Stupid day dreams and questions and confusions. So many more important and more interesting and more pleasant thoughts that could be filling her head, though few as enticing.
Her back began to itch and as she stretched to reach it she accidentally slid her pen down her leg leaving a small (but more noticeable than her lip’s had been) mark next to the first stain on her knee. She cursed herself for being so clumsy, but absentmindedly scratched her shoulder immediately after leaving another mark on the cover of the sofa. She cursed herself again, this time adding a line wondering why she was so itchy.
She was then reminded of favorite books and old friends and more memories and day dreams and soon she was swimming in them (just then adding a quote from It’s a Wonderful Life about swimming to the chain of connecting thoughts, this leading to another memory of a good friend). So many memories and quotes and stories and yet no muse. Nothing worth writing. Nothing to build a coherent paragraph with. Just a sea of memories and dreams she’d die to drown in (She dismissed the contradiction with a smile.). Some of the smaller thoughts pulled themselves together into thin threads, where one thought connected to another. Some seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Some hid, sometimes for moments, sometimes for hours at a time, but always returned and skipped mischievously through her mind until they grew tired and returned to their hiding places. And still there were some barely realized, but that must have been there all along, the foundation, the ones she knew must have began somewhere, but that she couldn’t imagine ever being without. But as she sat there dreaming, and wishing, thinking, remembering (Now a flash of Dr. Seuss (the bee watcher watcher, and “Do you know how lucky you are?”), now her brother’s green eggs and ham, now her sister’s silly, “Barbeque sauce, I say, I say” at the dinner table) she accidentally marked her arm by the same stupid mistake she’d fallen for so many times before. And suddenly there was a spark, and she began to write.
Filed under: Uncategorized
The idea of fate, or a predetermined destiny, is something I’ve never been completely able to believe, or put down. I don’t believe that your life has already been chosen for you or that what you will do in this life and where you go after have already been decided. It doesn’t seem to make sense that what you do with your life doesn’t matter, that your end is predetermined and you are just going through the actions, or that your choices either have no effect on your life, or that they aren’t really your choices. I don’t even believe in soulmates. I believe you choose who you fall in love with, not that there is someone designed for you that you have to find. But I have thought to myself a few times before that everything happens for a reason. This seems to demand some sort of “fate.”
I do believe that there is a God and that He gave everyone agency so that each of us can choose what we do with our lives. But I think it’s also important that I explain that I believe God wants the people on Earth to do well. Like a good teacher, he doesn’t want to fail us. And I believe we are His sons and daughters and that he wants us, like any good parnet would, to become our best (and as He is perfect, that would be like Him). So I think it only makes sense that He give us a chance to learn right from wrong and try to become more like Him. If all our decisions were made for us, we wouldn’t be learning anything and we wouldn’t be becoming better. So in this way, I don’t believe there could be a such thing as fate.
However, I also believe God has a potential plan for everyone on Earth, a plan that leads us through life becoming better, and then back to Him, and that if we do as he directs, we will receive the blessings of that plan. This seems to make sense to me too. If he wants us to come back to him in a more perfect state, that would be the ideal plan. And the closer we are to following His teachings ideally, the closer we will be to the ideal plan. But the difference this is from fate, is that the plan is dependant on the choices, not the other way around.
The only other way any sort of fate may play in to our lives, I think, is that I believe God also knows all of the choices we will make ahead of time, and may control how each others’ paths are entwined with one anothers’ through his omnipotency. I do not think he judges us before our life is over, even though he knows all things and knows how we will choose, but I do think that some of the things we can’t control are being controlled by Him. For example, I believe he may cause a neighbor who runs a company in need of an extra employee to movein next to the family that is looking for a job. I also believe the friends we have been lucky enough to meet are somewhat planned by a God. Basically, I believe in the saying, “When God closes a door he always opens a window.” I believe He sets up opportunities for us, but we have to choose whether or not to take them.
Filed under: A
Kindergarten hadn’t been much of a challenge. I had learned the alphabet long before classes even started, and had already started to read small words. But in class, we were still focusing on the alphabet. I told my dad once, and said it didn’t make any sense. He just said that some of the other kids might still not know it and that if it was easy for me that was all right. I didn’t like reciting “A a ant, B b bird…” the same way everyday. There were more words that started with those letters, not just ant and bird. It especially bothered me when it got to the letters like c, u, or y, that made more sounds than just the cah- in cat or the uh- in umbrella, or the yuh- in yo-yo. And I didn’t like using “xylophone” or “x-ray” when it came to x because x made a z sound in xylophone, and I couldn’t think of a single other word where x made a z sound. And who really knew or cared what a xylophone was in kindergarten anyway? And saying x-ray seemed like cheating since the x wasn’t really part of the word, but using fox instead was not better, because it broke the pattern. X was at the end.
So I stumbled over these frustrations in my head everyday in class as we recited out monotone alphabet. And I was almost content to put myself on my high horse and recite, “A a ant” and then think, “or apple, or ankle, or Ashley,” “B b bird,” “or boat, or bear, or bucket,” “C c cat,” “or Chloe, or…” But that was about the extent of my reading lesson in Kindergarten on most days. We may have eventually read a few short books, but I remember most of the year, we stuck to the alphabet. My parents would help teach me a little more at home, but I don’t think they wanted to teach me too much, for fear I’d grow too bored at school. I already was.
With her new class coming into the first grade, my teacher, Ms. Visyak, had a challenge. She had to assign everyone to a reading group determined by level of experience. And she had never met any of us before. I imagine I was particularly tricky, because I remember her first guess. She handed me a short chapter book. I remember it had been about a dog that solved mysteries, but I think the only way I found that out was from her telling me so later. I stumbled over every other word. The next book she gave me was something much simpler, a short book with small pages that were more picture than words. I was assigned to the corresponding reading group. I don’t know exactly how it compared to the others, because as a six year old, I didn’t really care, but I knew it wasn’t nearly the highest. I remember a story about farm animals on the back of a truck. It was the first book I finished in that class and I have to admit, I was very proud of myself. A lot of the other students had stumbled over some of the harder words, but I was already coming up with my own context clues. And thankfully, Ms. Visyak noticed.
I spent the next month or so hopping reading groups. As soon as I understood the next level well enough, Ms. Visyak would bump me up to the next group. She gave me books to borrow so that I could catch up. I remember finding one in a pile of old school papers about the transformation from a tadpole to a frog a couple years after first grade had ended. I tried to return it to her, but she didn’t even remember the book. It took me ten minutes to explain to her why I was giving it to her. She only laughed.
She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She once asked the class to try to divide a circle into three equal parts. I thought I understood how to do it, so I raised my hand. I then realized my idea wouldn’t work, and tried to take back my offer to try. She wouldn’t stand for it. She told me to get up and try, even if I wasn’t sure. I was wrong, but no one ever felt too ashamed for being wrong in her class. But I was curious. The first thing I did when I got home was asked my dad how to divide a circle into three equal parts.
Another time, I spilt blue paint on the floor during art class. She told me I needed to clean it all out. I wiped it up lazily, and there was still a little blue spot that I didn’t think I was going to be able to get out. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me. It wasn’t very noticeable. But for her that was unacceptable. I spent the rest of the art period scrubbing. My best friend talked to me while I scrubbed and we whispered angrily to each other about how it was unfair that I had to scrub for so long. I had hated her in that one moment, but now I laugh at the memory. I must have been so spoiled. When I was finished, there was no trace of the blue paint.
At the end of the year she suggested me for the gifted and talented, or GT, program, probably to try to ensure I’d still be challenged. In fifth grade while I worked on creative writing pieces for the student made magazine in my GT class, my sister was in Ms. Visyak’s kindergarten class. Judging by the way my sister has turned out, she must have received the same treatment. We chat in our free time about books we’ve both read, like Bloomability, and Esperanza Rising. When Ms. Visyak retired the year before my second sister would be in her class, she gave a basket full of her first level reading books to my second sister. We still have them in the children’s book case in the playroom. Some of them had been some of my favorites in that class. My third sister’s kindergarten teacher needed a substitute for the first couple of months of school on maternity leave. Ms. Visyak was also that substitute. My third sister is still in kindergarten and has fulfilled all of the requirements for the school year and has started writing what she thinks will be a chapter book about an adventurous mouse. I now have little fear that all of my sisters will understand the importance and joy of reading, but what’s more, the importance of challenging oneself. We all had the influence of Ms. Visyak.
Filed under: I
Computer literacy is definitely essential in communicating in the world today. The internet is a much more convenient means of communication than most traditional methods. Email replaces snail mail, powerpoint presentations replace many visual aids that may be heavy or awkward to transport. Webcams and blogs have even made traditional meetings a thing of the past. A business can have employees all over the world who network rather than one office centered in one area. People can run businesses from home rather than deal with a long commute everyday. But in order for any of these conveniences to happen, one must be computer literate. Otherwise these “conveniences” quickly become frustrations. And besides that, a man who is computer literate will be more desirable than one who is not. He will be better at communicating with others who turn to these conveniences. And technology will only move forward. If you can’t keep up, you’re falling farther behind. Thus computer literacy is most definitely a gateway to power.
However, I hate to say verbal literacy is becoming a thing of the past. Though it may not be the most practical means of communication there’s still something more personal about receiving a letter the old fashioned way than receiving an email. It takes more time and effort to write, and so you’ll almost always get a more meaningful message out of it. Besides that, it’s written in that person’s own handwriting. You can tell so much more about how someone is feeling when you can see the way there hand was moving across the paper, than when you read typed characters on a screen. More so, I think the traditional speech is something that can never be replaced. No form of communication can replace that of the tongue. I doubt technology will ever be able to portray the amount of emotion a traditional speech with a real voice and facial expressions and hand gestures has. Even as technology progresses, it can do nothing to replace this, only to enhance it. And if reading books has become nothing more than a leisure activity for the elite, so be it, but let it at least stay at that. If the old fashioned forms of communication are not realistic, at least let them be an artistic alternative.
