Perspective

 

Author's Note- This is my response to the following assignment for my group reading book, Life As We Knew It. 

Assignment #2: Point of View

Identify the point of view in LAWKI and discuss how that point of view affects the reader's interpretation of the novel's events. Use specific scenes and examples to support your ideas. For an advanced score, determine how the story would be different if told from another point of view. Due December 7.

I struggled a lot with this assignment...it doesn't feel quite right to me.  Any advice/pointers?

In the apocalyptic, engaging novel Life As We Knew It, the point of view is written through the diary entries of 15 year-old Miranda, a normal teen thrust into a world full of death, destruction, hunger, and isolation.  The fact that a fifteen year old is narrating the story can easily be an advantage or disadvantage to the reader.   When reading this story from a teen's perspective, you get almost the whole picture, but not quite.  She is under no circumstances ever allowed to go into the pantry for most of the middle of the book.  Their mother always gets the cans out from the pantry, and she won't allow anyone in.  Reading in Miranda's point of view obstructs your knowledge of the food situation, as well as the condition of the outside world, as she's not allowed to waste batteries by listening to the radio like her mother does.  

Yet, her perspective still gives us an advantage.  At least we're not reading from ten year-old Johnny's point of view, who believes this horrid nightmare is some sort of game that he's playing that will all end soon.  It takes him weeks to realize that Miranda and Matt had stopped eating breakfast and lunch every other day to conserve food, or the fact that his mother had stopped eating almost entirely.  His young, naïve mind has yet to grasp the magnitude of this catastrophic disaster.

If, perhaps, the mother narrated this story, I have a feeling it would be much, much darker, the reason being that she sees what's happening a lot more clearly than a teen would, and she can assess the situation better.  She's slowly starving herself to death to save her kids.  She knows how low the food supply is, and learns about new disasters happening around the world daily from the radio.  She and Matt, the college-age brother, would understand how much more serious the situation is than Miranda and John, who are still on the drawn-out trek through adolescence.

Megan's Choices

Author's Note:  This is my response to the following assignment for the book I am reading with my reading group, entitled Life As We Knew It:

  

Assignment #3: Character

Analyze the motives (why) and behavior of one character from your novel. Is this character dynamic or static, and why do you believe this? How do his/her actions affect the events of the story? Use text evidence to support your ideas. If possible, compare this character to a similar one from another novel.

I tried to experiment with vocabulary a bit, but I'm not entirely sure I like the whole analysis...the first paragraph was sort of a summary of this character's story (who is not the main character- Miranda is.) and the second paragraph was the analysis.  The reason I included the summary is that only five other people in the class have read this book, and I felt like some background information would be required for the people who haven't.  Comments will be greatly appreciated!

Megan is withering away to nothing, purposely starving herself to death.  She was Miranda's closest and most trusted friend…until the sharp claws of Reverend Marshall lured her into it's grasp and kept her there.   Megan's always been Catholic, and always devoted to God.  But once the moon crashes into the earth, causing hunger, famine, floods, and volcanoes among other devastating disasters, a greedy and gluttonous reverend crafts his convincing words and uses her false trust to change her beliefs, along with the entire congregation's, and makes them think that the right thing to do is give their food to him and his family, while they all slowly starve to death.  He tells them that he hears God speaking to him, telling him that this is their destiny, and that God is waiting for them.  Megan is convinced immediately, as she has been listening to him all her life and trusts him unwaveringly.  Miranda must watch as Megan becomes so weak from hunger that it takes all her strength to stand.

Megan is quite obviously a dynamic character, as Reverend Marshall takes a hand in changing her beliefs, values, and attitude.  In fact, her whole attitude toward life is changed.  Instead of wanting  to live her life to the fullest like the old Megan once did, she condemns herself to the confinement of her room for the rest of her life, eating little to none everyday, even though she has food and she lusts for it,  for life, for sunlight.  Reverend tells her that her lust for these things, along with everyone else's is the reason why God did this.  He's causing the world to end to punish them, apparently, and they have to prove their love for God by sacrificing everything they love.  Food, communication, family, friends...When Miranda tells Megan she'll be back next week to visit her again, she even says, "Don't come back.  I have to show God I'm truly repentent, and I can't do that if you make me think about food, and talking to my family, and how awful things are.  I don't want to be angry at God and seeing you makes me feel that way, just a little bit.  So I can't see you again. I have to sacrifice our friendship, because I don't know how much left I can sacrifice to prove to God how much I love Him."  

Her actions affect the events of the story because once she dies, it pushes Miranda on.  It makes her realize she does not want to die, especially not like Megan did, so at peace with everything, and okay with herself dying for no reason.  It caused Miranda's decision to die fighting, which ultimately saved the entire family in the end.

Guy Montag from the book Fahrenheit 451, as well as most of the characters from this novel, would be perfect examples of characters similar to Megan.  The reason I say this is that Guy, like Megan, is completely and utterly convinced that what he's doing is the one true and right thing, though in reality, he's participating in terrible and wrong things.  You see, Guy is a firefighter, yet unlike our modern day firefighters, he doesn't put fires out, he starts them.  His job is to burn books.  He lives in the future, where classes like Philosophy and Sculpting no longer exist, nor do any other classes that would allow you to think for yourself.  Math, science, and business-type classes are the only classes anyone could take, books are burned, and writing is banned.  A controlling government has filled the population's heads with nonsense.  They have the creativity slowly beaten out of them with a (figurative) stick from a young age and are told this is right.  Now tell me, does that sound right to you?

Innocence

 Author's Note- This is my essay on Life of Pi for Lang. Arts class.  I tried to work on making my conclusion and introduction strong.  Please comment!

Innocence.  Naiveté, guiltlessness, ingenuity.  Those are qualities of young children living in fantasy land or of people who have never done something unspeakably horrid, something that fills them with heart-wrenching guilt.  Something that you're not proud of, and would take back in a heartbeat.  To lose those qualities is like losing a part of yourself, that part of you that still hopes, still wishes and dreams, still has a positive outlook.  In the award-winning novel, entitled Life of Pi, Pi Patel starts off as an innocent, curious boy, finding his religion.  But at the age of sixteen, Pi loses that part of himself; he loses his soft innocence.

Pi doesn't lose his innocence all at once, or at a set time or date.  A string of events slowly strip the innocence from him, but the last event finalizes it and takes away the very last shreds of hope and ingénue.  The first happens after Richard Parker and Pi are the only ones left on the boat, and Pi starts fishing.  Pi goes from crying hysterically over "the muffled death of a flying fish" to "gleefully bludgeoning a dorado with a  hatchet".  His first bit of innocence is lost there, as he kills the flying fish, then the rainbow-colored dorado.  His actions majorly contradicted his beliefs on murder and vegetarianism. They were his first kills, and once they were gone, it couldn't be undone. 

The second event where Pi lost his innocence was when he killed his first turtle.  He had killed and eaten raw fish before, but killing the turtle was symbolic for Pi. In the Hindu beliefs, turtles are extremely sacred animals, because Hindus believe their shell represents heaven and their underside represents earth.  So basically, a turtle is an animal whose magic unites heaven and earth.  Their religion also has a legend that earth is supported by four elephants standing on a giant turtle.  Another reason turtles are important to Hindus is that they believe turtles are also the second incarnation of the powerful god Vishnu.  So by killing the turtle, he is also symbolically killing his religion and his god.  Another example of how he killed his religion at sea is that in Part II of the book, when he's out at sea, Pi doesn't mention religion nearly as much as he does he does in Part I and III.  This is because he starts to lose faith and hope, and instead of practicing religion, survival instincts take over.

There are a few other parts where Pi's innocence is torn, but the climactic moment, the event that finalized it, was the death of the blind man.  When the blind man dies, Pi describes it as "killing a part of [himself] that will never come back to life."  That part of him was his innocence.  By eating some of the dried strips of his flesh, Pi has lowered himself all the way down to cannibalism.  That is an act that will surely destroy his innocence and greatly harm his beliefs.  Not only is he eating meat, but the meat of his own kind. 

Pi talks about religion throughout Part I, but he loses touch with God and Vishnu in the second, and walks away scarred, but wiser and much more knowledgeable about religion than he ever had been.  He does end up getting his religion back, but on his journey, he lost something he will never get back.  His innocence.

Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Skip Bathing This Week

*Author's Note- Yesterday, I was surfing the web, and I came across a website that was just a bunch of top five lists- top ten movies to see this summer, top ten reasons to buy an iPhone, top ten healthy but yummy foods, and so on. So I decided I wanted to make a few of my own top ten lists...except I wanted them to be devil's advocate top ten lists. A devil's advocate is a person arguing about something they don't necessarily agree to, just for the sake of the argument. So, here's my first list.

Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Skip Bathing This Week:

1. Showering and bathing take up time.
I know for a fact that most people like to take drawn-out, time-consuming, relaxing showers. Ten, fifteen, even twenty or thirty minute showers! Then another five minutes or so to get dried off and dressed. Depending on the amount of hair the person has, it takes a person anywhere between 1-20 minutes to dry their hair. So, in total, it could take 16-55 minutes to take their shower or bath! That's 16-55 minutes you could've spent sleeping, or practicing your free throw, playing instruments, or memorizing lines for the school play. It's precious time that you could've used up doing that homework assignment due four days ago, watching last night's episode of Glee, or playing Mario Kart on your Wii. You could've even been helping your community by donating food to the local food pantry or volunteering at the animal shelter or soup kitchen. Heck, even if doing something nice like that doesn't give you the satisfying feeling of knowing you've helped someone, it'll look good on your college résumé. So in the long run, not showering can help get you into a better college.

2. Water is a precious natural resource we must preserve.
Already, our planet is running out of water. 1 of every 6 people in the world (about one billion people) don't have clean, drinkable water, or even remotely clean water to bathe in. If we keep it up this way, with everybody showering and bathing every day for half an hour, the numbers of people with clean water will keep dwindling, until only the richest in the world have drinkable water. Are we really going to be this selfish, and take away the lives of the poor thirsty children in Africa when they run out of water, all to accommodate our own petty relaxation and cleanliness needs?

3. Being clean is an act of conformity.
Many people only shower because it is required of them to be clean to be accepted by a clique, or a girlfriend/boyfriend, or even family. Because they think that nobody would want to be friends with them if their dirty and stinky all the time. But shouldn't true friends and family not judge you by how you smell or look, but by your personality? Shouldn't they care about you even if your hair is greasy or your feet stink, or you smell like a garbage can just threw up on you? Real friends should stick with you no matter how bad you reek.

4. Showers can be very dangerous places.
Most people don't realize this, but if you think about it, showers and bathtubs are two places where there are many different ways to become injured or, in worse case scenarios, die. Think about it. When you're bathing or showering after a long, stressful or physically demanding day, hot water and steam can be very therapeutic and relaxing, and could potentially make a person extremely drowsy. If one were to fall asleep in the shower, they would slip and fall, possibly knocking their head and passing out. If one were to fall asleep in the bathtub, they could easily drown. It's happened many times before, especially if the tub is full and children in it are unsupervised. Also, you could get cut by a razor if someone left it on the floor of the shower or accidentally dropped it into a full bathtub. If you pour in too much bubble bath, the bubbles could multiply until they filled the bathroom, and you can't find the way out. While shampooing or conditioning, you could get soap in your eye and be unable to see where you are going, and run into something and fall, or at least stub your toe. There are endless possibilities to get injured or killed while bathing or showering.

5. The Psycho Shower Scene...

I'm sure you've heard of the movie Psycho, filmed in the 1960's. One of the main scenes in the movie is where one of the characters, whose name is Marion, is violently stabbed to death in the shower. After seeing this movie, many people avoided showering and bathing for weeks, months even, because the scene terrified them. The actress that played the victim now only showers when absolutely necessary, and locks all the doors and windows in her house every time she does. Although the movie is fiction, if you think about it, a shower is possibly one of the best places to murder someone (though I would highly advise against murder). The person is completely vulnerable. First off, they're naked. They have no armor or clothing even to protect themselves. Second, they can barely see the rest of the bathroom, if at all! There's steam everywhere, and most people have an opaque shower curtain, so you couldn't see someone sneaking up even if you were looking. Third, unless you're a really, really paranoid person that keeps weapons in the shower, the only item you have for self defense is a bar of soap. Pretty reassuring, right? Also, the floor would be slippery and wet, making it hard to stand your ground or escape. So, although it is highly unlikely you will ever be attacked in the shower, that's one of the places you'll be the most vulnerable.

6. Energy cannot be taken for granted.
Energy needs to be conserved, not wasted. Every time we take a hot, steamy shower, we're using up priceless energy to keep our water warm, and burning fossil fuels that emit deadly toxins into the air. We're trashing our earth and polluting our atmosphere. Fossil fuels are non-renewable sources, because they take millions of years to form, and they're being used up much faster than they're being made. If people use them up on material things like showers, there won't be much left. And even if you don't care about your environment, another reason for conserving energy is its cost. Energy bills are getting higher and higher these days, so when you take showers, you're not just wasting energy, but money as well.

7. Frequent showers and baths can strip your skin of its natural oils and dry it out.
Every time you take a shower, you're rinsing away your skin's natural oils that keep your skin nice and moisturized. And not just your skin, your hair as well. Your only supposed to wash your hair every other day or it can get very dull and dry. If you shower all the time, every day, your skin is going to start looking like my dad's old wallet, all wrinkly and scaly. You'll get itchy and your skin may even form red bumps. Skin doctors even say you shouldn't shower as often. This is even more common in the winter, when the cold, dry weather wicks away any moisture your body has. Keep your skin healthy and avoid the showers!

8. Chlorine in your shower is very dangerous.
Chlorine is a chemical used to purify drinking water to make sure it's clean. It's also used for bathing water. But a recent study has shown how dangerous that is. When you shower or bathe, chemicals in the water vaporize, releasing poisonous gas. Until you can get a shower filter, you better avoid showering.

"Chlorine is used almost universally in the treatment of public drinking water because of its toxic effects on harmful bacteria and other waterborne, disease-caring organisms. But there is a growing body of scientific evidence that shows that chlorine in drinking water may actually pose greater long term dangers than those for which it was used to eliminate.

These effects of chlorine may result in either ingestion or absorption through the skin. Scientific studies have linked chlorine and chlorination by-products to cancer of the bladder, liver, stomach, rectum, and colon, as well as heart disease, The presence of chlorine in water may also contribute to the formation of chloramines in the water, which can cause taste and odor problems. “Since chlorine is required by public health regulations to be present in all public drinking water supplies, it is up to the individual to remove it at the point-of-use in the home.”

-Dr. J. M. Prince, M.D.

9. Sweat can be a natural bug repellent.
Sweat and dirt can actually be natural bug repellents if the odor becomes strong enough. In fact, the longer you go without a shower, the more effective the stench is. Bug spray is expensive as well, and taking a jog or doing a few sit-ups then avoiding the shower is free! So by not showering, your improving your physical fitness by doing whatever you want to break a sweat, saving money on insect repellent, and getting mosquito-bite free skin! What a deal!

10. Wet hair can cause sickness and deprive self esteem.
When you shower, you're hair gets wet, obviously. And if you shower before school or work, sometimes you just don't have time to dry it all out! Then you go to school with wet hair, and it gets all frizzy. Then you might get teased and bullied, which just ruins your self esteem. And if it's cold outside, (and in Wisconsin, we only have about six weeks when it isn't) you could get very sick if you leave the house with wet hair. You could get a cold, or a virus and then miss out on homework, and have to race to catch up. If you just don't shower, you'll avoid all that, and get to sleep in later.

Homework: Helpful or Harmful?

Author's Note- This is a piece I wrote for my District Writing Assessment on the harmful affects of homework, and why students shouldn't be given so much of it.

To most students, homework is a part of everyday life.  I know it is for me.  Most students have anywhere between 30 minutes to two hours of it almost every night, especially once they reach middle school and high school.  I want to introduce some points about homework I've found through some research I did and my own personal opinion on it so you can see that although homework has its positives, too much homework is harmful, and can affect our education in a negative way, instead of helping students.

Something that really aggravates me is that even though there are many negative effects of homework that are well known, such as frustration and exhaustion, eyestrain, insomnia, and even loss of desire to learn, many schools and teachers still assign boatloads of worksheets, essays, projects, and fact sheets without giving us time at school to get it done.  Now, I know most of the teachers at ACMS don't do that, but some do, and many more around the country.  So by assigning tons of homework with little work time when they know the affects of it, teachers are setting their pupils up for all of the aforementioned effects, and leading them to failure.

Another thing that bothers me is the lack of free time homework gives me for relaxation, extracurricular activities, and just going outside and shooting hoops or kicking around my soccer ball.  I get home, usually grab a snack, and head up to my room in my little corner to work on my homework.  I'll start doing my homework, but I'll get about halfway through it and then I have to go to my babysitting job, or my soccer practice.  Soccer practice takes up about 3 hours and 15 minutes of my day because its so far away, and when I get home, I have to eat dinner and shower.  By the time I'm done with that, it's late, and I'm still only halfway done with my assignments.  On those days, which is almost every day, I get really stressed out, stay up late doing homework, and don't get enough sleep.  I know that's how a lot of other student's afternoons are, as well.  I honestly don't think I've been outside to just play around and get active on my own time since school started. 

Something else I'd like to point out is that I've heard so many different people talking about how overweight Americans are getting.  I personally think homework is one of the causes of obesity.  When all we have time to do is homework, there's no time to go out and get active and play.  Also, many people eat when they're upset.  To many students, homework is upsetting!  It confuses them and frustrates them, gives them headaches and fatigue.  Many people would turn to comfort food when it gets that stressful.

One of the main things I can't stand about homework is when we get meaningless assignments, though.  It's one of my pet peeves, actually.  How exactly does coloring a worksheet improve my education?  What does cutting up magazines and gluing pictures on a piece of paper have to do with science class?  When I do this fact sheet, am I really thinking about the definition of a peninsula, or mindlessly following directions?  Seriously, what's the point of doing worksheet after worksheet when there's no real content in them, or opportunity to think for myself? 

Another issue with the amount of homework students get is that when they are given more homework than they can handle in the given amount of time, whether it be a class period, a day, or even a week, they rush through their assignments.  They'll just try to finish it as fast as they can so they can move on to the next paper due, or textbook assignment that needs to be finished.  I know this not only from my friends, but from my own experiences.  I have to speed through my science homework, not giving quality answers, just the fastest one I can think of off the top of my head.  Then I'll start my math homework and if I get a weird decimal answer, then all I can say is oh, well, not enough time to fix it, I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Homework can, in some situations, be a show of teacher incompetence as well.  If we just spent a whole hour and ten minutes focusing on a lesson, then the teacher decides to give us homework, it could be their way of saying that they didn't think we understood the lesson or learned it enough, so here's extra practice that we have to finish and turn in.  And if we spend eight hours a day at school already, we shouldn't have to spend another two relearning what we already learned.

Teens need good night's rest as well.  Many people blame the fact that we're so tired on Facebook or texting.  I don't have a Facebook, and I never text past 9PM, and I'm still bone-tired every morning.  It's not from Facebook.  Usually it's from homework that I stayed up until 10:30PM doing.

In my research, I learned something that shocked me at first, but later I realized that it's not all that surprising.  This is an excerpt from a book written by specialists about the negative effects of homework:

"…most parents (as well as many teachers) would be surprised to learn that there's very little proof that homework helps elementary school pupils learn more or have greater academic success.  In fact, as this book will explain, when children are asked to do too much nightly work, just the opposite is found.  And study after study shows that homework is not much more beneficial in middle school, either."

-The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It by Sarah Bennett and Nancy Kalish

Once I thought about it, I realized that in many cases, whenever I did my homework, I never learned anything, just repeated what I was already taught.  That's not really helping me in academic success.  Most homework doesn't help me at all, in fact.

Homework also interferes with family bonding time.  Families all around the country are complaining about how they never get to spend time with their kids, because whenever they aren't working, their kids are holed up in their room studying.  Some people may argue that when parents help with homework, they are bonding by getting involved in their child's education.  In truth, when parents try to help with homework, often times the way they were taught is completely different than what the student was taught, and everyone ends up to confused and frustrated.

Homework not only has negative effects on students and parents, but the environment as well.  We waste more and more energy with every light bulb we have to keep burning and laptop we charge.  We have to chop down our trees for textbooks, pencils, and paper.  We are killing our earth one worksheet at a time. 

All the assignments we've had to do are hard on the students, parents, and environment.  We shouldn't have to go through this on a daily basis.  Homework can be good in moderation, when it's homework that has some real, actual content, but when we are given a ton of worksheets where there's no thought process involved, it just wastes our time.  I hope now you can see that the cons of homework in most cases outweigh the pros, and that homework can be very harmful if we're given too much. 

The Babysitter and the Body

"Erica!"  Giselle whined, "Come play princesses with me!  You promised!"

                "I'll be there in a minute, sweetie!  Just let me finish the dishes from dinner."

                "Erica," Ashton moaned.  "Nick is stealing my action figures again!"

                “Erica, hurry!"  Giselle screeched.  "I need to show you how pretty I look in my Ariel dress!"

                "I'm almost done, honey!"  I said.  "Nick, give the action figures back to Ashton.  If you want to play with them, you have to ask nicely, and share."

                "Yeah, Nick, give it back!" Ashton said triumphantly.

                "Erica!  Come play princesses NOW!"

                I sighed deeply, scrubbing the pizza sauce off the last plate.  I dried it quickly, and put it back in the cabinet.  "I'll be right there, Giselle!"  I called.

                I walked over to the playroom, and plastered a big, fake smile on my face.  Giselle was standing there, hands on her hips, foot tapping impatiently.  She had on a blue and purple sparkly dress with a picture of Ariel, the Little Mermaid, on the front, paired with cute little dress up heels, a plastic necklace, and fake clip-on earrings.  "Oh my goodness, Giselle!  You look so beautiful!" I gushed, putting extra enthusiasm in my voice.

                "I know," she said haughtily.  Man, she is one conceited little three-year old.  This babysitting job just doesn't pay enough sometimes.  She turned around and started rummaging through her dress up princess chest, and a few moments later, came back out holding up a Cinderella dress made for five year olds, and plastic shoes too small for even my tiny feet.  "Put these on!" she ordered.

                "I don't know if I can, Princess Giselle.  They're so small!  I'm pretty sure I'd burst the seams if I tried to fit it over my head," I shrugged, pretending to be sad that I couldn't fit.

                Well you never know until you try, so try it on anyway!"

                I sighed, resigned, and took the dress from her.  I couldn't even fit my shoulders through the bottom of the dress.  "Doesn't look like I'll be able to wear it.  Sorry, Princess Giselle."

                "Erica!"  screamed Ashton.

                "I'll be right back, sweetie,"  I said to Giselle.  In response she stomped her foot and harrumphed, but I ran back to the living room anyways.  I arrived to find Nick running around the room with an action figure, being chased by a very angry Ashton. 

                "Give it back, Nick!"  he demanded, then stopped running, looked at me and tattled, "Nick asked like you said, but then he just took it without waiting for an answer!  It's mine, and I want it back!"

                "How about we put the action figures away for now and go outside?  We can play football if you want," I persuaded, trying to get them away from the toys. 

                "Yeah!" They chorused.  Nick dropped the forgotten action figure and they ran over to put their shoes on. 

                "I'll be out in a minute, I'm just going to grab your sister and clean up a bit!"  I called after them, but they were already out the door.  I hurried over to the playroom and cajoled Giselle out of her Ariel dress and heels.  Then, I helped her get on her Dora the Explorer sandals, went outside and got her some chalk to draw with, and told her I'd be back in a minute.  When I came inside the house and looked around, I realized I had a lot of work to do.  There were baseball cards and action figures everywhere, and our abandoned Candy Land was still lying there, with the cards strewn across the floor.  Walking over to the playroom, I almost tripped on a toy car, and when I got to the playroom, I realized Giselle had dumped out her dress up collection all over the floor, and knocked over the stack of piano books.  I got to work, putting this and that away, fixing up everything and reassembling the house.  I found a Wii remote lying around.  I wonder why it's up here?  I thought.  Their Wii was down in the basement, and all the CD's and remotes were supposed to be in the game closet.  Great, now I have to walk all the way downstairs, I thought. 

                I ran down the steps and over to the closet.  I looked around and shuddered.  I don't know why, but their basement always gave me the creeps.  It never happened with anyone else's basement, and it's not like theirs was one of those dark, creepy ones with cobwebs and spiders everywhere.  It was a fancy basement.  Fluffy, white carpeting, a bar, a pool table, even a 42 inch flat screen.  But whenever I went down there, I always got a creepy feeling. 

                I walked over to the game closet, and was blown away by an awful stench.  It smelled like something rotting!  I hurriedly put the Wii remote back.  Right as I was about to shut the door, something caught my eye.  A pale, white piece of what looks like…like flesh, behind the stack of games.  Intrigued and curious, though thoroughly grossed out, I moved the stack, and stifled a shriek.  What I saw was an elbow.  I slowly raised my gaze.  What I saw repulsed me.  There was a long, sickly gash along the upper arm of a body, covered in dried blood and gangrene.  I moved aside a small shelf of books to discover a whole body.  Oh, my God.  Oh, my God there's a dead body in the closet there's a dead body in the closet and oh my God oh my God what am I going to do oh my God oh my God oh my-

                All of a sudden, a maggot crawled out of the gash in the arm.  This time, I couldn't hold it in.  I let out a blood-curdling scream, and turned around and ran.  I dashed down the hall, up the stairs and then Oh my God I'm going to puke.  I'm gonna puke, I'm gonna puke!  I dashed into the bathroom and regurgitated my dinner.  I sat there for three minutes, just barfing my guts up.  Then I realized the kids were still outside.  I slowly, cautiously walked out.  If I had gone any faster, I would've passed out.  I made it to the yard, then just collapsed.  Laid down on the ground and stared up at the sky.

                Ashton ran over.  "Erica, what are you doing?" he asked.  Good question.  What am I doing?  I should call the cops.  I should call 911.  Wordlessly, I pulled out my phone and punched in the three numbers.  Immediately, someone, a female voice, answered.

                "Hello, 911, what is your emergency?"

                "Hello, I'd like to report a..a uh-uh--"and I couldn't finish the sentence.  I couldn't bring myself to say ‘dead body’.  Like saying it would make it all real.  I felt a tug on my sleeve, and there was Ashton again.

                "Erica, what's going on?"  he asked, his eyes widening in fear.

                'I'm not sure, hon," I replied honestly. 

                "Ma'am?  Ma'am, are you there?"  I heard from the other end of the line.

                Taking a deep breath, I responded, "Yes, I would like to report a dead body."

                There was a couple seconds of silence on the other end, and then, "And where is your location, ma'am?"  I replied calmly, and answered all her other questions in the same collective tone.  My name, did I find the body or did someone else, where was it found…it seemed to take an eternity, but I finally heard the woman say, 'Alright miss, we have people on the way, you just stay put,"  and then the dial tone after she hung up. 

                By now, Nick and Giselle had come over, and Giselle started crying.  "Erica, I'm scared!"  she sobbed. 

                "Where's mommy and daddy?"  Nick cried.  Ashton just buried his face into my shirt. 

                "Everything's going to be okay, guys.  It's all going to be fine.  Mommy and daddy will be here soon.  Everything's okay."  I gathered them close and hugged them all, and just kept repeating what I said, over and over, more for myself than for them.

Birthday Pie

Author's Note- A while ago in class, we did a journal entry, and the this was the prompt.

Power Outage at home, in the night, and your family is all around you.  Summer, during a thunderstorm around 9 pm central time.  With no cake.  Sharing a pie.

I had decided to write about my birthday pie, which is an actual birthday tradition for our family.  Last night, I found this, fixed it up and added a few things to it, and it is now a new  blog post.  Comments are appreciated, as always. 

"Oh, no!" cried my mom.  "The pie!"

"Pie?" I asked, looking around.  There was no pie in sight.  "What pie?"

"The pie I made for you're birthday tomorrow!  Since the power is out, that means the fridge won't be cold, and the pie will go bad.  By tomorrow, we won't be able to eat it!" she exclaimed.

This was a serious dilemma.  No birthday pie?  Birthday pie is a tradition in our family, and without it, the fun would be taken out of the party.

"What ever shall we do?"  asked my little sister Lauren, rather dramatically.

"Well, how about we have the pie early?"  proposed my mother.  "We'll pretend it's your birthday right now, and we'll get out the pie before it goes bad, and we'll eat it!"

My family pondered this.   Having birthday pie when it wasn't your birthday is something we never do.  It would ruin the tradition.  And then there would be no pie for the party!  But otherwise it would get all rotten, and there would be no pie!  It's completely and totally against all family traditions, but….

"It's not a bad idea," said Dad.

"If we don't eat it now, we won't have any pie at all," my mom added.

"Well…"  I hesitated.

"I don't see a problem with it," shrugged Lauren.

I sighed.  "Okay, I guess." My mom brought out the coconut cream pie, and we all dug in.  And it turned out to be the best coconut cream pie in the entire universe, even if it was a day early.

Colorful Feelings

Author's Note- This is a creative piece I did inspired by one of my favorite books that Peyton happens to be reading right now called "A Mango-Shaped Space".  Idecided to take emotions and other things that don't really have a color and make it colorful, imagine it through the eyes of someone with synesthesia.  Comments and feedback are appreciated, as always.

  

Colorful Feelings

The sickly, pasty yellow of hunger, tinted with light brown and famine.

The urgent, frantic, bright red of panic, streaked with vibrant yellows and charcoal blacks, causing senses to go into overstimulation, what to do, what to do?

The bubbly, eccentric yellows and oranges of laughter, creased with happy, soft red lines for smiles and fun.

The deep, dark red of anger, streaked with cold, hard black, seeping into your vision, blinding you from reason with it's opaque density and darkness.

The endless and ominous blue sky of perseverance, with tufts of white fluff with hints of grey shadows.

Rich reds and purples of passion, with hues of pale blues, filled with emotion.  A kiss under the moonlight, a goal achieved, a love for anything, for anybody.

The dull grey-blue, subtle, nothing exciting, really.  Boredom.  The color I see in math class and nonsensical movies.

Chaos, a catastrophic jumble of neon, exuberant colors in a frenzy, each trying to be the biggest, the most noticeable, pushing each other out of the way for the spotlight like the childhood game King of the Hill, or two divas fighting over center stage.

The blindingly bright and deep blue of confidence, with shades of green and belief in yourself.

The pure white of faith, drizzled with the soft, comforting light brown of trust and spotted with the greens and blues of confidence.

The new, spring green of hope, like a freshly planted flower, just popping its head out of the ground.

And love, a  rainbow of colors, balancing each other out, because love is filled with bright happy colors, dull sad tones, sharp, stinging, painful  tints, grey-blue sorrows and regrets, deep, emotional purples and fluttery pinks. 

Cheating

Author's Note- This is a Stream of Consciousness entry that I did a while ago, and I just found it tonight and decided to expand on it and post it to my blog.  I did it based off a picture on the back wall of Mr. Johnson's room, of a little kid doing a math problem in his head while the kid sitting next to him is looking at his answers.  I thought it would be fun imagining what the kid felt like, finding out his best friend was cheating off his slate.

58, 59, 60, 61….61!  That's it.  A large grin spreads across my face as I double check my answers, and find them all right in my head.  As I wrote down the answer with my white chalk, I thought, Hey,  I'm actually starting to get the hang of this arithmetic's thing!  I turned to tell my best friend Jimmy about how excited I was, and saw him staring intently but sneakily at my slate.  I looked down at it to see if there was a bug or a glob of snot or something equally fascinating, but all I saw were my answers.  Why would he be staring at my answers?  Wait…..he's cheating off my slate!  Oh, that little stink-nosed, dog breathed booger face!  I blushed, looking around, ashamed.  My mommy told me to never, ever say those words.  They were naughty.  But it doesn't matter, because I'm gonna get him, and I'm gonna get him good.  I raised my hand as high as it could go, and started to shout, in a sort of whiny voice, "Mrs. Honey!  Mrs. Honey!  Oh, oh, Mrs. Honey call on me!  Pretty, pretty please with chocolate syrup and sprinkles and brownie crumbles and a cherry on top?"  Mrs. Honey, who looked about fifty, with her wrinkled, frowning face and bun pulled back so tightly I wondered if she could even blink, sighed impatiently and frowned even more.

"Yes, Jeffery?"

"Jimmy was cheating off my slate!"

"Oh, really."

"Yes!"  I whined.

"And your proof is…"

"Well, I don't have any proof, but…"

"Then how could I possibly know if you were telling the truth?"

"But-but, I saw him…"

"How do I know you're not lying?"

"But-but…"

"No buts.  Now get back to work."

I harrumphed, angry that my friend never got in trouble.  I looked over and Jimmy and stuck out my tongue, but he just smugly smirked at me.  It just wasn't fair.  But what could I, a scrawny little first grader, do about this catastrophic predicament?  (My mommy taught me those big words.  She told me that they mean bad situation, but I still can't say predicament very well yet.  There are so many letters and sounds that it's hard to get it straight, so I only use it inside my head, because what's the point of sounding smart when you just mess up the words?)  Anyways.  If I keep trying to get Mrs. Honey to realize that I'm not lying, she might give me a time-out, and I'd have to wear the dunce hat.  I don’t like the dunce hat.  It makes me feel silly, and everyone laughs at me.  If I let my emotions get the better of me, and I start crying, Johnny and Erik will never let me live it down, even though I don't tease Erik about the time he peed his pants, 'cause that would make me a bully, and I don't wanna be a bully.  Plus the entire class will laugh at me, just like if I wear the dunce hat, and Mrs. Honey will tell me to suck it up and they'll laugh even harder, and Charlotte might think I'm a wimp!  I can't let her think that, no matter what.  If I just sit here and take the blow, I'll lose my manly dignity, which is not going to happen, either.  I have to do something.  But what?

Suddenly, an idea popped right into my brain.  I got it!  If he's just gonna keep cheating on me, then I'll write down the wrong answer, and when Mrs. Honey calls on him, he'll get it wrong!  As Mrs. Honey wrote the next problem on the board, a creepy smile spread across my face.  I couldn't help it.  I wanted to see Jimmy get made fun of in front of the entire class!

Okay, 47 + 9.  I can do this.  I did the math in my head.  47 + 9 = 56.  I double-checked, triple checked, even quadruple checked the answer in my head.  Once I was sure that 56 was the right answer, I wrote down 152 on my slate.  The answer was so far off that nobody would be able to stop laughing until lunchtime!  I snuck a peek at Jimmy.  He was, as I had planned, staring intently at my slate.  I didn't let on that I saw him this time, though.  I just watched with great satisfaction (another big word mommy taught me) and he copied down 152 onto his slate and shot his hand up in the air.  "Mrs. Honey, Mrs. Honey, call on me, I know this one!"

Mrs. Honey looked over at him with a dead, bored expression on her face.  "Enlighten us, Jimmy.  What is the answer?"

Jimmy looked at me with that same mocking smirk on his face.  Well this time, the joke is on him! "One hundred and fifty-two!"  he proclaimed proudly. 

Mrs.  Honey's usually monotone voice changed in pitch for the first time in hours as she exclaimed, "Why, Jimmy, that's nearly one hundred off from the correct answer!  I expect more out of you than that.  How on earth did you get such a number?"

Jimmy's face was filled with a confused expression.  "B-but that's what Jeffery wrote!"  Immediately after he realized his mistake, his eyes got wide as dinner plates, his hands flew to his mouth, and his face turned beet red.

"And why, exactly, Mr. Martin, had your eyes traveled over to Jeffery's slate?" she inquired, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.

"I-I," stuttered Jimmy, but he couldn't get past that word.

"Please, go fill the back left corner of my classroom with your presence, then, and do remember your dunce cap.  We will talk about this later."  She turned to Jeffery.  "I suppose you were right about him cheating then.  Do you happen to know the correct answer?"

"Fifty-six!"  I announced, filled with glee.

She smiled at me and winked.  "Correct."  Wow.  That was the first time I've ever seen Mrs. Honey smile!  She has pretty teeth, but not as pretty as Charlotte's.  Charlotte's are much prettier, and anyways, Mrs. Honey is an old lady.  I can't court an old lady, much less my teacher.  Ewwww!