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!