in lieu of anything intelligent
Apr. 23rd, 2003 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wisdomeagleSecond assignment: write a paragraph about a time when you were on the outside looking in. Use concrete details.
There is a stack of scrap paper in my first grade classroom, and we color on the backsides of old worksheets and pictures photocopied from coloring books. Today, though, they are coloring the fronts of these pages. Mostly they choose the picture of the mermaids, lounging on a rock. They are such lovely mermaids, from a Disney movie or a fairy tail, and such careful coloring. I dare not choose my own copy of this picture, sure that I would not be able to color inside the lines, could not add anything of beauty. No, that I do not dare, but I choose a picture of a puppy, take my box of 72 Crayola crayons, and I color. My dog will have spots, black and brown and yellow, a mottled dog with a white coat, a mutt with a mixture of pigments. I am proud; I have finished. I run to them-and they are the nameless girls, the popular girls, and they are also my friends. Jessica, whose house I slept at, and Sonja, who wandered in the woods with me, Rachel, whom everyone loved because she was the prettiest, her friend Megan, who had been cruel in Kindergarten-to these I run with my finished picture. I don't know which girl it is who tells me that their collection is only of pretty colored-in pictures, that I and my spotted dog are not welcome. Tears must be choked back; if I can't manage that now, how will I manage the next eight years? But my teacher is gentle, and she notices-my face stained, my eyes downcast? I don't know. She notices and asks what's wrong, and I, first grade Ruth Ellen who did not yet know how to lie convincingly and tell her "nothing," explain that they did not like my picture, and she holds me and tells me, "I like the things you do."
I'm considering the relative merits of taking a nap and not taking a nap. Either way, I haven't had anywhere near enough sleep... and Crafting of Fiction should be fine. Yay.
There is a stack of scrap paper in my first grade classroom, and we color on the backsides of old worksheets and pictures photocopied from coloring books. Today, though, they are coloring the fronts of these pages. Mostly they choose the picture of the mermaids, lounging on a rock. They are such lovely mermaids, from a Disney movie or a fairy tail, and such careful coloring. I dare not choose my own copy of this picture, sure that I would not be able to color inside the lines, could not add anything of beauty. No, that I do not dare, but I choose a picture of a puppy, take my box of 72 Crayola crayons, and I color. My dog will have spots, black and brown and yellow, a mottled dog with a white coat, a mutt with a mixture of pigments. I am proud; I have finished. I run to them-and they are the nameless girls, the popular girls, and they are also my friends. Jessica, whose house I slept at, and Sonja, who wandered in the woods with me, Rachel, whom everyone loved because she was the prettiest, her friend Megan, who had been cruel in Kindergarten-to these I run with my finished picture. I don't know which girl it is who tells me that their collection is only of pretty colored-in pictures, that I and my spotted dog are not welcome. Tears must be choked back; if I can't manage that now, how will I manage the next eight years? But my teacher is gentle, and she notices-my face stained, my eyes downcast? I don't know. She notices and asks what's wrong, and I, first grade Ruth Ellen who did not yet know how to lie convincingly and tell her "nothing," explain that they did not like my picture, and she holds me and tells me, "I like the things you do."
I'm considering the relative merits of taking a nap and not taking a nap. Either way, I haven't had anywhere near enough sleep... and Crafting of Fiction should be fine. Yay.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-23 11:44 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-04-23 01:25 pm (UTC)