Post by ScarletMornings on Sept 5, 2007 15:29:34 GMT -8
we were supposed to write a short narrative about someone who influenced us to a beginning. this was my effort and i found it rather enjoyable so i decided to see if y'all did as well.
I sat in sixth period, resignedly watching the clock tick towards the end of the hour. Fatalistically, I slumped in my seat as the bell rang. My next hour was English…with Mrs. McIntyre.
My sister had terrified me with stories of her before school even started, relating with ghoulish relish one particular story when someone farted in class and Mrs. McIntyre cheerfully walked around spraying the general area of everyone’s posterior with Lysol spray.
She had lived up magnificently to her reputation. I was convinced she was the worst teacher in the sixth grade. She taught English in the most boring, drab, cut-and-dry way possible, and she loved to reiterate grammar until I felt I could spout rules about adjective clauses and adverb phrases and dangling participles backwards in my sleep. My hands twitched constantly, muscle memory forcing them to retrace previously diagrammed sentences even when I wasn’t near a marker board. All and all, I seriously dreaded my last hour of the day.
As I slouched into class and slipped in my chair, I prayed blackly that I wouldn’t have any gas problems, because Mrs. McIntyre had a new, big can of Lysol on her desk. Half the class was already sleeping and the other half sat hunched over their book, frantically trying to finish the homework they’d forgotten to do.
The bell rang shrilly, and the sleeping half of class jumped guiltily while the procrastinators groaned in unison and allowed their heads to drop to their desk in defeat. Mrs. McIntyre strolled cheerily into the room, smiling pleasantly. A militant gleam was in her eye as she said, “Please turn in whatever homework you have completed at this time.” No one dared to so much as twitch a pencil. We all filed reluctantly to the tray to turn in our pitiful efforts to master the English language.
After we all sat back down, we reflexively reached for our English books, but Mrs. McIntyre stopped us. “Today class, we won’t be needing our textbooks. We are going to be beginning a poetry project!” she announced happily.
Along with the rest of the class, I groaned piteously. Not….poetry. Possible the single most uncool thing you could do in sixth grade was to write poetry. I wanted to cry in protest against the ignominy of this project, but Mrs. McIntyre barreled on determinedly, ignoring our spectacular vocal disapproval. She took all hour to explain how to write it and what it was to be about- what freedom meant to us- and to give examples of the “wonderful work” her previous years had done. We all left after the last bell dreading the coming night and the agony that no doubt awaited our poor brains.
That night, I put it off as long as I could. I actually did chores to avoid having to write a poem. But finally it came to the point where I knew that if I was going to get this thing done before morning, I had to start. So I sat down at my computer and forced my mind to think.
And something happened. Words began to flow and rhyme in my mind, and my hands began to type, and before I knew it, I had a poem staring back at me from the once blank and forbidding Word Document on my computer. I read it and began to get what would become a familiar feeling- the thrill of writing poetry. Mine was so good!
In retrospect, that poem is so bad I refuse to admit to it. But I was so excited to turn that thing in that I actually put it on pretty paper and drew lovely things in the background and actually spent time being creative and not just doing the minimum requirements. They hung all our poems up in the hall for the rest of the year, and every time I walked by it I got this huge thrill.
Not too much later, it began to occur to me that I didn’t have to wait for school projects to write poems, and I began my first halting attempts at writing. I like to think I steadily improved to the fairly talented writer I am today. I plan to spend my life getting even better, maybe one day brilliant, because I realized that writing is the thing I love to do most in my life.
For the rest of the year, I cheerfully sat through grammar lessons and diagrammed sentences, and I even would have smilingly taken a whole can of Lysol to the bottom. I had discovered my passion in life, and it was all due to the frightening Mrs. McIntyre. Without her, I might have gone the rest of my life without giving writing a try. I may not have liked her class or her teaching, but she is the reason I credit for beginning poetry. And no matter how often I had to stifle farts in her class, in the end I was so, so grateful
I sat in sixth period, resignedly watching the clock tick towards the end of the hour. Fatalistically, I slumped in my seat as the bell rang. My next hour was English…with Mrs. McIntyre.
My sister had terrified me with stories of her before school even started, relating with ghoulish relish one particular story when someone farted in class and Mrs. McIntyre cheerfully walked around spraying the general area of everyone’s posterior with Lysol spray.
She had lived up magnificently to her reputation. I was convinced she was the worst teacher in the sixth grade. She taught English in the most boring, drab, cut-and-dry way possible, and she loved to reiterate grammar until I felt I could spout rules about adjective clauses and adverb phrases and dangling participles backwards in my sleep. My hands twitched constantly, muscle memory forcing them to retrace previously diagrammed sentences even when I wasn’t near a marker board. All and all, I seriously dreaded my last hour of the day.
As I slouched into class and slipped in my chair, I prayed blackly that I wouldn’t have any gas problems, because Mrs. McIntyre had a new, big can of Lysol on her desk. Half the class was already sleeping and the other half sat hunched over their book, frantically trying to finish the homework they’d forgotten to do.
The bell rang shrilly, and the sleeping half of class jumped guiltily while the procrastinators groaned in unison and allowed their heads to drop to their desk in defeat. Mrs. McIntyre strolled cheerily into the room, smiling pleasantly. A militant gleam was in her eye as she said, “Please turn in whatever homework you have completed at this time.” No one dared to so much as twitch a pencil. We all filed reluctantly to the tray to turn in our pitiful efforts to master the English language.
After we all sat back down, we reflexively reached for our English books, but Mrs. McIntyre stopped us. “Today class, we won’t be needing our textbooks. We are going to be beginning a poetry project!” she announced happily.
Along with the rest of the class, I groaned piteously. Not….poetry. Possible the single most uncool thing you could do in sixth grade was to write poetry. I wanted to cry in protest against the ignominy of this project, but Mrs. McIntyre barreled on determinedly, ignoring our spectacular vocal disapproval. She took all hour to explain how to write it and what it was to be about- what freedom meant to us- and to give examples of the “wonderful work” her previous years had done. We all left after the last bell dreading the coming night and the agony that no doubt awaited our poor brains.
That night, I put it off as long as I could. I actually did chores to avoid having to write a poem. But finally it came to the point where I knew that if I was going to get this thing done before morning, I had to start. So I sat down at my computer and forced my mind to think.
And something happened. Words began to flow and rhyme in my mind, and my hands began to type, and before I knew it, I had a poem staring back at me from the once blank and forbidding Word Document on my computer. I read it and began to get what would become a familiar feeling- the thrill of writing poetry. Mine was so good!
In retrospect, that poem is so bad I refuse to admit to it. But I was so excited to turn that thing in that I actually put it on pretty paper and drew lovely things in the background and actually spent time being creative and not just doing the minimum requirements. They hung all our poems up in the hall for the rest of the year, and every time I walked by it I got this huge thrill.
Not too much later, it began to occur to me that I didn’t have to wait for school projects to write poems, and I began my first halting attempts at writing. I like to think I steadily improved to the fairly talented writer I am today. I plan to spend my life getting even better, maybe one day brilliant, because I realized that writing is the thing I love to do most in my life.
For the rest of the year, I cheerfully sat through grammar lessons and diagrammed sentences, and I even would have smilingly taken a whole can of Lysol to the bottom. I had discovered my passion in life, and it was all due to the frightening Mrs. McIntyre. Without her, I might have gone the rest of my life without giving writing a try. I may not have liked her class or her teaching, but she is the reason I credit for beginning poetry. And no matter how often I had to stifle farts in her class, in the end I was so, so grateful