My Life- Who Am I?

Response to A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

I am a pawn in a game. I ride in the green car. I go on the trip just for the sights. I watch all around me. I get out at the last stop, finally. I figure out my purpose, why I came. I now say things in my voice, from before when I did not have one. I am detailed. I have a history. I am complicated. I am a book, when before I was just one line. I am a single flower that grows and flourishes in the winter, but I know it will soon be spring, but only when springs time comes and no sooner.


Some win some lose and some are stuck on the Superman at Six Flags. Francies ride went up, down and then she is upside-down for a while and has no idea where she is, but she knew that the loop was soon to be over and her life just started gliding on again. Or, she could be in the board game Life, because it is based on luck, although in the board game Life, everyone always wins. She would have to start effortlessly with either a job or going to college, and eventually end up in a nice nursing home and living until she was like 100 or something, and that isn’t how her or my reality is. Nothing is effortless, unless it is completely pointless. Not everyone is successful, not everyone has opportunities thrown at them like others do, not everyone has a turn to spin the wheel and move ahead on the board. Francie doesn’t have those opportunities. She has to wait, and figure out her next move before she can go, and when she does figure out what to do next everyone else gets ahead, and she falls back yet again.

The word “life” is always used in a positive way. Life means to live, but what does to live mean? It could mean to exist, to be there, take up space, to starve and just barely make it. For some, like Katie it means to survive, exists. That isn’t very positive, to just barely get along with no meaning, no happiness. For others like Johnny it meant to enjoy himself and do things with soul. Francie learned how to survive, while enjoying herself but she also added belief and imagination to their lives. Francie tried to escape to writing. Writing is good to escape too, but it will never talk back to you. They all tried to escape from their lives but there are no escape stairs in her building, she just has to keep going forward.

I can’t force something to happen otherwise it won’t happen right. I just have to let it play out. If it wasn’t meant to be then it won’t happen, but everyone is meant to prevail. Francie only showed herself in her writing but that ended so she is in a valley right now but soon she will be on top of a mountain and it will be her spring.

Remember Me

Response to A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life it’s in him to live. Sissy said that to Katie about Johnny’s drinking. You can’t change someone completely, there will always be a little of their old self in them, but you can try, to help. Nothing that ever happened will completely go away. Even when you erase a line on a paper you can still see it, but you can right over it with pen and make it true.

Johnny died and Laurie replaced him. There was a death and then a birth so it replaces and all of the spots are filled. Katie, Neeley and Francie lost their father/husband but they received Laurie just after he left. She didn’t replace him but she minimized some of their pain and brought a new pleasure to bring it back to their normal happiness level.

Francie had to accept where you she was then to be able to grow in the future. If I am a seed I have to think of myself as a seed. If I am a full grown poplar tree I have to see from the top of my branches not still at my roots, where I was as a seed. If I look from my roots I will still see myself the same as before, when I was a seed. Francie had to grow and improve, otherwise her mother’s effort and her effort and everything would all be for nothing. Francie could not accept that others did not like her writing so she quit, she burned it. She did not improve or grow, she shrunk. Her teacher did not like her, at the beginning because she was not rich and she didn’t even get a chance to prove herself otherwise.

My definition of free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. (Adlai Stevenson) In her time as well as ours this is definitely not true. It is not “safe” to be lower classified. Francie only ruined her papers but it could be a lot worse for others. There is a part that is alike in everyone so they shouldn’t really make judgments like that. It took Johnny to die, for others to realize just how good he was. It shouldn’t be that they have to leave completely for a point to get across.

I Wish, I Wish, I Wish...

October18, 2009

The English Classroom Could Be

Under the concentration of the lights, the bell rings, a signal the next 70 minutes is dedicated to reading, writing, and analyzing sentences in an uncomfortable school chair, connected to a hard plastic desk, as I stare blankly ahead, my teacher walks up to the plain, colorless board, grabs an ugly black marker from the package of all hideous black markers, and starts to write on the perfect lines of the board in perfect letters with no spelling errors, and in his monotone teaching voice tells me “Copy.” Along with the boring teaching method, the boring cubed tiles, and walls are copied too. To succeed in school “boring” has to get changed into exciting, so the inside of the class room, at the least could at least be remodeled.

The new room would have an awesome floor, walls, and doorway. I now walk in through a red and white swivel door, which will help get me excited for class to start; I walk over the floor which is an aquarium with lots of exotic fish, sea turtles and coral. In two sections of the floor it opens up to a freezer with every type of ice cream, pizza, tacos and candy, to keep us well fed and not be distracted by hunger. Three of the walls are completely covered in every type of flower, and the other wall is only windows. The feel of the new room would lighten and would already help me write better, since it would be way better than a wooden door, and cubed walls and floor.

On top of the floor there would be a lot of comfy chairs, and things to sit on to read and write on. They have to be cushioned so that I won’t get back problems from the hard desks and then have to go get surgery. All along the windows there would be really comfortable and cushiony light green window seats, with lots of books and dictionaries under it. If I walk over to my right there would be small, pretty waterfall, with a pond around it filled with trained frogs, so they wouldn’t hop away, and the fish that go into the aquarium in the floor, with sitting rocks around it for writing inspiration. If I walk to my right again the next wall is the brain food wall. It has a refrigerator with tons of food and two bar counters, with purple swivel chairs, to sit at and do work at, and in the counter there are lots of drinks, snacks, books, dictionaries, pencils, and cool pens. Then in the corner of that wall and the wall I walked in from there is a sunken in orange trampoline with different colored pillows for me to lie on to read and write. In the middle of the floor there is a raised circular light blue cushion made out of the Temper-Pedic material, with a dark blue step to get up too it. In the middle of the circle there is a wooden table top thing to write on, that turns into entertainment and a projector. Under the circle there are lots of books and dictionaries so then they are close if we need them. I have to be comfortable to write and this set up for a language arts room would allow me to do that.

This room could function as a decent English classroom and not just a decent lunchroom, or nap room. The teacher could write on the windows or the floor with window markers to teach. When a project needed to be shown, it could be projected from the table in the circle, because the table flips over to the other side and turns into a projector, TV screen, touch screen computer, and a writing board. My project would be shown on the ceiling and my class can watch it from lying on the furniture. There are lots of books and dictionaries at convenient use throughout the room, like under the window seats, in the shelves by the windows, under the middle circle, in the bar counter, and the door has some books in it but is still easy to push open. I would actually enjoy coming to this room if it was set up like this, and it would function too, so it wouldn’t be unrealistic to have.

Would you rather walk into a life-less room, or a spirited room filled with lots of color, energy, and excitement for English class to start? I know I would rather walk into the spirited room because it would just be a better atmosphere too. It could be this way, as the bell rings I walk into the room through a boring wooden door, as I walk to my seat I walk on a plain tiled floor, surrounded by walls that are cubed and white, in front of a clean perfect white board at the front of the room, and to my hard plastic desk or it could be, I walk into the room through an awesome spinning red and white door, on an aquarium filled with fish, sea turtles and coral, in front of a window wall filled with writing from the class before, and sit down at a bar counter to start class. This would be a better setup. The best writers are said to have come from an “exciting” English classroom, so if the school wants me to succeed in writing, a place like this should be looked into getting remodeled. The room wouldn’t even have to be bigger, and there would be educational ways to pay for it. A lot of people could be interested in your success and this could be one of the ways to achieve it.

Honor Me, I Deserve It

VETERANS PAPER!

The right time to honor our military heroes is always. They give us our freedom so we should at least honor them for that. If we earn our own freedom then we could honor ourselves, but most of us didn’t, so we should honor them for that. The military soldiers don’t get honored that good because we forget too, although we don’t forget to live our lives ordinarily without having to worry about our freedoms. They all signed up to put their lives at risk to make ours more enjoyable. Some of them don’t come home and families are heartbroken, just to make our lives more enjoyable, the least we can do is honor them.

Every night the families are thinking of them and every day they wait for a call, letter or something to let them know that they are safe. The families of the military soldiers go through this for us too. They didn’t choose to, necessarily but they do so we should thank them for that also. Also another reason is, isn’t the lesser person, generally supposed to honor and serve its betters? Now at least we honor our military heroes, but they serve us and the rest of our country so greatly that we can’t even come close to comparing.

When they are there they give up a lot of things too. They miss everyone here, they miss everything that we take for granted and they gain things that we don’t even want to think about. I get to see my family, get good cooked food, and go to school in a good positive safe environment, while they get to go fight a war with strangers, packaged, stale food and get to go into a battle. They are off fighting a war for our country, and I am just sitting at home. That doesn’t seem fair to me. I know that at least I can honor them for that, and lots of other things, but they deserve at the very least my respect and honor.

A Dream, Of The Light

Response to “All Summer in a Day”


          Everyone connects water with life and old with death, but what if it really isn’t that way, what if water and young would be what murdered a little girl? A lot of times right is punished and wrong gets privileges it doesn’t deserve, sometimes it comes back around to haunt the wrong, and sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the time though it is just a little too late to do anything to fix it.

           To live life to the fullest, imagination has to be involved. If a person, a child especially was to go through life without a dream, a picture of, what if it looked like this, they would become insane. Insanity and different are two completely different things. Different could be expressing your point of view or being yourself or standing up for yourself, which are all positive things. Insanity is negative 100% of the way, and will close many opportunities for you. It is said that when one door closes another door opens. When Margot’s closet door closed it only opened one more time and then there were no more doors for Margot.

          I think the sun is a flower, that blooms for just one hour. I think that Margot was also a flower that bloomed for just one hour, but her hour was back on Earth, when she was in the sun, but her one hour was over long ago. You are supposed to live in the present not the past or the future. I can dream about my past, but it won’t change no matter how hard I try. I can remember my past, but I can also accept to forget parts of it, just like, I should plan for my future but should also just live and let things just happen. My present is like a present given to me that I can’t return or re-gift, and is also like a spoiling cookie that has to be eaten right away.

             If you locked a life away that would be a waste of your time to close the door. When you opened the door and only darkness and silence greeted you, there would be no more light to shine on your path because it was taken to provide for the ghost of the life that had disappeared. Light guides everyone, some more than others. Margot’s path was dim because there was no sun, ever, to guide it. She was looking for her path to follow the whole time but she couldn’t see it so she went out looking for a sun to guide her, to her path. She never found it, therefore she died.

           She drowned in the water, while her classmates held her head under, and as she left she didn’t get to see her life flash across her eyes, all she saw was the one light, because that one light, the sun, was her whole life.