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Name: English Teacher Year Completed: Assignment Commentary: |
Kelly Kathy 2001 I wrote this paper for a summer writing tutorial for the John Hopkins Gifted and Talented program. The assignment was supposed to describe an object while thinking out of the box. With this mindframe, I decided not to tell my tutor what my subject was. Instead, she was to guess what the object. To my surprise, she guessed right.
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Kelly It is dark. A bumpy ride is in store, as sharp swivels of movement are made. My lonely circular frizzy-haired body thrashes around, attempting to stay in one place. I adjust to the darkness, and around me are items such as a jumper, and a toolbox, remnants of my ownerÕs job. I sit, lonely in the corner, wondering if I will make it home safe, to my shelf where I live. Earlier tonight, sounds of screams and delight filled my ears. I flew into the air. I was thrown around, as if I were pieces of tossed salad. The thrills of being midair tore at my frame, and my tousled hair went haywire. Later, as I was placed gently into my current curling position, I sensed my owner was feeling fatigued. It was to be a short ride home. She cradled me in her arms, as if I was a long lost doll. She cooed to me, telling me how I had changed her life for the better. Yet, she still carelessly tosses me into this dark and scary place. Suddenly, the movements are becoming increasingly harsh. A faint, yet bloodcurdling scream is heard from some far off distance. I am thrown against the wall of my unknown chamber. My temporary home comes to a screeching halt. And then, silence ensues. I am just a forgotten piece of someoneÕs once happy existence. I will no longer be tossed into air. I will no longer hear screams of delight, about what I do not know. I am now just a shriveled member on this shelf. (Note: Within in the theme of becoming Òfunctionally unfixedÓ, I have decided not to tell you what my object is. Instead, I would appreciate if you would guess what my object is.) |
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Dear Kelly, My response is very macabre, I must warn you. If IÕm wrong, youÕll wonder what kind of malformed mind is allowed to be a CTY tutor! But you may actually delight in the misinterpretation. Hopefully, if IÕm wrong, you wonÕt be upset. IÕm a little afraid to give you my interpretation of your mysterious story! The first time I read this I thought your object was a hairbrush and that the jumper and toolbox belonged to a hairdresser. But then I reread the story and came up with a different idea. Is your object a cheerleaderÕs pompom? At first I thought the screams of delight referred to an exaggeration of the happy responses of customers to a hairdresserÕs wizardry, but now I hear those screams as a combination of cheerleader cheers and an audience watching two teams compete. The jumper sounds like a uniform and the dark place is the cheerleaderÕs carrying bag. No? (Please let me be right!) When I first saw the curled position of the object I imagined a brush that could be bent closed, but then I saw a pompomÕs streamers being folded over and tucked into a bag. I started thinking that the hair-like pieces referred to the streamers. Before, I had seen them as hair stuck in the brush bristles, although I kind of doubted that you were making a literal reference to hair. Doubting that it was literal, I put my brush idea aside and tried to free my mind up to something more unexpected. Now that I see the object as a pompom, it all makes sense. But if IÕm wrong, youÕll find my response both amusing and disappointing. I lose my confidence where you describe the dark and scary placeÑsounds like instead of being returned to the bag, the pompom is being tossed into a school locker. At first I thought the dark place was a garbage canÑsignifying that the cheerleaderÕs team had lost and she had thrown out her pompomÑbut the shelf led me to believe that the place was a locker. This is the part of the paper that has me thrown for a loop. I canÕt tell whether the shelf at the end is the shelf seen at the beginning. It doesnÕt seem like it isÑthe early shelf sounds like the pompomÕs place among other important memorabilia, but I canÕt figure out that second shelf. I also become confused by the kind of scream heard near the end. If I let my imagination go even more, I see that the game is over and the cheerleaderÕs on her way home, but then thereÕs a car accident and this is why the pompom is thrown about in such a harsh way. And then thereÕs the post-accident silence. But then thereÕs the shelf, which makes my car accident theory all wrong. But IÕll get back to that in a minuteÉ I think your descriptions are great. Even if IÕm wrong about your object, Kelly, the tossed salad simile is funny and surprising. The doll comparison is really neat because your readers will be thinking of a doll and your own mention of the doll will tell readers that the object is not a doll (yet, in a similar way, knows what itÕs like to be cared for by the owner). As I read this, I imagined that the ownerÕs gentleness with the pompom had to do with her sense of good fortune at being chosen as a cheerleaderÑthis pompom stood for her high stature as a popular student in her school. But then that endingÉ.thatÕs what has me really unsure of my theory. The only thing I can come up withÑand this is where things get very macabreÑis this: There IS a car accident and the cheerleader (a fictional cheerleader, it turns out) is either badly hurt or killed in the crash. The pompom is returned to the cheerleaderÕs shelf by a loving parent. Here, the pompom and the other belongings are just ÒshriveledÓ reminders of the parentsÕ loss. If this interpretation is correct, then the reference to the doll is even better because it alludes to more than the dollÑit brings to mind the way the cheerleader, once an infant girl, was held and loved by her parents. Have I read too much into the action? The sounds had me so caught up in the mystery and made me want to analyze it more than anything else did. The on-again-off-again sounds had me so intrigued. Kathy |
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