Lively Literature

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Lively Literature
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Lively Literature

• Motivation for Learning

Myrtis Mixon Ed.D mmixon_at_usfca.edu
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Using literature?

• Why?
• Authentic
• Interesting
• Motivating
• Engaging/involving

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SKILLS?

• Useful as content to teach all skills
• Reading
• Writing
• Speaking
• Listening
• Vocabulary

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• What kind of literature have you used?
• Pair/Share
• Group share?

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• How did you use the piece?
• An activity?
• Was it successful?

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• What novels have you used?
• In class?
• Leisure reading in English?

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What novels did I bring?

• Charles Dickens? Tale of Two Cities?
• Emily/Charlotte Bronte? Jane Eyre?
• Jane Austen? Pride Prejudice
• Nathaniel Hawthorn? The Scarlet Letter
• Mark Twain? Huckleberry Finn
• Herman Melville? Moby Dick

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• No
• Why not?
• They are good but
• language is dated.
• hard to read.
• historical, not current.

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Why use contemporary?

• Relevant to high school students
• Todays issues
• Todays language
• Lively
• Engaging
• ????

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What is this genre?

• Fiction with a YA designation
• Young adult
• Novels
• Short Stories

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(No Transcript)
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Lets jump in

• Pre-reading?
• What activities? Look at this book cover
• Speak
• A contemporary classic

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Preview of Speak
Melinda busted an end-of-summer party by calling
the cops, so her old friends wont talk to her,
and people she doesnt know hate her from a
distance. Its no use explaining to her parents
theyve never known what her life is really like.
The safest place for Melinda to be is alone,
inside her own head. But even thats not safe.
Because theres something shes trying not to
think about, something about the night of the
party that, if she admitted it and let it in,
would blow her disguise. Then she would have no
choice. Melinda would have to speak the truth.
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Clans, Cliques Outsiders

• Pairs
• Read together and pick out the words you know in
  this list of clans.
• Dont have to understand them all to understand
  the piece.

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Clans, Cliques and Outsiders

• Older students are allowed to roam until the
  bell, but ninth graders are herded into the
  auditorium. We all fall into clans Jocks,
  Country Clubbers, Idiot Savants, Cheerleaders,
  Human Waste, Eurotrash, Future Fascists of
  America, Big Hair Chix, the Marthas, Suffering
  Artists, Thespians, Goths, Shredders. I am
  clanless.
• I wasted the last weeks of August watching bad
  cartoons. I didnt go to the mall, the lake, or
  the pool, or answer the phone. I have entered
  high school with the wrong hair, the wrong
  clothes, the wrong attitude. And I dont have
  anyone to sit with. p. 4

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Activity 1

• Unfamiliar words
• Slang? How much to teach?
• Using Bookmarks for vocabulary words

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Vocabulary Bookmark
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Activity 2 Word Choice, Tone, Voice

• Who is the speaker?
• What is the conflict that the speaker faces?
• Why is the listing of different social circles
  significant?
• What type of tone is used here? Why?

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Critical Thinking Questions

• Why are the ninth graders treated differently
  than the older kids?
• Given the circumstances in the passage above, how
  would you feel?
• Have you ever felt like the speaker? Describe in
  detail a time in your life when you feel you
  could relate.
• Why do you think the speaker is facing this
  problem? Is she really an outcast?

• High school is a time when things like hair and
  clothes can make an immediate difference in the
  way you are treated. Why do you think these
  things are so important in high school? Does this
  change in life after high school?
• Why is it important to have a clan?

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Winter Break

• School is out and there are two days until
  Christmas. Mom left a note saying I can put up
  the tree if I want. I drag the tree out of the
  basement and stand it in the driveway so I can
  sweep the dust and cobwebs off it with a broom.
  We leave the lights on it from year to year. All
  I have to do is hang the ornaments.
• There is something about Christmas that requires
  a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I
  wonder if we could rent one for the holidays.
  When I was tiny we would buy a real tree and stay
  up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just
  the right place for the special decorations. It
  seems like my parents gave up the magic when I
  figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldnt have
  told them I knew where the presents really came
  from. It broke their hearts.

• I bet theyd be divorced by now if I hadnt been
  born. Im sure I was a huge disappointment. Im
  not pretty or smart or athletic. Im just like
  theman ordinary drone dressed in secrets and
  lies. I cant believe we have to keep playacting
  until I graduate. Its a shame we cant just
  admit that we have failed family living, sell the
  house, split up the money, and get on with our
  lives. (70)

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Winter Break

• Choral Reading?
• Summarize with your partner.

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Escape

• The first hour of blowing off school is great. No
  one to tell me what to do, what to read, what to
  say. Its like living in an MTV videonot with
  the stupid costumes, but wearing that
  butt-strutting, I-do-what-I-want attitude

I wander down Main Street. Beauty parlor,
7-Eleven, bank, card store. The rotating bank
sign says it is 22 degrees. I wander up the other
side. Appliance store, hardware store, parking
lot, grocery store. My insides are cold from
breathing in frozen air. I can feel the hairs in
my nose crackle. I even think about trudging
uphill to school. At least its heated.
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Escape

• I bet kids in Arizona enjoy playing hooky more
  than kids trapped in central New York. No slush.
  No yellow snow.
• Im saved by a Centro bus. It coughs and rumbles
  and spits out two old women in front of the
  grocery store. I climb on. Destination The Mall.
• I sit by the central elevator. The air smells
  like french fries and floor cleaner.

• I should probably tell someone, just tell
  someone. Get it over with. Let it out, blurt it
  out. I want to be in fifth grade again. Fifth
  grade was easyold enough to play outside without
  Mom, too young to go off the block.
• I spend the rest of the day waiting for it to be
  248, so its not all that different from school.
  (99)

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Escape

• Use Shadow Reading.
• What are teen words for being absent without a
  valid reason?
• Cutting classes
• Playing hookey?
• ?

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Lunch Doom

• Nothing good ever happens at lunch. The cafeteria
  is a giant sound stage where they film daily
  segments of Teenage Humiliation Rituals. And it
  smells gross. I sit with Heather, as usual, but
  we are off by ourselves in a corner by the
  courtyard.
• Heather This is really awkward. I mean, how you
  say something like this? No matter what . . . no,
  I dont want to say that. I mean, we kind of
  paired up at the beginning of the year when I was
  new and didnt know anyone and that was really,
  really sweet of you, but I think its time for us
  both to admit that wejustareverydifferent.

• She studies her no-fat yogurt. I try to think of
  something bitch, something wicked and cruel. I
  cant.
• Me You mean were not friends anymore?

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Lunch Doom

• Heather (smiling with her mouth but not her
  eyes) We were never really, really friends, were
  we? I mean, its not like I ever slept over at
  your house or anything. We like to do different
  things. I have my modeling, and I like to shop
• Me I like to shop.
• Heather You dont like anything. You are the
  most depressed person Ive ever met, and excuse
  me for saying this, but you are no fun to be
  around and I think you need professional help.

• Up until this very instant, I had never seriously
  thought of Heather as my one true friend in the
  world. But now I am desperate to be her pal, her
  buddy, to giggle with her, to gossip with her. I
  want her to paint my toenails.

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Lunch Doom

• Me I was the only person who talked to you on
  the first day of school, and now youre blowing
  me off because Im a little depressed. Isnt that
  what friends are for, to help each other out in
  bad times?
• Heather I knew you would take this the wrong
  way. You are just so weird sometimes.
• I know what shes thinking. She has a choice she
  can hang out with me and get the reputation of
  being a creepy weirdo who might show up with a
  gun someday, or she can be a Marthaone of the
  girls who get good grades, do nice things, and
  ski well. Which would I choose?

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Lunch Doom

• Heather When you get through this Life Sucks
  phase, Im sure lots of people will want to be
  your friend. But you just cant cut classes or
  not shop up to school. Whats nexthanging out
  with the dopers?
• Me Is this the part where you try to be nice to
  me?
• Heather You have a reputation.
• Me For what?
• Heather Look, you cant eat lunch with me
  anymore. Im sorry. Oh, and dont eat those
  potato chips. Theyll make you break out.
• She neatly wraps her trash into a wax-paper ball
  and deposits it in the garbage can. Then she
  walks to the Martha table. Her friends scootch
  down to make room for her. They swallow her whole
  and she never looks back at me. Not once. (107)

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Lunch Doom

• Activity 3 Defining the Theme
• 1. Pairs or small groups. Consider the following
  Many say the theme of this book is survival. Or
  is it being an outsider? An outcast, and how to
  survive? Can you define survival? What does it
  mean to survive? How do people survive? Describe
  a personal survival experience. Are there
  different levels of survival? What are they? What
  characteristics coincide and encourage survival?
• 2. Compare your definitions. How is yours
  different? Does survival mean something different
  to everyone? Why? What shapes our ideas of what
  it means to survive?
• 3. Write down your personal definition of
  survival, and then compare it to the dictionary
  definition. How does your definition measure up?
  Are there any important aspects that you left
  out, or that the dictionary failed to mention?

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Clash of the Titans

• We have a meeting with the Principal. Someone has
  noticed that Ive been absent. And that I dont
  talk. They figure Im more a head case than a
  criminal, so they call in the guidance counselor,
  too.
• Mothers mouth twitches with words she doesnt
  want to say in front of strangers. Dad keeps
  checking his beeper, hoping someone will call. I
  sip water from a paper cup. If the cup were
  glass, I would open my mouth and take a bite.
  Crunch, crunch, swallow.
• They want me to speak.
• Why wont you say anything? For the love of
  God, open your mouth! This is childish,
  Melinda. Say something. You are only hurting
  yourself by refusing to cooperate. I dont know
  why shes doing this to us.
• The Principal ha-hums loudly and gets in the
  middle.
• Principal We all agree we are here to help.
  Lets start with these grades. They are not what
  we expected from you , Melissa.

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Clash of the Titans

• Dad Melinda.
• Principal Melinda. Last year you were a
  straight-B student, no behavioral problem, few
  absences. But the reports Ive been getting
  well, what can we say?
• Mother Thats the point, she wont say
  anything! I cant get a word out of her. Shes
  mute.
• Guidance Counselor I think we need to explore
  the family dynamics at play here.
• Mother Shes jerking us around to get
  attention.
• Me (inside my head) Would you listen? Would you
  believe me? Fat chance.
• Dad Well, something is wrong. What have you
  done to her? I had a sweet, loving little girl
  last year, but as soon as she comes up here, she
  clams up, skips school, and flushes her grades
  down the toilet.

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Clash of the Titans

• Guidance Counselor (leaning forward, looking at
  Mom and Dad) Do the two of you have marriage
  issues?
• Mother responds with unladylike language. Father
  suggests that the guidance counselor visit that
  hot scary underground world. The guidance
  counselor grows quiet. Maybe she understands why
  I keep quiet.
• Mother and Father apologize. I think of them
  singing a sorry tune and I giggle.
• Mother You think this is funny? We are talking
  about your future, your life, Melinda!
• In-School Suspension. This is my Consequence. It
  is in my contract. (116)

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Clash of the Titans

• Activity 4 Do a mind-map of the different
  characters in this short scene. Add details that
  you can guess about the people.
• Expansion possibilities Students write role
  plays of a similar meeting. Act it out.
• Use Character and Plot Line Bookmarks
•  

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(No Transcript)
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My Name

• In English my name means hope. In Spanish it
  means too many letters. It means sadness, it
  means waiting. It is like the number nine. A
  muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father
  plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving,
  songs like sobbing.
• It was my great-grandmothers name and now it is
  mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in
  the Chinese year of the horsewhich is supposed
  to be bad luck if youre born femalebut I think
  this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like
  the Mexicans, dont like their women strong.

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My Name

• My great-grandmother. I wouldve liked to have
  known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she
  wouldnt marry. Until my great-grandfather threw
  a sack over her head and carried her off. Just
  like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier.
  Thats the way he did it.
• And the story goes she never forgave him. She
  looked out the window her whole life, the way so
  many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I
  wonder if she made the best with what she got or
  was she sorry because she couldnt be all the
  things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have
  inherited her name, but I dont want to inherit
  her place by the window.

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My Name

• At school they say my name funny as if the
  syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof
  of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out
  of a softer something, like silver, not quite as
  thick as sisters nameMagdalenawhich is uglier
  than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home
  and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.
• I would like to baptize myself under a new name,
  a name more like the real me, the one nobody
  sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze
  the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.
•  

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Non-Stop Writing

• WHAT DO YOU THINK about this piece? (for one
  minute)
• NOW NON-STOP WRITE
• You write on a topic without stopping, similar to
  free writing. In class, non-graded, timed writing
  on an assigned topic---without stopping.
• Use think-three rule support the statement
  with at least three reasons, all explained in
  narrative form.
• Why do a writing assignment that is non-graded?
•  
• Share your writing. 

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Another contemporary classic
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Preview

• Miles Pudge Halter is done with his safe life
  at home. His 16 years have been one big nonevent,
  and his obsession with famous last words has made
  him crave the Great Perhaps (poet Francois
  Rabelais last words.) He heads off to the
  sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and
  anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek
  Boarding School in Alabama. His life becomes the
  opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska
  Young gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy,
  self-destructive, and utterly fascinating. Alaska
  Young is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge
  into her world, launches him into the Great
  Perhaps, and steals his heart.

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Unusual Talents

• My new roommate came in. I see youve decorated
  the place, pointing toward the world map. I
  like it.
• And then he started naming countries in a
  monotone, as if hed done it a thousand times
  before Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American
  Samoa, Andorra, and so on. He got through the As
  before looking up at me. I can do the rest, but
  itd probably bore you. Something I learned over
  the summer. God, you cant imagine how boring New
  Hope, Alabama, is in the summertime.
• Thats pretty amazing, I said.
• Yeah, everybodys got a talent. I can memorize
  things. And you can
• Um, I know a lot of people last words.
• Example? asked Chip.
• I like Henrik Ibsens. He was a playwright.
  Well, hed been sick for a while and his nurse
  said to him, You seem to be feeling better this
  morning, and Ibsen looked at her and said, On
  the contrary, and then he died.
• Discussion Question Chip, the Colonel, says
  Everybodys got a talent. Do you?
• Name some other talents, usual and unusual you
  can think of.
•  

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p. 13 Meeting Alaska

• Later, Chip said And dont call me Chip. Call
  me Colonel.
• I laughed, The Colonel?
• Yeah. The colonel. And well call youhmm,
  Pudge?
• Huh?
• Pudge, the Colonel said. Because youre
  skinny. Its called irony, Pudge. Heard of it?
  Now, lets go get some cigarettes and start this
  year off right.
• He walked out of the room, again just assuming
  Id follow, and I did.
• We walked five doors down to Room 48. A dry-erase
  board was taped to the door using duct tape. In
  blue market, it read Alaska has a single!
• He knocked once, loudly. A voice screamed to
  come in. I saw the hottest girl in all of human
  history standing before me in cutoff jeans and a
  peach tank top.
• She told a story about someone grabbing her
  boobs. The Colonel laughed and I stared, stunned
  by the force of the voice coming from the petite
  girl and partly by the gigantic stacks of books
  that lined her walls.

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Meeting Alaska

• Whos the guy thats not laughing at my very
  funny story? She asked.
• Oh right. Alaska, this is Pudge. Pudge
  memorizes peoples last words. Pudge, this is
  Alaska. She got her boob honked over the summer.
• She came over, her hand extended, then made a
  quick move and pulled down my shorts. We all
  laughed!
• So, Alaska, sell us some cigarettes, the
  Colonel said. And then somehow he talked me into
  paying five dollars for a pack of Marlboro Lights
  I had no intention of ever smoking.
• Discussion Question Share some nicknames. Why do
  people give nicknames?
• Should teen-agers be allowed to smoke cigarettes?
  Why do they start smoking?
• Do they usually start smoking to fit in?

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More bookmarks
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p. 95 Why Things Get Screwed Up

• Alaska came to my room, sobbing. She sat down on
  the couch, whimpering and screaming. Whats
  wrong? I asked.
• When she could talk, she said I dont
  understand why I screw everything up.
• What, like ratting on Marya? Maybe you were
  just scared.
• Scared isnt a good excuse! she shouted into
  the couch. But I told the Colonel about my
  ratting on Marya. He said hed never let me out
  of his sight during pranks. That he couldnt
  trust me on my own. And I dont blame him. I
  dont even trust me.
• It took guts to tell him, I said
• I have guts, just not when it counts.

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Meeting Alaska

• I dont want to upset you, but maybe you just
  need to tell us all why you told on Marya. Were
  you scared of being sent home?
• Theres no home.
• Well, you have a family,
• I try not to be scared, you know. But I still
  ruin everything. I still fuck up.
• Discussion Question Miles tells the story in his
  own first-person voice. How might the book differ
  if it had been told in Alaskas voice or the
  Colonels? Or in the voice of an omniscient
  narrator?

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(No Transcript)
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p. 114 Best Days/Worst Days

• Alaska opened another bottle of Strawberry wine.
  I said, We have to slow down or Ill puke.
• Im sorry, Pudge. I wasnt aware that someone
  was holding open your throat and pouring wine
  down it, the Colonel responded.
• And then, as if out of nowhere, Alaska
  announced, Best Day/Worst Day!
• Huh? I asked.
• Well slow down the drinking by making it a
  game. Best Day/Worst Day.
• Never heard of it, the Colonel said.
• I just made it up.
• Lara asked, What are the rules?

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Best Days/Worst Days

• Everybody tells the story of their best day. The
  best storyteller doesnt have to drink. Then
  everybody tells the story of their worst day, and
  the best storyteller doesnt have to drink. Then
  we keep going, second best day, second worst
  day
• I went first. Best day of my life was today and
  the story is that I woke up next to a pretty
  Romanian girl named Lara and I kept adding
  details. Great day. Today. Best day of my life.
• You think Im pretty? Lara said, and laughed,
  bashful.
• That story ended up being a hell of a lot
  better than I thought it would be, Alaska said,
  but Ive still got you beat.
• Bring it on, baby, I said.
• Best day of my life was January 9, 1997. I was
  eight years old, and my mom and I went to the zoo
  on a class trip. I liked the bears. She liked the
  monkeys. Best day ever. End of story.
• Thats it?! the Colonel said. Thats the best
  day of your whole life?
• Yup.

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Best Days/Worst Days

• OK, my turn, said Lara. Its easy. The day I
  came here. I knew English and my parents didnt,
  and we came off the airplane and my relatives
  were here. My parents were so happy. I was 12,
  and I had always been the little baby, and that
  was the first day that my parents needed me like
  a grown-up. Because they did not know the
  language, right? They need me to order food and
  translate tax and immigration forms and
  everything else, and that was the day they
  stopped treating me like a kid.
• All right, Takumi said, its my turn. I lose.
  Because the best day of my life was the day I
  lost my virginity. And if you think Im going to
  tell you that story, youre gonna have to get me
  drunker than this.
• Not bad, said the Colonel. Best day of my
  life hasnt happened yet. But I know it. I see it
  every day. The best day of my life is the day I
  buy my mom a huge house. And she wont live in a
  trailer anymore. Ill open her side of the car
  door and shell get out and look at this house,
  two-stories and everything, and Im going to hand
  her the keys to her house and say, Thanks,
  Mom.
• Colonel, you win, said Alaska. And the rest of
  us drank wine. Now whats your worst day?

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Best Days/Worst Days

• Worst day was when my dad left. Hes oldhes
  like 70 now, and he was old when he married my
  mom and he still cheated on her. And she caught
  him, and she was angry, and he hit her. And then
  she kicked him out, and he left. I was here at
  school, and my mom called, and she didnt tell me
  the whole story. She just said he was gone and
  not coming back. I kept waiting for him to call
  me and explain, but he never did. He never called
  at all.
• I said, You got me beat again. My worst day was
  when Tommy Hewitt pissed on my gym clothes and
  then the gym teacher said I had to wear my
  uniform or I would fail the class.
• Lara was laughing. Im sorry, Miles. My worst
  day was probably the same day as my best. Because
  I left everything. I mean, it sounds dumb, but my
  childhood, too.
• Takumi was next. June 9, 2000. My grandmother
  died in Japan. She died in a car accident, and I
  was supposed to leave to go see her two days
  later. I was going to spend the whole summer with
  her and my grandfather, but instead I flew over
  for her funeral.

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Best Days/Worst Days

• Your turn, buddy said the Colonel. Alaska went
  next. She lay on her back, her hands locked
  behind her head. She spoke softly and quickly.
  The day after my mom took me to the zoo where
  she liked the monkeys and I liked the bears. It
  was a Friday. I came home from school. She gave
  me a hug and told me to do my homework in my
  room. I went into my room, and she sat down at
  the kitchen table, I guess, and then she
  screamed, and I ran out, and she had fallen over.
  She was lying on the floor, holding her head and
  jerking. And I freaked out. I should have called
  911, but I just started screaming and crying
  until finally she stopped jerking, and I thought
  she had fallen asleep and that whatever had hurt
  didnt hurt anymore. So I just sat there on the
  floor with her until my dad got home an hour
  later, and hes screaming. Why didnt you call
  911? and trying to give her CPR, but by then she
  was plenty dead. Aneurysm. Worst day. I win. You
  drink.
• And so we did.

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Best Days/Worst Days

• No one talked for a minute, and then Takumi
  asked, Your dad blamed you?
• Well, not after that first moment. But yeah.
  How could he not?
• Well, you were a little kid, Takumi argued. I
  was too surprised and uncomfortable to talk,
  trying to fit this into what I knew about
  Alaskas family.
• Yeah. I was a little kid. Little kids can dial
  911. They do it all the time. Give me the wine,
  she said, deadpan and emotionless.
• Why didnt you ever tell me? the Colonel
  asked, his voice soft.
• It never came up. And then we stopped asking
  questions.
• In the long quiet that followed, we passed
  around the wine and slowly became drunker. I
  found myself thinking about President McKinley,
  the third American president to be assassinated.
  He lived for several days after he was show, and
  toward the end, his wife started crying and
  screaming, I want to go, too! I want to go,
  too! And with his last measure of strength,
  McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words
  We are all going.

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Best Days/Worst Days

• Long passage read it silently.
• Discussion Questions How and what does this
  explain about Alaska?
• In an essentially and irreparably broken world,
  is there cause for hope? Is this a hopeful time
  for these teen-agers? How do they react to
  Alaskas story?
•  
• What activity would you use?

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(No Transcript)
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Are you there God? Its me, Margaretby Judy
Blume

•  Preview Margarets family moves from New York
  City to New Jersey. Adjusting to life in the
  suburbs is not easy a different school, and a
  whole new group of friends. It also meant leaving
  her Grandmother back in the city. Everything is
  changing and there are some things about growing
  up that are hard to talk about, even with your
  best friends or your mother. So Margaret finds
  someone else to talk to.

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Its me, Margaret

• p. 1 Are you there God? Its me, Margaret. Were
  moving today. Im so scared God. Ive never lived
  anywhere but here. Suppose I hate my new school?
  Suppose everybody there hates me? Please help me
  God. Dont let New Jersey be too horrible. Thank
  you.
• Mom explained it to me this way my father could
  commute to his job in Manhattan, I could go to
  public school, and my mother could have all the
  grass, trees and flowers she ever wanted. Except
  I never knew she wanted that stuff in the first
  place.
• I think we left the city because of my
  granDmother. My mother says Grandma is too much
  of an influence on me. She wants to take me to
  her Jewish temple and my mother doesnt like
  that. I will miss her. Shes a lot of fun,
  considering her age, which is 60. Live

59
Its me, Margaret

• p. 9 Nancy, a neighbor six houses down, invited
  me to her house. Mom, this is Margaret Simon who
  just moved in down the street.
• How nice, said Mrs. Wheeler. Tell your mother
  Im looking forward to meeting her. Weve got a
  bowling team on Mondays and a bridge game twice
  a month.
• I dont think my mother knows how to bowl and
  she doesnt play bridge. She paints most of the
  day, I explained. Shes an artist.
• Were making our carpools early this year.
  Perhaps you could be part of our Sunday school
  carpool
• I dont go to Sunday school.
• My Mom was a Christian and my Dad Jewish, so we
  dont do anything.
•  

60
Its me, Margaret

• p. 24 On the first day of school I got up early
  but I had trouble eating. My mother said it was
  natural for me to feel uneasy on the first day of
  school. She said when she was a girl she felt the
  same way. My mothers always telling me about
  when she was a girl. Its supposed to make me
  feel that she understands everything. When she
  saw me with no socks on, she said, You know you
  get blisters every time you go without socks.
• Well then, Ill just have to suffer.
• But why suffer? Wear socks!
• Now thats my point about my mother. I mean, if
  she understands so much about me then why
  couldnt she understand that I had to wear
  loafers without socks? I told her, Nancy says
  nobody in the sixth grade wears socks on the
  first day of school.
• By the time I got to school, my feet hurt so
  much I thought I wouldnt make it through the
  day. Why are mothers always right about those
  things? As it turned out, half the girls had on
  knee socks anyway.

61
Its me, Margaret

• p. 63 In November, I asked my friend Janie if I
  could go to church with her. The funniest thing
  was it was just like temple. Except it was all in
  English. But we read from a prayer book tht
  didnt make sense and the minister gave a sermon
  I couldnt follow and I counted eight black hats,
  four red ones, six blue and two fur. At the end
  of the service everyone sang a hymn. Then we
  stood on line to shake hands with the minister.
  By then I was a pro at it.
• Janie introduced me. This is my friend Margaret
  Simon. Shes no religion.
• I almost fainted. Why did she say that? The
  minister looked at me like I was a freak. Then he
  smiled with an Ahamaybe Ill win-her look.
• Are you there God? Its me, Margaret. Ive been
  to church. I didnt feel anything special in
  there, God. Even though I wanted to. Im sure it
  has nothing to do with you. Next time Ill try
  harder.
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62
Thank you for you time

• Myrtis101_at_mac.com
• Myrtis Mixon Ed. D.