Persuasive Essays

Just a real quick post for you about Thanksgiving...

The day before Thanksgiving Break, I had my students do a persuasive writing activity in conjunction with the fourth and fifth grade classes (I teach junior high).  Students had to choose a writing prompt and write a one(ish) page essay responding to that prompt.  Here are some excerpts from a few of my favorites.  I LOVE my job.  That's really all there is to say about that.

Prompt:  Write from the point of view of a turkey and convince people to not eat you.

Response: 

          I am a nice little innocent turkey, and why do you want to eat me?  What did I ever do to you?  First reason why you shouldn't eat me: I could be sick with anthrax and you might not notice it.  Then you'll be angry for eating me.  Turkey is very expensive, and then you'll be broke sitting under an overpass with no bed or house to live in.  You will be sitting under a bridge and you won't get a wink of sleep.  Then you'll think back and say, "I'm so stupid that I got that expensive turkey."  Your cook may be dumb and blind and might not cook me thoroughly.  He might not have killed me thoroughly, and when you go to eat it my nerves might react and my wings or legs might flop over the table and your wife might faint because of the awful sight.  I could be very lardy and fat, and your thanksgiving day turkey will be made of big chunks of fat.  Next time you think of getting a turkey, just remember the wise turkey who told you the reasons why you shouldn't get a turkey for thanksgiving.

Prompt:  Write from the point of view of the pilgrims to convince the Native Americans that you are a friendly people.

Response: 

Dear Savages,

 

I know that previous explorers have killed your people, spread disease, and made you slaves.  That is not why we've come.  We strive for peace.  If you agree to not storm our forts and wreak havoc on our peaceful civilization, we will not retaliate and burn your teepees to the ground.  I would like to extend the olive branch.  We pilgrims are having a dinner party.  It would be very appreciated if you would bring a dish to pass, or rather, various dishes as it has been a sparse summer.  Business casual.

 

Long live our King,

The Pilgrims

Independent Woman

Rex has been gone for almost five months.  GROSS.  I hate it.  Only 32 more days until he's home for good, but who's counting?  I never really realized how dependent I was on him until he was gone.  It's handy to have a guy in my life - he lifts the heavy stuff, zips up my dress if I can't reach the zipper, fixes the car when it won't start, etc.  Confession: he even braids my hair when I want it braided.  I don't know how to braid my own hair, which is actually ridiculous. I just never learned.

Slowly but surely, I'm learning how to do all of "Rex's stuff" on my own.  It's weird and oddly satisfying to live on my own.  It's like, "Hey, I can do this. Not that I want to...but it's cool that I can."  Does that make any sense? 

Anyway, today I had an awesome "go me," independent woman experience (please cue "Independent Woman" by Destiny's Child in your head as you read this).  My toilet broke, and I panicked.  It wasn't clogged - don't think anything nasty, you nasty - but when I got home from school the water was just running and running, and it wouldn't stop.  The bowl wasn't overflowed or anything, but it just kept refilling itself for no apparent reason.

Now, we only have one toilet in the house, and I had been teaching all day so I really wanted to use it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't.  It was running, and the flusher wouldn't do anything to stop it.  I immediately picked up my phone to call Rex, but then I remembered that he was hunting and probably wouldn't want to scare all the deer away while he discussed plumbing problems with me.  Instead, I called my dad.  He didn't answer.

I stared at the toilet, perplexed.  I thought about peeing in the shower, but that's disgusting.  I thought about getting in my car and driving somewhere else to use their bathroom, but then I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous.  You're a college-educated twenty-four year old.  You're not going to be defeated by a toilet."

I spent the next twenty minutes on the internet researching how toilets work.  It was actually kind of interesting - have you ever studied the evolution of a modern toilet?  Well, I have.  I studied diagrams and looked up trouble shooting pages about everything that can go wrong with your toilet (which is apparently a lot of different things). After all of that research I really, really had to go, so I marched back into the bathroom with my newfound knowledge, ready to take on my porcelain foe.

I opened the tank part of the toilet, and I noticed that the flapper was up.  WELL, that's supposed to be down when the toilet's not running, so I put it down.  Unfortunately, it picked back up.  Stubborn little thing.  I tinkered around with some parts and took some stuff apart, and finally I lengthened the chain from the flusher doohickey to the flapper thing (my terminology...not sure what they're actually called).  Once I lengthened the chain, the toilet water stopped running, and the toilet magically worked!  Whooo hoooo!  I'm one exposed butt crack away from being a plumber!

Anyway, it was a personal triumph.  I beat my toilet.  Now if only I could braid my own hair...

Why I Was Late For Work Today

Why I was late to work this morning (or, in other words, the letter I didn't actually send to my boss).

 

Dear Boss,

 

I'm very sorry that I was late to work this morning.  I didn't mean to be.  Really, though, it wasn't my fault.  You see, I've been living in Nevada for the past few years.  We don't believe in snow there.  When it snowed last night, that put my whole world into a tailspin.

 

I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and freaked out.  SNOW?!?!?!  The magical powder that had been reduced to a distant memory was now suddenly in my life again?!  I couldn't decide how I felt about it.  Happy?  Sad?  Angry?  Excited?  I needed to call a therapist to sort out all of these emotions.  Unfortunately, it was 6:30 AM, so I had to soldier on alone.

 

I decided to proceed with my morning routine as usual.  Things were pretty normal when I was in my house, but when I took the dog out for a walk...well...things didn't go as usual.  Elvis has never seen snow, you see, so he completely freaked out and wouldn't go to the bathroom.  His tail was between his legs, his hair was raised his back, and his legs were spread out in all directions as far as they would go, as if somehow he could avoid the snow if he just stretched out enough.  He kept sniffing the snow and then jumping back as if it bit him.  I think the coldness surprised him.  Do you have a dog, Boss?  Have you ever taken him out and he wouldn't go to the bathroom?  You can't just take him back inside and LEAVE him there in his cage all day.  His bladder will explode!  He'll call PETA and they'll take you to animal cruelty jail!  I couldn't do that.  It would be too horrible (I thought).

 

But then...after standing in the snow for ten minutes waiting for Elvis to go, I decided to just leave him in his kennel.  PETA might call, but I was cold and he was really freaked out by the snow.  He was about to go into a full-blown canine panic attack, I could tell.  It's more cruel to torture him with fear than to make him have to hold his pee, right?  Right.  Which brings me to my next point - I need to leave at lunch to let the dog out.  I hope that's okay.

 

So anyway, I finished bringing Elvis inside, then I got my things together and got into my car.  Unfortunately, there was ice on the windshield.  Now, I remember back in my childhood my parents had a tool called an "ice scraper" that would scrape ice off of the car.  Since my car has been in the desert for the past few years, I have no ice scraper.  I looked all around the car and in my purse for tools, and the only thing I came up with was a credit card. 

 

I sighed and decided to use my credit card to wipe the ice off of my windshield.  I tried to get out of my car but discovered I was stuck.  The driver's side door handle is broken, so I have to roll down the window to open the door from the outside.  When I went to roll down the window, I discovered that the window was frozen in the "up" position.  Fabulous.  So I was trapped in my ice cave of a car.

 

I made my great escape by climbing into the back seat and opening that door.  Then I went to the front and executed my (largely unsuccessful) credit card ice scraper plan.  I'm pretty sure I got some ice shards in my fingernails, but hey - anything to get to work!  Aren't I dedicated?!

 

I toiled restlessly until I had cleared off enough ice to drive to school, but alas - I was late.  A thousand apologies.  It won't happen again.

 

Until it snows again.

 

Then I make no promises.

 

Your loyal employee,

Christine

Catfished

Have you heard the term "catfished"?  It's a new term used for when someone dates someone online, but they turn out to be totally different than who they said they were.  Example: the person you thought you were talking to was a 26-year-old Channing Tatum look alike, but really it's a 63-year-old sex offender from Hoboken.  Get it?  Okay, good.

My poor husband is getting catfished.  He SWEARS he's not, but if he ends up being sold into slavery in the middle east somewhere, I know I'm looking for "Frank" from the "Upland Bird Hunting Forum."

Rex thinks online dating is the dumbest thing ever.  For the record, I don't.  I think it's handy.  You cut all the crap - you don't have to waste time dating someone for months in order to figure out whether or not they want kids, what they want to do in the next ten years, what their religious beliefs are, etc.  It's all laid out for you like a Mates-R-Us store where you can pick exactly what you want.  If I hadn't married my high school boyfriend, I bet I would have tried out the online thing.  Oh, well.  No need.  I guess I just got lucky that way.

Anyway, back to catfishing.  So my self-professed online dating hater of a husband is going bird hunting next weekend with a guy he's never met.  He met him online in a bird hunting forum.  Rex is on this forum all the time...it's like facebook for hunters.  Really kind of weird, actually, but oh well. He likes it and spends a lot of his (very little) free time on there. Sometimes I go on and post on his threads just so he'll pay attention to me.

Okay, just kidding about that part, but you get the idea.

So Rex met this Frank guy who is also from Michigan, and they've been texting a lot.  They've even talked on the phone (so I give it a greater than 50% chance that "Frank" is actually a guy).  Frank texts Rex pictures of the birds he gets, and Rex is eager to learn how to hunt with bird dogs.  This led to Frank inviting Rex to his bird hunting camp in a few weeks.  He's going with a few other guys, and he said Rex could come for free and hang out with them to learn the ropes.  Well, that sounds a bit sketchy if you ask me.  Want to know what sounds even sketchier?

The place they're going is called "Rainbow Resort."

LOL!!!  I am not even joking.  That's the name.  My husband is so going to be violated.  Frank insists that it's not a gay commune or anything (he actually texted that, ha ha), but I am yet to be convinced. Frank apparently has a female girlfriend, but who knows if that's actually true.  It could be a cover story. I looked up the website for the resort and it actually looks pretty legit (and not gay), but still.  Rex is going to the Rainbow Resort with a guy named Frank who he met online?  That's got enough red flags to make a small communist country.

We'll see how this goes.  Either Rex has a super cool new hunting buddy or he's going to be featured on an episode of Catfished next year.  I'll let you know which when I figure it out.

Stepford Children

Have you ever seen the movie Stepford Wives?  It's about this couple who moves to a new town and all of the women are perfect.  They are all gorgeous, they cook and clean, they do whatever their husbands want, and they do it all with style and a smile. They're so perfect that it's creepy.

Well...that's how I've felt during these first few weeks of school.  I think I'm teaching the Stepford Children.

I'm teaching at a new school this year, and so far it's great.  I'm not complaining about the kids being so good; it's just that it kind of creeps me out.  Like, I kind of hear the Twilight Zone theme song playing in the back of my head when I show up to work in the morning.  They're that good.  Don't believe me?  Check this out:

1. I teach junior high, so I have different classes during different hours of the day.  Unfortunately I was detained in the hall before third hour one day, so I got to one of my classes a few minutes late.  I walked into my classroom, and literally every single student had pulled out a book and was reading silently, awaiting my arrival.  WHAT?!  At any other school in America there would have been mayhem: paper airplanes flying, girls gossiping in corners, boys swinging from the lights, you get the idea.  Not my kids, though.  When they get unsupervised free-time they just READ.

2. We had our beginning of the year assembly during the first week of school, and the teachers told their kids to "walk silently into the gym and take your seats."  That's normal.  Every teacher says that.  What's not normal, however, is what followed: the kids actually did it.  They walked silently in and sat there - SILENTLY - waiting for the assembly to begin.  Even the kindergarteners.  Do you know what it's like to be in a gym full of children and have none of them talking?!  I do.  It's CREEPY.  Kids don't do that, ever.  It's not natural.

3. My teacher friends know that if kids are crazy when walking down the hall, the teacher will sometimes call them back and make them start again.  Well, I looked out of my classroom and saw the kindergarteners walking down the hall.  They were absolutely quiet and had their hands to themselves - two things that I've never seen kindergarteners do.  Imagine my shock, then, when the teacher said, "Okay guys, we're going to have to go back and try this again..."  Want to know why they had to go back?  DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY?!  The SPACING was wrong between the kids.  The kindergarten students had not evenly spaced themselves while walking down the hall. THAT was the issue with their line.  I can't handle this.

4. I tried to start a project with my kids, and they all just sat there and worked quietly.  Silence freaks me out, so I said, "You know, you guys can talk during work time...it's okay as long as you're still working..."  They looked at me as if I was speaking Swedish.  Then they went back to silently working.  I shrugged and tried to go around the room making myself useful.  Finally a girl whispered quietly to the girl next to her and then quickly looked up at me like I was going to yell at her for talking (which, obviously, I did not).  Do these kids not know how to have fun??  I've gotten them to loosen up a little bit since then, but holy cow.  They're so painfully academic.

5.  Want to know what my kids do in their free time?  Hmmmm?  THEY READ.  That's seriously all they do.  Well, some of them hunt.  They hunt and read.  Not a single family in my school owns a television (true story), and every single child is from a two-parent household.  After school they go home, exercise outside, spend time with their family, and then read.  It's pretty much every teacher's dream.  It was (is?) mine too, I guess, but the dream just turned out a little creepier than I imagined. 

Classroom management is a strength of mine, and I have no need for it at my new school.  I feel like Superman without any superpowers.  It's strange.  It's definitely an adjustment.  I don't think I'm serious enough or disciplined enough for that school yet, but I'm working on it.   I never thought my biggest challenge would be getting  kids to have fun, but alas.  Every year is different.  We'll see how this goes.  I don't dare complain for fear I'll break the Stepford spell. 

Titanic Party

Hello blog world.

It's been almost a month since I last blogged.  That's horribly sad, I know.  Ask any teacher, though, and they'll tell you: September is no time for free time.

What I want to tell you about today is what I did for my last summer "Hurrah."  It was the week before school started, and I needed to do something fun.  I was out for ice cream with my friend Sarah lamenting the fact that I had nothing to do, and she suggested that we have a movie night.  Well, obviously that sounded fun.  We got to talking, and I found out that Sarah had never seen Titanic.  WHAT?!  That movie is an icon!!  It won ten million Oscars!  With my husband still in Nevada and Sarah's husband working a night shift, we decided it was time for a girls' night.

You might think that a Titanic girls' night would involve sitting around and, well, watching the movie.  NOPE.  We had a legit Titanic PARTY.  As in, themed dinner, costumes, etc.  Strange? Yes.  Fun?  Absolutely.

We started by looking up what kind of dinner they ate on the actual Titanic so that we could copy it.  They ate braised duck, which is obviously disgusting, so we skipped it and had pizza.  Ha ha.  We did have salads with iceberg lettuce though (catch the irony?) and blue Hawaiian punch in honor of the ocean.  We got out fancy dishes, got super dressed up, and played the Titanic soundtrack as our dinner music.

Not only were we in on the action; our dogs were too.  Sarah has clothes for her dog Bizzy (a trend which Rex has vehemently opposed when it comes to Elvis).  She brought over Bizzy's tuxedo, and Bizzy and Elvis took turns wearing it during dinner.  Elvis didn't like it much, so he just played with his new sea monster dog toy (See??  There it is again - THE THEME!).  Bizzy looked very dapper.

After dinner we watched the movie.  Halfway through, when the ship starts to sink, we paused the movie and put Bizzy in his life jacket.  Yes, the dog has a life jacket.  SO COOL!  Elvis didn't have one, unfortunately, so I guess he went down with the ship.

Sarah and I were laughing and having a great time (except of course during the movie, when there were Kleenexes involved).  I thought it was so funny that we came up with this crazy idea of having a Titanic party....except guess what?!  It wasn't even my idea first!  Sarah went on Pinterest and discovered that lots of people have had Titanic parties, and they did it was cooler than we did!  Case in point: this cake: 

Oh, well.  I was still pretty proud of us for our party.  It was fun.  I think the dogs liked it too.

Just One More

Lately I've been checking my mail like a high school senior waiting for acceptance letters from colleges.  You may think I'm crazy, but don't worry.  It's all part of the master plan.

I'm going to be really fabulous author someday.  New York Times bestseller.  It's going to happen.  (Isn't that the secret wish of every blogger??  Haha...oh well).  Here's my issue: no one really likes me yet.

My first novel (The Elsie Files) was published in February of this year, but it was published by this tiny outfit in Oklahoma with almost no marketing contacts.  I've sold a handful of copies and really haven't made much money at all.  They offered to pick up my second book, but I really didn't want to go with them again.  I want to play in the big leagues, so I have to actually start figuring out how to do that.

In looking for a home for my second novel, I spent countless hours querying literary agents and publishing houses.  I have buckets of rejection letters.  Two agents are currently reading my second book to see if they like it, so keep your fingers crossed for me.  Nothing concrete has happened, so I started getting discouraged.

I noticed a lot of places that rejected me want a writer with more publishing credits.  I don't have a third novel in mind at the moment, so I decided to start querying magazines.  I figured I could write a few magazine articles, earn a bit of cash, and stock up on publishing credits before my next round of queries.

Well, it's not quite that easy (are you surprised?).  I worked for days to craft another round of queries, these ones personalized for specific magazines.  I pitched ideas while trying to sound smart and pithy at the same time.  All I got for my trouble was more rejection letters and e-mails to add to my collection.

I had a lot of hope for this one specific magazine.  I thought my idea for them was really good.  I got their "this material just isn't right for us" letter in the mail today, and I sank into my couch, disappointed again.  I texted Rex and said, "Aargh!  Just got rejected from another magazine where I thought I might actually have a shot.  This stinks.  How many times should I get rejected before I give up?"

I went about my business for the day, and when I sat down to check my e-mail I had a message from Pat Stone, the editor of GreenPrints magazine.  He said that the material I submitted was "funny" and "well-written," and that he would like to publish it.  My check for $75 will be in the mail tomorrow.

WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!  I very much needed a win.  I called Rex to tell him the good news, and he said, "Well, I guess there's the answer to your question - how many times do you get rejected before you give up?  Just one more."

That's so true.  Rex has a way of being very profound at times.  Just try one more time, every time.  Eventually you might get something.  I know $75 and an article in a gardening magazine isn't like I just got the cover story for Good Housekeeping or Time, but it's a start.  Also, more importantly, it was just the motivation I needed to keep going.