Peer Response, Week 5

Response to Melissa's Oddity, Week 5

Melissa,

I noticed that you used something from your junkyard in this piece, the admonition to "'go outside of Azeroth' with your friends." I thought that was a loaded quote and was glad to see you use it. That on-screen reminder to embrace life outside of the game speaks to the obsession-like interactive gaming trend, but also makes me think of manufacturer responsibility.

It reminds me of the warnings on alcohol and tobacco labels, or the notices at Six Flags about how pregnant people or those with back problems should avoid a particular ride. Certain warnings are required by law, others are there as a kind of voluntary disclaimer that might offer protection (to the company) of some sort in case of a lawsuit. I wonder if Azeroth's on-screen prompt hints at something similar or if it's meant only as a cute reference to its own addictiveness, one that holds no seriously intended meaning or concern. You could use that angle as a jumping-off point to expand your essay, I think.

Since warnings or suggestions such as this one are typically there for our protection (or to suggest that the manufacturer must think for us in order to protect itself), you could even bring in your junkyard quote about the squigly words meant to "prove you're not a robot." I guess it prevents spam? The same kind of screening process works when you're buying tickets for a concert or something, maybe to prevent ticket scalpers from scooping up all the good seats first. I would love to read a piece about these warnings and what they accomplish or don't.

Also, the details in this entry are fabulous. You give us the population groups I remember from "Lord of the Rings," and sprinkle in those I don't know, like Draenei and Worgen. The idea that you're "pewing" things is fun to think about. I think your prose might benefit in a few places (as would my own) by switching out some of your "is," "was," and "are" verbs for some beefed up verbs. But that's an easy fix. This piece, I think, holds a lot of opportunity for a longer, quite fascinating tale of "Warcraft" and "warnings."

Improv, Week 5

(testing my prompt for this week)

Gorilla Warfare

"Sometimes I forget there are gorillas behind me." My daughter, swept up in the latest app for I-phone, keeps getting bashed by primates in her pursuit of something I have yet to identify. But I relate to the ambush. My gorilla that day was laundry. I, for the moment, measuring my life in scoops of Tide. I used to proclaim, with some sense of originality, that while polishing one piece of my life, I neglected other pieces dissolving undetected into disarray. The mounds of laundry the product of dustless bookshelves, spot-free drinking glasses, tubs free of iron stains. Then I learned everyone feels that way. I'm no exception.

Sometimes I forget there are gorillas behind me. The five-pager due on Tuesday, buried in the prose of the hundred-pager up for discussion on Monday. My brain itches the word "write," my planner etches the word "read." What, Milton, should I remember from your tale? It won't be relevant. The relevant gorillas sneak up behind me in the robust analysis of a classmate. I remember fire. And ice. Damn primates. Reading the prose was not enough.

A gorilla. The word still evokes an image of my sister-in-law's dad, years before I was born, climbing into the gorilla habitat at the zoo, looking for a fight. I'm not kidding. He was inebriated, Denise says. That's her retelling the story he told her. I didn't know smuggling alcohol into a zoo was an option. Or desirable. He climbed in on a dare. He lost the fight. Lost two teeth. And some blood. Roger woke up the next morning in his own bed, where his friends left him and his mom found him. The gorillas I've seen seem sedated, content to let their leathery palms rest on the ground, staring in one direction for drawn out intervals. They looked bored, uninterested in the gawking audience, unfazed by our hankering to see them do something. Anything. Roger, I guess, determined to test the quiet. I'd like to see them in the wild.

Sometimes I forget there are gorillas behind me. Once, while buying groceries with my two youngest children, anxious to check out with the essentials in tow, I let drift through my ears Emily's quiet request to find a bathroom. I accused her many times before that of a bizarre fascination with restroom decor, certain that she only wanted to see what every toilet in every venue in every town looked like. Wasn't there anything original anywhere? But this day, comparing the fat content of fat-free refried beans and original refried beans, I failed to respond. I checked items off my list, Emily jogging my memory as I grouped cans, boxes, toiletries and produce on the checkout belt. "Almost done," I promised distractedly. As I handed my card to the cashier, a flood ensued, an embarrassing apology, an intercom call for disinfectant and mop. I was sorry. So sorry that I didn't heed to the gorillas behind me. I failed as a parent that day. I hugged her tightly, trying to undo her embarrassment at something she couldn't help, accepting all the blame myself, as I should. Tomorrow, I would do better.

Sometimes I forget there are gorillas behind me. The empty dog food bowl. The postponing of another date night. Sebastian trailing me with a ball in his mouth, wagging his tail. The stained coffee pot. The empty wine glass in the upstairs shower. The $30 field trip fee due yesterday. The empty toilet paper roll. Missing the deadline for a group rate at the Hilton DeSoto. Thesis research. The weeds around the lantanas. Forgetting to call my best friend. The unmopped floors, unanswered letters, 2,000 emails stuck in my inbox. Sometimes I forget, when I beg for consolation, there are gorillas behind you, too.

Original Prompt, Week 5

In "The Date," Brenda Miller anchors the piece with the first line: "A man I like is coming for dinner tonight" (381). Miller repeats close versions of this line four times at the beginning of paragraphs, then closes the piece "casually walk[ing] out to greet this man I like, this man who's coming to dinner" (388). The repetition of this loaded fact works to keep the writer focused on the anxiety and expectations permeating it, giving her a new opportunity each time to reflect on a specific association. For example, after the first mention, Miller admits to sleeping very little, getting up early and mulling over rearranging the photos on her fridge, the ones he might use to read her life in some way, to decide if she's worth pursuing. In other sections, Miller talks about "[choosing] and [discarding] recipes as if trying on dresses" (383), whether or not she should "wash the sheets, just in case" (384), whether to get ready early and how much effort she should invest, and, finally, when he's late, she stresses over the possibility that he won't show.

Especially since Dr. Davidson has pointed out the need to incorporate more reflection in our work, I thought a prompt taken from Miller's strategy might prod us (emphasis on me) in the right direction. Repeating an anchor line may represent the opposite approach to starting an essay with a thread that serves only as a trigger into something else, but as an exercise to trigger reflection, I see it as a positive exception. Besides, Miller found an escape into a brief exposition of the word "date," playing off the title to discuss date orchards and her memories of eating fruit on summer car trips as a child (386). In fact, the fruit paragraph may be the only one that mentions the word "date," and the context contrasts with and complements nicely the essay's primary focus.

Davidson (rightly, I think) cautioned us that trying to come up with a great idea for an essay can lead to anxiety and inhibit the writing process. Hence, the benefit of object studies and the like. Instead of pulling a one-liner from the air, revisit one of your essays or journal entries that you want to expand and look for a grounding sentence that you can repeat and reflect on every so often in your piece.

(Edited to add: You might find a loaded one-liner in your junkyard. Imagine using a quote you admire as an anchor for an essay.)

Memory, Week 5

The Stanley Transplant

An unnatural respect for John Deere tractors gets you an honorary uncle title in my mom's family. We don't have a guidebook to family inclusion or an official ceremony of any sort, but experience shows this to be the case. We adopted Stanley, a country-solid lover of green farm equipment he never uses and the polar opposite to my Aunt Nora, the proper anecdote to unsightly manners and dirty boots. Stanley came to Christmas gatherings, once deducing "that ain't no shop vac" while manhandling a freshly unwrapped box clearly labeled "Shop-Vac" but housing rather facetiously John Deere salt and pepper shakers and a matching hardback picture book.

Once, on our way to surprise Uncle Hughey preaching at Highlands United Methodist Church in downtown Birmingham, our car in the lead, Stanley caught up to us, his head out the passenger window, his arm wildly waving a two-way, informing us that Aunt Nora needed coffee. It was a cruel prank of my mom's to put Nora and Stanley in the same car, Nora's lips pursed, her eyebrows perfectly painted, her consternation conspicuously awkward.

I remember Nora's outstretched manicured hand, the starched dollar bill poised to pay for her java, followed by Stanley's large labor-marked counterpart forcing hers down to her side. "Put your money up. It ain't no good here, woman."

Later during church service, Stanley went missing, returning a good half hour later with a steaming vessel of Starbucks between his palms, scooting back to Nora's side, her guardian for the day. I later learned he had offered to bring her a cup back, which she politely refused. Church concessions, I suppose, being too avant-garde for her taste.

Reportage, Week 5

Gourmet Gas Station

I stumbled yesterday upon what Savannah's locals christened the "gourmet gas station." At Parker's Market, you can purchase a bottle of wine and cool it in the "chilling station" for sixty seconds, the equivalent (according to the signage) of three hours in your fridge. Grab your fruit of choice, cream cheese, a can of caviar, or sushi rolls, if you like. The deli boasts cullings of pasta salads, tabbouleh, fresh baked artisan breads, and seafood hoagies. The cheese station--all asiago, bleu, munster, gouda--contrasts with the two gas pumps, outside lane only, the modest parking splitting the fuel center from the double glass doors, open 24 hours.

Between the merlot and the rice rolls, you can indulge in the expected on the candy aisle--Snickers, Starburst, Skittles--and the unexpected chocolate-covered espresso beans sold by the half pound. The chip aisle, the cigarettes, gum, beer, lottery tickets, toilet paper, and bath soap grounding the genre. I needed maximum hold. "Sorry," the unibrowed clerk pronounced, ringing up condoms and caviar for a more satisfied customer, "we don't carry hairspray."

I hurried on to the Hilton DeSoto and into the cookie-cutter gift shop, all souvenirs and necessities, where I spent $4.89 on 1.5 ounces of TRESemmé. Taming my curls in the ladies' room, adjusting my skirt one last time before picking up my conference packet, my thoughts turned to gourmet dinner options.

Oddity, Week 5

Heavy

You can predict how much you'll weigh in the morning by weighing yourself at night. When I confessed to my best friend Patricia how I, impatient to track my progress, devised a way to celebrate or self deprecate a few hours early, all relative to the order of three weighty digits, she grinned in recognition. My confided secret, my unsound obsession, was hers, too. And Gina's. And Sherry's. And, I guess, a majority of our colleagues who add points, calories, or ounces of water in order, optimally, to subtract pounds from last week's tally.

Most any weight loss regimen promotes a once a week weigh in, on the same day, at the same time, and in the same clothes. Morning weigh-ins are the ones that count, at least for me. And I, like many determined to lose those last ten pounds or the first ten, ignore the once-a-week mandate in order to get the insider's scoop on just how detrimental that pint of ice cream was to a day otherwise fueled by spinach, diet soda, black beans, and brown rice. Or, perhaps I forgot to count the cashews or underestimated the calories in four fig newtons. Perhaps my run was shorter than planned or I never got around to "Boot Camp" intervals of body resistance and cardio.

I find my backbone softer than the women who, blogging about weight loss success, say they just stop eating once they reach their daily limit, even if they meet it at noon. Weaker than others who claim to up their workout duration or intensity to compensate for the sweet tea and red velvet cake indulgence at a Sunday afternoon baby shower. Unfazed by the revelation that each human tends to eat the same volume of food today as yesterday, rather than the same number of calories--a discovery meant to inspire us to eat the weight of a chocolate bar in lettuce or fruit, to make less calorie-dense choices.

And the mantra meant to nourish my will, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," fails by association because I've never been skinny. But I know how good "Moose Tracks" tastes, the fudgy imprints, the drops of coated peanut butter. I know the comfort of homemade french fries, the contentment of honey butter slathered yeast rolls, the creamy warmth of fettuccine alfredo. I know what it means to scour the pantry for something sweet, come up empty, and turn to the can of cocoa for relief, consoled to learn that I do indeed have all the ingredients to make the "'Perfectly Chocolate' Chocolate Frosting" printed on the back.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 5

~Q: "What's your favorite vegetable?" A: "Lima Beans! They're like little pockets of mashed potatoes."

~"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

~"Sometimes I forget there are gorillas behind me."

~The phenomenon of people posting pictures of their dinner on facebook. It's just dinner, right? And pictures are a bit different than telling us about a great-tasting recipe you just tried. I'm talking a photoshoot featuring the pot roast and all its (apparently) newsworthy trimmings.

Peer Response 2, Week 3

Response to Brett's Memory 1, Week 3

Brett,

I agree that your use of language is impressive. And I'm not following instructions here, but I have to say anyway that I love your play with words. When you say "insomnia often fastened me to the drawing table near my window," I'm jealous that you thought to say that. You consistently use concrete images that wake up the scene and you're setting the scene more thoroughly now that Davidson made that suggestion. I think you're also following through with trimming the prose and letting the sharper language say more than it could before. Maybe you could seek out a sister scene in Indy to make a connection and keep the story moving. Also, add some reflection. What does this scene invoke for you personally? That's all I can offer. I love what you're doing. And I want to hear more about Korea.

Peer Response 1, Week 3

Response to Susannah's Memory 1, Week 3

This story is chock full of interesting, ripe happenings. To start in the middle of the action, you might think of opening with "The house across the street from us was a drug dealer’s mansion" or a brief quip about how your neighbor's tiger crashed your cousin's coming-out party.

Also, you could make this memory pop by streamlining your prose. For example, what if, instead of saying, "I imagine the tiger must have been doped up on some kind of sedative because my father grabbed the chain that hung from its neck and walked it back to the neighbor’s house as if it had been a puppy Labrador that had come to join the festivities and beg for left-over meatballs," you shortened it to: "I suspected animal doping when my father led the tiger back home by its chain, as though it was a puppy Labrador, come to beg for left-over meatballs." That's certainly not the only option for cutting the prose a bit, but I think trimming the language allows the spotlight to remain fixed on this unexpected scene.

I'm fascinated with this background of yours. I imagine you have lots of other stories from this kind of odd neighborhood mingling. I'd love to hear them!

Reportage, Week 3

(This probably isn't a 'normal' response to a dead mouse. But it's mine and I own it, whatever that means.)

Lovely Mouse

Last Monday, I stooped near the steps in my back yard to take a closer look at a dead mouse. I didn't know he was dead. He looked on the verge of taking a deep breath, of expanding his warm round middle before turning over in his sleep. I wanted to touch his jagged chestnut fur, give him the only petting of his brief life.

The mouse looked friendly enough, as though he had always been open to human touch. I crept closer, attracted to soft, relaxed eyelids. I think I remember long eyelashes. Lured to his side by the pink nose, his fat center. All rolled up in a fleshy bundle, he seemed not to have a tail at all. Was it the tail that repulsed me?

I nudged the mouse, expecting his eyes to widen, his feet to hurry him away to the field at the edge of the yard. I was grieved when he didn't budge, disturbed that he could be stiff with no outward signs of abuse. When I remembered, abruptly, last week's creeping rodent scampering past my feet in our basement, hunched low to the ground, sniffing his way to safety, his whip of a tail trailing his path, I squeaked. Not the same shriek that called Jeff to my rescue, promising to save me from unwelcome droppings and certain contamination. "I'll take care of it," he promised, placing poison in the mouse's likeliest haunts.

The lovely mouse means something else to me now, lifeless and plump on a bed of gravel just beyond the basement door.

Original Prompt, Week 3

Text: "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by E.J. Levy

Levy effectively brings in historical context (ie Julia Child's cooking show, the feminist movement, Watergate, Vietnam, and anxiety over oil prices) to help her establish associations between traditional family roles, her mom's culinary quirks, and her parents' marriage. Levy focuses in part on her mom's cooking of Child's recipes as a distraction from compromised desire (as Levy sees it). According to Levy, her mom--"widely read . . . an accomplished pianist and a gifted painter [who] speaks French and Czech, [and] is knowledgeable in art and history, physics, physiology, and philosophy"--had her "enormous ambitions . . . channeled by her marriage into a narrow course" (294-295).

Levy writes that her mom "was of that generation of women caught in the sexual crossfire of women's liberation, who knew enough to probe for their desires, but not enough to practice them" (291). Levy imagined or deduced that her mom was only waiting for the right moment to insist on her own liberation. She juxtaposes her mom's submissiveness to convention with her own schism against social conformity. Levy hints that although her mom never left (Levy had always expected she would), she did eventually throw in her apron, opting years later, for example, to order "a large, squat, hatbox-shaped vegetable torte with marinara sauce" in place of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey.

What impressed me about this piece is the way Levy chronicles the relationship between gustatory choices and the feminist movement, and ultimately her mom's subtle shifts in her role as the family's hash slinger.

Prompt:
Write about a family food tradition (or lack of) that embarrassed you when you had a friend over. Dig for a moment during your adolescent or teenage years.

Memory 2, Week 3

Friday Nights

Bailee chose a silver stone from the graveled driveway and etched a curvy line of gray into the green paint of my Saturn S-series. She was four and bored, waiting on her mom to take her home after a long day at daycare.

Bailee, blonde with Shirley Temple curls and a pageant smile, stopped only briefly at her mom's insistence. Lisa picked up her monologue where she left off. Something about an elk hunting trip she was taking that weekend. Lisa made small talk that evening, an attempt to smooth over the fact that she breezed through my kitchen door 50 minutes late for pick up on a Friday night. She made it up to me by keeping me an extra half hour with idle chat, ignoring Bailee's roguery and costing me a $500 deposit on a new paint job. I was distracted and nodding zealously, hoping to appear sufficiently appeased. Wanting Lisa to feel forgiven. To go home.

Friday nights meant laundering blankets and sanitizing cots, wooden blocks, Tonka trucks, baby dolls, manipulatives, and teething rings. Friday nights meant hiding toys under beds, stuffing cots in closets, and locking away art supplies for a two-day reprieve, a temporary reclamation of my space. Friday nights meant grocery shopping for juice, milk, applesauce, Lysol. Topping off the food program report and skimming the attendance sheets in case parents forgot to sign in cursive or log the drop-off or pick-up time. A slight that could cost me marks on my accreditation observation or dollars on my monthly food allotment.

I forged through my chores, sweeping the great room floor for the sixth or seventh time in a day, hiding the high chairs in the storage room, boxing up modeling clay and ABC placements, and taking down the pictures of people we don't know, photos illustrating babies and toddlers from diverse cultures and races brushing their teeth, washing their hands, or eating spaghetti.

Friday nights meant kitchen strike, according to my husband, who hoped that trend would change. Two-and-a-half days' reprieve from the black skillet, baking sheets, boilers, crock pots, and microwaves. Sixty hours of escapist lit, broken rest, American cityscape puzzles, apple-pie scented candles. Thirty-six hundred minutes of quiet.

By Monday, I would be ready to make toddlers into human circles, squares, and triangles in the living room floor. We'd make ice cream with a few ingredients and a ziplock bag. We'd turn the playset into a pirate ship or a firetruck. We'd make the letter 'A' out of play-doh or uncooked macaroni. We'd have an apple-tasting contest and name 'pink lady,' 'granny smith,' 'fuji,' or braeburn' our favorite. We'd read "The Three Little Fish and the Big, Bad Shark." And we'd start ripping apart orange and blue construction paper for Friday's pep rally.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 3

~"Would you rather be perpetually misunderstood or understood perpetually?"

~"She's already using your name in the past tense."

~Low Cost Spay and Neuter out of an RV in the Tractor Supply Parking Lot. There was a line. But I didn't see the first animal.

~(Quoting a tweet) "What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?"

Memory 1, Week 3

Disclaimer: I think I've avoided writing about daycare because there's so much to unpack. I couldn't decide where to begin, so I just started with the waiting list, which always made me feel awkward.

Waitlisted

When three-year-old Jake got waitlisted for daycare, his mom tried to bull open a seventh spot. Six was the legal limit. I don't recall the nuances of Janie's petition, but the sting underneath was painfully dealt: “Can't you fudge a little for your daughter's best friend's mom who's six months along and sits three pews back from you at Sunday service?” Then she sicked her husband Steve on me, who added the guilt of his wife's fragile emotional state and possible need for continuous bedrest.

In Woodland, Alabama—population 186 according to the aging town limit sign—there is one school, one bank, one gas station, one beauty shop, one-half of a restaurant, one recycling joint, roughly seventeen churches, and six daycares. At least there are six that anyone official knows about. All in, local parents have four basic options: Grandma, Rita's Little Angels Preschool, rogue underground home-based child depots, and licensed home providers like me. And there are three like me.

Parents in need of daycare hash out the ins and outs of center versus home care at t-ball games, Sassy Scissors, and at the Grapevine over pita bread and fried chicken. Moms drop words like “socialization” sometimes, but the buzz mainly falls to provider reputation, cost, structure, level of exposure to sickness, and preparation for kindergarten. No mom wants her child to be behind at five years old. Scholarly preparation for preschoolers falls reductively in the “learn through play” camp or the “whiz by worksheet” camp.

Janie—a stay-at-home mom—wanted socialization for Jake with minimal exposure to vomit, snot, and diarrhea. Also, loose structure, a provider she knew personally, and prep through play ranked high on her list. The best I could do was offer Janie a drop-in option for days that other children were out. She took it. When Janie dropped Jake off for the first time, he had his own stipulation. “I'll stay, but I ain't eatin' no beans.” Jake had a penchant for stomping the feet of other children when my back was turned. Sometimes I forgot to call Janie when a spot opened up for a day.

Waitlisted kids rarely got in anyway, most years. Spots generally only opened up when an enrolled child started school. Jennifer—eventual mother of three—once paid six months for a ghost child so that her as yet unborn son could get his sister Carley's spot after she started school. So Carley was replaced by Callen. And five days a week, 6:45 am to 4 pm, Callen, Cade, Kaylie, Kenzie, Kenzlie, and Mattie—this is not made up—played their way through my home into my family.

Callen, carried in by his father religiously at 6:45 am every morning, slept on the couch while the seven-o'clockers ate a starch, a protein, and a fruit, my husband Jeff feigning a craving for their hot biscuits and milk, raising the decibel to an unbearable level before complaining in my ear that it's too loud and leaving for work.

Without fail, Mattie and Cade arrived at 7:45 am, their mom throwing them at me, their tongues and chins stained orange from popsicle juice, the standard bribe to hurry up and get in the van.

Kenzie's mom—who answered the phone at her husband's body shop for a living—brought Kenzie's 10 o'clock "breakfast" from the Grapevine every morning as a bribe for her to stay. A “salad” consisting of shredded cheese, banana peppers, thousand island dressing, and bacon bits. No lettuce. Christy stood next to Kenzie while she ate, putting off, or prolonging, the whiny exchange over her mom leaving a half an hour later. Sometimes Christi gave in and took Kenzie back to the shop with her. Sally Kelley, a provider mentor from Auburn University who visited me once a month for on-site training, had something to say about that. According to Sally, Christi was conditioning Kenzie to use negative behavior effectively.

Apparently, Kenzie has a timekeeper in her subconscious that allows her to record and remember how long she needs to cry to get mom to take her back to the shop with her. Here's how it works. If Kenzie cries for five minutes, and mom says no, then she cries for ten minutes, then fifteen, and so on. (Sally theorizes in five-minute increments). If, one day, after a 30-minute whine, mom finally caves and loads Kenzie back in the Chevy Yukon for the seven minute ride back to Andy's Body Shop, Kenzie's invisible clock tells her instinctively that thirty minutes is the ticket out of daycare. After that, it's up to Kenzie to decide if she's willing to invest that much time on any given day. Thirty minutes of crying is as long as it sounds.

On the days that Christy won the showdown and left for the shop alone, Kenzie forgot all about her before the Yukon took a right out of my driveway. Sally managed me. I managed the children. The children managed the moms.