Prompt #35

Knife.   

I slid it in my pocket and caught her accusing gaze. 

“Like you’d actually use that,” her eyebrow rose.

“If anything happened, I like to know I brought my knife.  Backup plans are good.”

“You would knife something?  Someone?”

“I would do a lot if the situation arose.  At least, I hope I would.”

Her chin lifted a little and her lips pursed.  Displeased. 

Pistol.

When the movie was over she asked if it had scared me.

“No, they wouldn’t really kill the main character.”

“They do sometimes.”

I caught the defensive tone of her voice.  They had pulled her in.  “Yeah, sometimes.”

She picked at her nail bed.  Irritated.

Two letters.

The first one came to me on the darkest day of the year.  When I opened it, tears poured out.

I replied in the second, and was left hanging.  Suspended forever without resolution.

I stared at my empty palms.  Lost.

A pressed flower.

It was tucked in my Louisa May Alcott.  The book was a gift, the flower a memory.

I took it out and twirled it between my fingers, lost in thought.

I got up with an effort.  I released the flower from my grip, and it floated to the bottom of the wastebasket.  Finished. 

Prompt #37

She called it the boondocks that day, singing songs to his ears in a voice meant to charm.  He said that the boondocks and this dock in the lake had nothing to do with each other.  All the same, he let a smile play at the sides of his mouth, and placed his hands in the pockets of his shorts.  Just a lifeguard before swim time, just a naïve girl with a sweet smile.

The dock was empty in the soft tones of the early morning.  She stole out onto it, unafraid of being caught despite the warning sign.  She sat down on the very edge, dangling her toes into the water, making ripples in the glassy surface.  Then she laid the Bible on her lap and opened it.  After a few minutes he joined her with a Bible of his own.  They read in silence together, sitting close enough to feel, but not enough to touch.

Weekends without kids means a rest from responsibilities.  The summer rain picked up and she acted with predictable impulsiveness.  Out came the swim suit, and in she dove.  All alone, until a splash announced his presence.  Giggles and a tender moment when he helped her out of the water.  Was the dock really that slippery, or had she fallen against him on purpose?

Cold grows heavier every day, lacing the water’s edge with shards of ice.  The dock has been rolled out of the lake, and it is covered with a tattered tarp. 

Prompt #33

The world doesn’t bother to mourn with us today.  On our ride to the funeral home the sun is not hiding, the skies are not shrouded with clouds, and the birds have not hushed their songs.

We reach the destination and step down from the vehicle.  As if to nail the hammer in the coffin, we all wear matching black attire.  I walk inside, black heels sounding on the fresh pavement.  Click, click, click, like the second hand of a clock.  

Once inside, I turn my attention to the funeral home directors.  They present their practiced faces of perfectly mixed comfort and sadness to first one, then another family member.  

Tears are shed during the service, and for good reason.  Sometimes we know we’ll see them again – their lives revealed where their home was.  But this man is truly lost to us.  Hopeless is a terrible word.

One after another person gets up to face the black garbed crowd and speak a few tearful words.  “a good man…” was heard at least a dozen times, accompanied by such key words as “family” and “legacy.”

But what lies beneath the black ties, and the heels, and the tear stained faces?  Truth.  We all know who he was, who he was really.  So when the man with the worn book said that “We are gathered here today to remember…” what he really could have said was that we were gathered here to begin to forget.  This would be day one of replacing our real memories with the beauty of retrospect.

Nature/Descriptive Essay

College Composition

By Danielle Vine

 

 

Beech trees are known for their wide leaves, with veins that crinkle the skin of the leaf, leaving little ridges for rain to run down.  These woods are full of Beech trees, so when it starts to rain, I know I’ll be getting wet.  In books and movies, people always run under a tree and are magically saved from getting soaked, but that’s just ignorant story telling from someone who hasn’t actually been out here.  In fact, sometimes it can be worse under a tree, because those big leaves will fill up and then dump on you all of a sudden.

The snowmobile trail that I’m on is overgrown.  All spring and what summer we’ve had so far has been full of sunshine and rain, perfect weather for undergrowth.  Why did I wear my shorts?  I know the answer, my hiking khakis were in the wash.  But now my legs are all torn up from hostile raspberry bushes, and saplings that bend and whip as I pass. 

The rain is picking up, but I’m almost there.  The trail curves upward and away from me, but the trail is irrelevant now.  I climb down the side of the hill, leaving the trail behind me.  I choose my footing carefully, and don’t allow my momentum to build.  If I let myself descend as quickly as gravity would dictate, then the landing would be far from pleasant.  The slope is slippery.  Every patch of dirt is turning to mud, and every rock is rejecting the rainfall and allowing it to pool up, creating no safe surface for my descent.

I do reach the bottom safely though, and set my feet on a bed of leaves.  They are little basins for rainwater now, and my hiking shoes are soaked through.  I wade through the leaves that come to the middle of my calves, and curse the valley and its ideal location for storing dead leaves from years past. 

Finally, I come to the place I had set out to find.  My hair is soaked, hanging in a tangled mass, with water dripping off the ends.  But that’s behind me, and there in front of me is the fort.

I can still remember the day we built it.  My big sister, who always got us lost in the woods until I decided to lead, and I.  Just the two of us, pretending to be lost forever on a desert island.  I love the ability that children have to believe.  Once we grow older, we find all the answers we’ll ever need, and we decide that belief and wonder are things that children do.  I suppose exposure to the world breeds mistrust and doubt, but in those days we were innocent, and truly free.  Logic was irrelevant.  Tell us that desert islands rarely have beech forests on them, and we would disregard you.  Tell us that our first priority once stranded would be water or food, not shelter, and we would probably nod and then simply continue building our fort. 

This was what we had come up with.  I bend down and grab one of the slimy wet logs that had fallen from the lean-to and was lying on the ground.  Carefully, I place it in the gap that it had left, and then walk around to the other side.  Our lean-to is built against a large boulder that is covered in moss.

I creep around to the inside of the fort, and crouch on my knees.  I had made it to the safety of our leaky fort just in time for the rain to stop.  The dripping would go on for a while though – another drawback of escaping rain by diving for trees.  The ground inside the fort was still somewhat clear.  Even though the fort was built on the floor of the forest, my sister and I insisted on making it our home by making brooms out of ferns and grasses, and sweeping the tiny space.  And of course, we made the brooms before we found food and water sources.  They were much more important.

My ankles are getting sore from my position, so I lean back against the rock.  It was wet from the rain, but I'm wetter, so I don’t care.  The rain only makes the hot July atmosphere more humid and hard to breathe, so I run my hand along the stone and drink in the cold through my palms. 

My hand runs along a crack, and I remember my sister’s words.  She had told me that this crack was the safest place in the world – here hidden away, and secret.  So she had put our locket in there.  I turn around in the small space and peer into the hole.  But nothing is there, and I walk away with empty hands.

Prompt #32

“Who’s the last person you would want to remember?”  I read the question and immediately knew what it meant.  Who in the world would I like to remember with my dying moments?  Who would I want to hold in my mind as I let go of my grasp on life?  It’s a romantic question, in the old sense of the word, and it evokes such mood.

Then I read the next line.  The teacher claims that there is more than one meaning to that question.  But what does he mean?  Then, the other meaning dawned on me.  In the whole world, who is the person that I don’t want to remember.  Who have I used all of my mental powers to rid from my mind?  Who has impressed me so badly with who they are and what they’ve done that I never, ever want to remember them.

Which begs the question.  Does the instructor enjoy my discomfort?  Does he really want me to remember the person I least want to remember?  Apparently so.  I knew college teachers weren’t human.

So I wracked my brain.  Who do I hate that badly?  Or who have I tried to forget?  Well everybody has someone like that.  But if I’ve tried and succeeded to forget him or her, then how am I supposed to remember this mystery person?  And why should I?  

Who does this teacher think he is, after all?  These questions all along have been dreadfully personal.  And I only trust the government with my darkest secrets.  Is this teacher some kind of stalker?  Is he building up enough information about me to steal my identity?  Then again, it would be a trick for my adult male teacher to take on my identity – a female college student.  But really, it could happen.

I guess it all comes down to privacy.  And maybe paranoia.  But mostly privacy.

Week 7 Theme

This project removed because it was published!!! 

Opinion Essay

College Composition

Opinion Essay

 

 

I love the summer camp I work for.... However, there are some things in the camp that should not be tolerated.

First off (and probably most importantly) Counseling is like parenting.  It’s a commitment and a sacrifice, not a way to get out of the bottom rungs of “staff-girl” or “staff-boy.”  You as a counselor are assigned a cabin full of kids that will be your responsibility for the week.  Tough?  Absolutely.  Seven seven-year-old girls or boys in one room is never easy.  But if you signed up to be a counselor, then you didn’t sign up for easy.  You signed up to take care of these kids, physically and emotionally, for the week.  You are supposed to want them to feel comfortable and happy.  You’re supposed to be here at thus Christian camp as a missionary, looking out for their souls.  Too often I see so-called counselors whose children could be anywhere, and they’re too busy flirting or socializing to care that their kids need them.  A good week of camp for a kid hangs on their counselor, and some of us just don’t make the cut.

That being said, what about those counselors who really are working hard?  What about the dependable ones who take no time for themselves during the day, and sometimes won’t get a good night’s sleep because their kids will wake up homesick, or flu-sick?  Budgeting has always been a problem, but being paid a maximum of $20 a week all summer is too little.  We can’t retain good counselors without paying them.  If we bumped up the salary, (by maybe not spending exorbitant amounts on horses all year long, or on climbing walls that the kids rarely climb) then maybe we could afford good counselors that had better focus and purpose.

This next one should be very straight-forward.  If you’re dating, don’t sneak off.  And keep your hands to yourselves!  If you’re looking for a utopian summer with your special someone, don’t commit to working 24/6 at a summer camp; it just doesn’t work.  Your focus should be on the kids, not on watching your significant other’s eyelashes.  This past summer, I hated walking into the laundry mat and ramming the door into a couple who quickly put themselves back together after an obvious make-out session.  What if I had been a kid?  This is supposed to be a godly environment, can’t we at least act like we're trying to support that?

What about the wilderness department?  Why the terrible divide between the wilderness program and the base camp?  Yes, I get the past.  The guy who started the wilderness program was a difficult man to get along with and he didn’t want to be associated with the main camp.  But he’s gone now.  He’s been gone for three years, for goodness sake!  Why aren’t we unified?  When we get back from a trip we unpack, wash the dishes, vacuum tents, clean equipment, put away equipment, and so on, all by ourselves.  It takes us long into the night and through the next days!  Meanwhile, some staff is often bored down at the main campsite.  If we all pitched in then we could be done in one night and those of us who are already exhausted at the end of the trip could be finished after one day.  Wilderness people help base camp, why not return the favor and live as one in perfect harmony? 

What about the cows??  I could go on and on about the cows.  Around the bend and up the road from the camp lives a bunch of cows.  A good chunk of the staff boy’s time is spent on making hay to feed the cows.  However, the cows don’t belong to the camp, they belong to the camp director’s son.  This is wrong.  Not everybody has connected the dots to see what this means, but if they did then they would see that this is totally the director’s son working the system.  Now I’m not saying that hard work isn’t good for these young men.  I absolutely agree with hard labor as a way of building character.  But what kind of character is he modeling to these kids?  He’s teaching them to cheat and to steal.  If he wants them to hay for him, then he needs to offer to pay them at least minimum wage, and he needs to observe every law about child labor.  If people got wind of this, we could get in serious trouble. 

The camp is doing a lot right, but through time the squeaky-clean system has been dirtied.    Maybe it all goes back to the fact that they aren’t budgeting to pay their workers well, and because of that they feel like they can’t enforce rules and restrictions.  They’re probably right, if they tightened things up then they might lose help.  But wouldn’t it be better to run a tight ship with scanty help, rather than allow some of this stuff to go on?