False Memory: Conceptual Questions

1) Why didn't I cry?

This would set the stage for my attitude about failure and getting hurt for the rest of my life. I adopted the idea at a very young age that crying and whining accomplished nothing, and was a sign of sheer weakness. Through my cracked tailbone and broken noses (yes, two times) I never shed a tear. I was simply physically incapable. My body refused to react for fear of appearing feeble. The strange thing is that who was I afraid of looking weak in front of? Now I realize it was probably my older cousins, for our 19 person clan of under 12 year olds lived by the idea of survival of the fittest, and I suppose I was simply proving my fitness.

2) Why didn't anybody help me?

In a big family, you learn to fend for yourself. None of my cousins in the hot tub with me alerted an adult or provided a shoulder to kneel on as I bloodily hopped to the door. In accordance to big family mentality, if the person is breathing and able to move, they can handle their own business.

3) Why is a mother the best person to bandage you up?

Mothers not only offer mental comfort with hugs and soothing voices, but apply physical comfort as well, seeing as they know how to fix up a scraped knee. Mothers are sympathetic and nuturing by nature and care both about the physical and mental health of their children, for any injury- big or small.

Fake Memory Exercise Revision

indsay Johnson

Pugliese

English 2, Block C

19 September 2009

Fake Memory Exercise

Oh childhood summers. The days we didn’t stress about our bellies in bikinis or carry our phones with us to the beach to check text messages. The days when we could run around topless and bare foot, hugging members of the opposite sex with Popsicle stained lips. The days when a day was good or bad based solely on the weather.We were up at my grandparent’s sprawling lake front house in Tahoe, and I was in the hot tub with my cousins after an afternoon of tubing on the lake. I felt a wooden floorboard on the bottom of the tub come loose, but brushed it off without a second thought. Suddenly, my older cousin swiped my headband off the top of my head and without thinking twice I promptly lunged towards him. The rusty nail entered through the right ball of my foot, sinking deeper and deeper as I stepped down on the nail in utter shock. I bit my lip and slid my hand under the bubbling water, feeling the dirty metal in my soft flesh. Without saying a word, I stepped gingerly out of the hot tub, hopping on one foot towards the house. I hopped through the fir needles, past the pinecones, carefully navigating through the huge rocks. Then I tripped. I skid forward on the top of the rock, belly first, blood running down my entire torso like a bad war movie. With my shredded stomach and Frankenstein foot, I hopped even harder and eventually made it to the door.

My mom took one look at me and returned to the kitchen with a full first aid kit. She attacked the nail first, wrapping her manicured nails around the head and pulling slowly as I squirmed on the pillowed window seat. I looked down into the hole. Filled with dried blood, rust and mangled skin, the bottom of my foot was clearly in a sorry state. That fact would be confirmed later when I tried to put pressure on my foot and promptly fell over. My mom filled the hole with a mixture of anti bacteria paste and Neosporin and wrapped it tightly with an ACE bandage. The next issue to address was my torn tummy. Without knowing what had happened, someone would probably have guessed that two male lions had used my torso as a scratching post. The cuts varied in color, some purple, some red, some white, like a painful Jackson Pollack painting. Obviously you can’t bandage an entire stomach so my mom diligently washed my stomach with soap and water, and applied the same foot wound mixture to my entire stomach. Slick with the mixture and still in my XS Hawaii print bikini, I sat at the kitchen table for a good two hours, getting up only once to attempt to walk.

Fourth of July came and went and my torso began to scab into long, hard lines, which I cleverly concealed with a one-piece swimsuit. I limped around the house, but luckily was able to continue waterskiing, wakeboarding and tubing as the freezing melted snow water of Lake Tahoe numbed my foot to the point where putting my full weight on it went unnoticed. Thanks to the freezing cold water, the week was salvaged and my badass reputation soared among my family, my place in the cousin hierarchy moving up several slots.

Fake Memory Exercise

Lindsay Johnson

Pugliese

English 2, Block C

19 September 2009

Fake Memory Exercise

Oh childhood summers. The days we didn’t stress about our bellies in bikinis or have to carry our phones with us to the beach to check text messages. The days when we could run around topless and bare foot, hugging members of the opposite sex with Popsicle stained lips. We were up at my grandparent’s sprawling lake front house in Tahoe, and I was in the hot tub with my cousins after an afternoon of tubing on the lake. I felt a wooden floorboard on the bottom of the tub come loose, but brushed it off without a second thought. Suddenly, my older cousin swiped my headband off the top of my head and without thinking twice I promptly lunged towards him. The rusty nail entered through the right ball of my foot, sinking deeper and deeper as I stepped down on the nail in shock. I bit my lip and slid my hand under water, feeling the dirty metal in my soft flesh. Without saying a word, I stepped gingerly out of the hot tub, hopping on one foot towards the house. I hopped through the pine needles, past the pinecones, carefully navigating through the huge rocks. Then I tripped. I skid forward on the top of the rock, blood running down my entire torso like a bad war movie. With my shredded stomach and Frankenstein foot, I hopped even harder and eventually made it to the door.

My mom took one look at me and returned to the kitchen with a full first aid kit. She attacked the nail first, wrapping her manicured nails around the head of the nail and pulling slowly as I squirmed on the pillowed window seat. I looked down into the hole. Filled with dried blood, rust and mangled skin, the bottom of my foot was clearly in a sorry state. That fact would be confirmed later when I tried to put pressure on my foot and promptly fell over. My mom filled the hole with a mixture of anti bacteria paste and Neosporin and wrapped it tightly with an ACE bandage. The next issue to address was my torn tummy. Without knowing what had happened, someone would probably have guessed that two male lions had used my torso as a scratching post. The cuts varied in color, some purple, some red, some white, like a painful Jackson Pollack painting. Obviously you can’t bandage an entire stomach so my mom washed my stomach with soap and water, and applied the same foot wound mixture to my entire stomach. Slick with the mixture and still in my XS Hawaii print bikini, I sat at the kitchen table for a good two hours, getting up only once to attempt to walk.

Fourth of July came and went and my torso began to scab into long, hard lines, which I cleverly concealed with a one-piece swimsuit. I limped around the house, but luckily was able to continue waterskiing, wakeboarding and tubing as the freezing melted snow water numbed my foot to the point where putting my full weight on it went unnoticed. Thanks to the freezing cold water, the week was salvaged and my badass reputation soared among my cousins.

Three Questions for Tobias Wolff

1) Was the story "Nightingale" inspired by your relationship with your own father?

2) Did you want readers to feel sympathy for the murdered book critic in "Bullet in the Brain"?

3) Why did you make us dislike Krystal in "Desert Breakdown 1968"?

Zoom Zoom In!

Mary Ann tilted her chin up to the sky and her lower lip shook terribly as her chest cavity heaved with another sob. The child felt heavy in her arms. She rocked it back and forth, waiting for his car, waiting for something she knew would never arrive. The child stirred and she gently pried open his tiny mouth and put in a binky to keep him quiet. The baby chewed thoughtfully, his tiny, creamy eyelids closed in serenity. Mary Ann's mascara had run down her cheeks, her eyes two swollen black pieces of coal in a faded face. She wiped off her lipstick with the back of her hand and took a deep breath before pressing her cheek into the baby's soft head. He nestled into her collarbone, his small chubby hand wrapped around her spaghetti strap tank top and it stayed there, soft skin upon soft skin. 

She took the baby inside, unwrapping his fingers from her tank top. Placing him in his crib, she slipped on flip flops and called her best friend. There was no answer, only a chipper voicemail message. She hung up the phone and overcome by a sudden wash of sadness, knelt in the damp grass. A person appeared at the fence. It was Carol Landon, the elderly black woman who lived next door.

"You ok honey?" said Mrs. Landon, hiking up her nightgown in order to step through the tall weeds. 

Mary Ann said nothing.

"Honey?" Mrs. Landon said nervously. Mary Ann could hear her take a deep breath.

"He ain't coming." Mary Ann said, rising to her feet. "He ain't coming." she repeated. 

She couldn't remember feeling like this. She felt as though somebody had hollowed her out, gutted like the fish they used to catch before the games. She remembered the games, the way he stared at her long, tan legs in her little cheerleading skirt. She remembered the rush when he scored a touchdown, remembered the way she would hug his mother as he led his team to victory. She remembered the parties after the games, when someone had a free house and cool parents. She remembered him getting the scholarship and proposing, she remembered buying the house. He was always winning winning winning. And then he lost. And then she lost him.

Zoom In Activity

"The blood ran down the dog's muzzle into the snow." Hunters in the Snow, Tobias Wolff, p. 26.

It was cold enough to the point where Mary Ann couldn't feel the tears on her cheeks. The pine trees cast dark shadows across the dog's dead body, she could feel her whole weight sinking down into the snow. Crippled with pain, she knelt in the fresh powder. The snow soaked through her jeans and Mary Ann reached inside her flannel jacket for a tissue but found none. She could only stare at the dog's lifeless body. The wind blew softly and the pine tree's thick needles kept it from becoming anything more. Wispy grey clouds filled the sky. Mary Ann tilted her chin up to the sky and her lower lip shook terribly as her chest cavity heaved with another sob. The two teenagers had looked at her awkwardly. The larger one was holding the gun and he had turned bright red, the other smaller boy kept twisting his mouth around and had been chewing on the edge of his glove.

"We're real sorry mam," the fat one had said.

"Yeah" had echoed the smaller one.

"Honest we was just trying to get a rabbit, and from a distance-" the fat one started, before he was nudged by the smaller one.

"We can can clean it up for you," the tiny one had offered with no emotion in his voice.

Mary Ann didn't remember what she said, but she knew when she opened her eyes the boys were gone and so was her dog.

Extra Credit=-Story Review!

I read the story about Academiatrophe. Heres what worked: The idea was horrifying and interesting. The pursuit of knowledge is generally viewed as a positive and this negative angle was unique. Heres what didnt work, sentence by sentence:

1) "I work at the Academiatrophe Academy, the organization in control of teaching future generations and lay the foundation for the future."

2)"I see the powerful corrupt for what they are"

3)"But now, he's suffering from an extreme case of scardish"

4) "Scardish is now the main cause of death at Academiatrophe UNTIL NOW"

5) "Seven ingredients"

Here are my ways the sentences could be improved:

1) I work at the Academiatrophe Academy, the organization responsible for teaching and laying the foundation for the future."

2) "I see the corruption"

3) "Now he is suffering from a horrible case of scardish."

4) "Until now, scardish was the leading cause of death at Academiatrophe"

5)  "The seven ways"

By moving words around, using more interesting vocabulary and making certain sentences more concise, the sentences are stronger, making a stronger story overall.

Regarding the moral or meaning, I believe you should never underestimate people because of their jobs. Brilliance and great ideas only exist in a select group of people, but people in this group includes both garbage men and CEOs. This story also teaches us about the importance of passion. The story cautions us against becoming "empty vessels". There is room in life for both learning AND living.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire!

I'm a bad liar even though I can keep a straight face and sound convincing. I'm a bad liar because I can't lie to my best friends or family, two groups of people most people lie to on a regular basis. I can lie about my age and my relationship status when necessary, I can also lie about my whereabouts. I let myself believe lies when they make me feel secure or when I don't want to face the truth. I can never ever lie about something I did though. I am unable to cover an action or lie about words I spoke. Physically, my mouth starts to fall sideways off my face. Mentally, I cannot stand liars and obviously I would never want to emulate something I despise. Lying about major things shows me three things about a person. 1) I can't trust them. 2) They can't trust themselves. 3) They are too immature to accept consequences for their actions. I have lost a few friends because of their strange inability to tell the truth when it matters, and my best friend since seventh grade has never told me a single lie, nor done anything to lie to me about. As a result, we haven't gotten in a single fight the four years we have been inseperably close. I believe trust is a huge part of all relationships because if you can't trust someone you don't feel comfortable around them. If you aren't in a relationship where you are comfortable, why are you in that relationship at all?

Vonnegut's MHS

There would be no student/ teacher hierarchy. Everything anybody says is a lie so why would we believe one person over another? Classes would be everyone talking at once to whoever or whatever interested them the most. Nobody would be forced to listen to something they didn't want to listen to because everything is a lie, and thus nobody would be offended if you were not interested in hearing a lie. Teachers would have no power. They would tell us what to do but we would know it was all lies. The teachers' college degrees and teaching experience is all lies, their knowledge in their selected subject is a lie, their subject itself is just one huge lie. So if everything about a teacher is a lie, including what they teach, we do not need to have liars in authority positions.

Call me...

Call me Baxter. They made it up and that's what they call me. It is a lovely place where I reside, there are no trees and the ground cracks like an old woman's smile. The place I live is small and has four rooms for eating, breeding, raising and numbering. Outside the one window I can see shantalambs shuffle around aimlessly, nipping one another on their bright feathered behinds as the sun sinks down into the ground. It is dark. I flick on light #7 and dial night number 684958 into my computer. They know I am in my house. They can see me press up against the humming fridge in the corner to attempt to escape from the stifling heat. Most importantly, they can see my disgusting son run his toy trucks over the carpet, creating small lines across the living room floor. He sits there content and amused, his protruding belly spilling over the elastic band of his Men's Undergarments 87s, the only boy in our damarkse who wears this size. His number is visible on his lower back and the dark tag hangs from his left ear. In one week he will be slaughtered like the rest of them. They created the round ups and soon this full cheeked, sickening, innocent child will be killed by them, and they will distribute his meat amongst the damarkses. Besides the Shantalambs, there is no meat here. There is nothing here. Nothing but numbers. Numbers and yellow eyed husbands and filthy swine children who suck the very air out of my lungs. Until round ups.