I wrote this paper for my creative writing class last week and am posting it just for the heck of it. It seemed to be well recieved by the folks in my workshop group and the professor (who's this rad guy with a mini-faux? hawk and signature converse shoes).
Lesson #1: Crazy Hair and Quirky Kids
I could feel the fresh evening air floating through the old rickety screen door. I couldn’t wait to feel it on my warm skin which seemed to suffocate me. I hadn’t seen the light of day for 72 hours, except through windows with blinds that mostly remained closed. I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to die. And I’d felt like I was dying a slow death for two weeks, each day slipping more into oblivion, disregarding all responsibilities and disappearing, falling into the four constraining walls of my home. Okay, it may not have been that severe…I’d just battled a bout of the flu for a few weeks. I’d simply felt awfully unwell, like I should be wearing a sign around my neck, hunched over from coughing so much, that read in bold, capital letters, “UNCLEAN!” But, the illness seemed to be dissipating and I knew I was still wallowing in it. So, this was the end. I was rising above it—out of it…a phoenix from the ashes. Only to burn again.
“Courtney, Courtney!” Quinn precariously pedaled toward me on her hot pink bicycle, the training wheels freshly removed. As she neared she stopped and looked up saying, “Courtney…you have crazy hair…” Burn. Do I really look that bad? I thought to myself as I pushed my blonde stringy hair away from my face and glanced down at my big white sleep shirt and two-sizes-too-big gray sweatpants. But, three year old Quinn just stared at me, big brown eyes smiling, with a grin displayed on her dirty face that suggested she didn’t just think my hair was crazy, but that I’d gone completely off my rocker as well. I wanted to retort, “Well your hair’s crazy too jerkface,” but that would have been immature, although not far from the truth. Her short blonde curly locks, pulled up in a messy pink ponytail looked as if they hadn’t been washed in days. And yet, she was the bright light that had guided me out of the house; her childlike charm sweetly coerced me out of my cave of three days.
I couldn’t think of anyone else that could have gotten me up and out of bed besides her—and Baxter of course, the clumsy yellow Labrador retriever that came bounding up to me slightly knocking me off balance. “You love him or Honey better?” Quinn asked, pointing to her other dog, an older and wiser yellow lab mix.
“Well…Baxter...” I admitted, though I knew it was obvious. He and I were thick as thieves. Even if there was a stranger walking around our family friendly cul-de-sac, he’d always come running up to me, disregarding the opportunity to make a new friend and smell new smells. It was fantastic. He was definitely my favorite bundle of uncontrollable fur.
“I love Baxter best, too. He’s so pretty,” she replied tugging on Baxter’s droopy ears as he licked her arm. I laughed, though I didn’t think she’d fully grasped the concept of favoritism yet. One day she’d say Baxter was her best, the next she’d say Baxter was soooo stupid and Honey was super smart and Honey was just the greatest, isn’t she great?
Quinn was one of the most entertaining, strangest children I’d ever met. She was a year old when she moved in with her two brothers, Gavin and Nolan, and her sister, Chandler. I don’t remember Quinn talking much when she was younger, which, I suppose isn’t so strange, seeing as she is only three years old. But the things this kid would do seemed to be years beyond her capabilities. For instance, by the time she was two she was riding one of those razor scooters in circles around the little boys of the neighborhood. She was a kamikaze, fearless, and would very rarely cry if she made a face plant on the asphalt. However, if she didn’t get her way, well then the floodgates would open on up and she would really show us what her vocal chords were capable of.
Quinn was pretty spoiled like that. She had three brothers and sisters to do most everything for her, including talk. She didn’t really speak much at all for a while, and then it seems something in her clicked and suddenly she was talking all the time. Almost as if the words were all locked up inside and now they all come tumbling out in spurts of energy at the same time. But they aren’t necessarily things you’d expect to hear from a three year old. Or from anyone, really.
Take the crazy hair thing she’d said to me. Who would say that? No one besides a child simply being brutally honest, I suppose. And that’s the thing about Quinn, she’s just honest. She just tells it how it is, or, at least, how she sees it. And this captivates me…and cracks me up all at the same time. It’s wonderful.
As I write this, Quinn, clad in a magenta shirt with matching boots, just came knocking on our front door, well, it was more like pounding, with her grandma Helen and asked to stay with us while Grandma goes to pick up the big kids from school. Helen said, “Hey, this was all her idea…she didn’t want to come with me.”
“I just wanted to come check on you…I never stay with you, c’mon let’s go!” Quinn says, racing to see our dog, Rylie…whom she has affectionately decided to call “Carly”, instead.
I suppose Quinn calls things whatever she wants to partly as a result of the way she’s grown up so far. I think she may be a little confused about how names work. Her parents used to call her a little sing-song name: Quinner-Quinner-Chicken-Dinner, which, a la carte, became the nickname, Chicken. If you ask her now whether she likes to be called Quinn or Chicken better, she’ll tell you Chicken. The girl is a riot.
So, she really was just the person to cheer me up and bring me back to a state of living after being sick and miserable for far too long. “C’mon Coooourtney, let’s go play,” She giggled as she pulled at the sides of my big shirt, twisting the white fabric in her small grubby hands. This child had no sense of personal space either. She was always all over the place; pulling on clothes, hanging on jean pockets, wrapping her arms around my waist and pushing and pulling me. Oh, and she’d always possessed this weird fixation for earlobes. She’d randomly come up to just about anyone she knew, sit on their lap, and caress their earlobe. Odd. I knew I couldn’t wear hoop earrings anymore.
That day she tugged and pulled me into the garage and we sat and talked for a bit about some randomness. Then she proceeded to pull out some ping pong paddles and a tiny rubber ball that didn’t bounce nearly at all. “Here, let’s play,” she handed me a paddle, the blue one, and she took the red one and sat down two feet away. At first she made me throw the ball to her so she could hit it with the paddle, but, as I was saying, she’s always all over the place and slightly uncoordinated in doing so, thus she couldn’t hit the ball. We decided to play a rolling game instead. She sat down on the ground and I sat on the step in front of the garage door to the house and spread my legs in a V shape, creating a mock goal area. The object of the game, we decided, was to roll the ball, using the paddle, in between my legs. I had to guard the created goal and would roll the ball back to her. Nolan, her six year old brother, wanted in on the fun after a while. One time I had asked Nolan what the days of the week were, to which he replied, “Well, there’s Monday, Tuesday, Threesday, Foursday, and Fivesday…” He didn’t proceed to “Sevensday”, as I had cut him off with my burst of laughter. This kid was just as entertaining and enlightening as Quinn, so we let him in on the game.
For the next half hour, we all sat in my garage and played the roll-goal game. It was as if, by just watching the energy they were exerting as they chased balls and jumped over one another laughing their heads off, I was breathing in their excess and taking some of their life into my body that had felt so worn out and dead. I hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks.
I sat there and watched them in all their enthusiasm, getting lost in my own thoughts now and again, letting a little blue or yellow ball buzz past my paddle into the goal. I couldn’t believe what I had been missing out on: the simple pleasures that I had slowly begun writing off because I had real business to attend to; school, finances, my future. And yet, I was getting nowhere chasing these goals except sick and tired and stressed and unhappily apathetic towards my life. What a bright future, eh? I should have wanted to go back to my life. I should have been ecstatic that I didn’t feel like crap anymore.
So, it was by chasing a ball around my dirty garage floor with a three year old girl called Chicken and her brother Nolan, that my spirit was rejuvenated. If these quirky kids could get so excited by playing a simple made-up game directed by a pajama-clad girl with crazy hair, I realized that surely I had a thing or two in my life that I could be a bit more passionate about and look forward to going back to tomorrow. But for the rest of that night, we kept playing our simple game with a few paddles and a couple rubber balls. We even added a cardboard box to the mix by the time we were through.
“Courtney, Courtney!” Quinn precariously pedaled toward me on her hot pink bicycle, the training wheels freshly removed. As she neared she stopped and looked up saying, “Courtney…you have crazy hair…” Burn. Do I really look that bad? I thought to myself as I pushed my blonde stringy hair away from my face and glanced down at my big white sleep shirt and two-sizes-too-big gray sweatpants. But, three year old Quinn just stared at me, big brown eyes smiling, with a grin displayed on her dirty face that suggested she didn’t just think my hair was crazy, but that I’d gone completely off my rocker as well. I wanted to retort, “Well your hair’s crazy too jerkface,” but that would have been immature, although not far from the truth. Her short blonde curly locks, pulled up in a messy pink ponytail looked as if they hadn’t been washed in days. And yet, she was the bright light that had guided me out of the house; her childlike charm sweetly coerced me out of my cave of three days.
I couldn’t think of anyone else that could have gotten me up and out of bed besides her—and Baxter of course, the clumsy yellow Labrador retriever that came bounding up to me slightly knocking me off balance. “You love him or Honey better?” Quinn asked, pointing to her other dog, an older and wiser yellow lab mix.
“Well…Baxter...” I admitted, though I knew it was obvious. He and I were thick as thieves. Even if there was a stranger walking around our family friendly cul-de-sac, he’d always come running up to me, disregarding the opportunity to make a new friend and smell new smells. It was fantastic. He was definitely my favorite bundle of uncontrollable fur.
“I love Baxter best, too. He’s so pretty,” she replied tugging on Baxter’s droopy ears as he licked her arm. I laughed, though I didn’t think she’d fully grasped the concept of favoritism yet. One day she’d say Baxter was her best, the next she’d say Baxter was soooo stupid and Honey was super smart and Honey was just the greatest, isn’t she great?
Quinn was one of the most entertaining, strangest children I’d ever met. She was a year old when she moved in with her two brothers, Gavin and Nolan, and her sister, Chandler. I don’t remember Quinn talking much when she was younger, which, I suppose isn’t so strange, seeing as she is only three years old. But the things this kid would do seemed to be years beyond her capabilities. For instance, by the time she was two she was riding one of those razor scooters in circles around the little boys of the neighborhood. She was a kamikaze, fearless, and would very rarely cry if she made a face plant on the asphalt. However, if she didn’t get her way, well then the floodgates would open on up and she would really show us what her vocal chords were capable of.
Quinn was pretty spoiled like that. She had three brothers and sisters to do most everything for her, including talk. She didn’t really speak much at all for a while, and then it seems something in her clicked and suddenly she was talking all the time. Almost as if the words were all locked up inside and now they all come tumbling out in spurts of energy at the same time. But they aren’t necessarily things you’d expect to hear from a three year old. Or from anyone, really.
Take the crazy hair thing she’d said to me. Who would say that? No one besides a child simply being brutally honest, I suppose. And that’s the thing about Quinn, she’s just honest. She just tells it how it is, or, at least, how she sees it. And this captivates me…and cracks me up all at the same time. It’s wonderful.
As I write this, Quinn, clad in a magenta shirt with matching boots, just came knocking on our front door, well, it was more like pounding, with her grandma Helen and asked to stay with us while Grandma goes to pick up the big kids from school. Helen said, “Hey, this was all her idea…she didn’t want to come with me.”
“I just wanted to come check on you…I never stay with you, c’mon let’s go!” Quinn says, racing to see our dog, Rylie…whom she has affectionately decided to call “Carly”, instead.
I suppose Quinn calls things whatever she wants to partly as a result of the way she’s grown up so far. I think she may be a little confused about how names work. Her parents used to call her a little sing-song name: Quinner-Quinner-Chicken-Dinner, which, a la carte, became the nickname, Chicken. If you ask her now whether she likes to be called Quinn or Chicken better, she’ll tell you Chicken. The girl is a riot.
So, she really was just the person to cheer me up and bring me back to a state of living after being sick and miserable for far too long. “C’mon Coooourtney, let’s go play,” She giggled as she pulled at the sides of my big shirt, twisting the white fabric in her small grubby hands. This child had no sense of personal space either. She was always all over the place; pulling on clothes, hanging on jean pockets, wrapping her arms around my waist and pushing and pulling me. Oh, and she’d always possessed this weird fixation for earlobes. She’d randomly come up to just about anyone she knew, sit on their lap, and caress their earlobe. Odd. I knew I couldn’t wear hoop earrings anymore.
That day she tugged and pulled me into the garage and we sat and talked for a bit about some randomness. Then she proceeded to pull out some ping pong paddles and a tiny rubber ball that didn’t bounce nearly at all. “Here, let’s play,” she handed me a paddle, the blue one, and she took the red one and sat down two feet away. At first she made me throw the ball to her so she could hit it with the paddle, but, as I was saying, she’s always all over the place and slightly uncoordinated in doing so, thus she couldn’t hit the ball. We decided to play a rolling game instead. She sat down on the ground and I sat on the step in front of the garage door to the house and spread my legs in a V shape, creating a mock goal area. The object of the game, we decided, was to roll the ball, using the paddle, in between my legs. I had to guard the created goal and would roll the ball back to her. Nolan, her six year old brother, wanted in on the fun after a while. One time I had asked Nolan what the days of the week were, to which he replied, “Well, there’s Monday, Tuesday, Threesday, Foursday, and Fivesday…” He didn’t proceed to “Sevensday”, as I had cut him off with my burst of laughter. This kid was just as entertaining and enlightening as Quinn, so we let him in on the game.
For the next half hour, we all sat in my garage and played the roll-goal game. It was as if, by just watching the energy they were exerting as they chased balls and jumped over one another laughing their heads off, I was breathing in their excess and taking some of their life into my body that had felt so worn out and dead. I hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks.
I sat there and watched them in all their enthusiasm, getting lost in my own thoughts now and again, letting a little blue or yellow ball buzz past my paddle into the goal. I couldn’t believe what I had been missing out on: the simple pleasures that I had slowly begun writing off because I had real business to attend to; school, finances, my future. And yet, I was getting nowhere chasing these goals except sick and tired and stressed and unhappily apathetic towards my life. What a bright future, eh? I should have wanted to go back to my life. I should have been ecstatic that I didn’t feel like crap anymore.
So, it was by chasing a ball around my dirty garage floor with a three year old girl called Chicken and her brother Nolan, that my spirit was rejuvenated. If these quirky kids could get so excited by playing a simple made-up game directed by a pajama-clad girl with crazy hair, I realized that surely I had a thing or two in my life that I could be a bit more passionate about and look forward to going back to tomorrow. But for the rest of that night, we kept playing our simple game with a few paddles and a couple rubber balls. We even added a cardboard box to the mix by the time we were through.
