Joseph, this is a powerful choice of a topic for your first essay, as it captures reader attention with your use of clear sensory descriptions and distinct dialog. One major difficulty is that this submission is not a final draft but more of a revised draft in progress. Nevertheless, you’ve written plenty of fully developed paragraphs with a narrative voice that is strong and authentic, drawing readers into the events as you vividly describe them. I enjoy your use of dialog and think adding even a bit more dialog can enhance your future creative nonfiction essays. Dialog helps to create a specific scene, which allows the events to seem like they’re immediate and unveiling before the reader’s eyes. Were you to revise and bring this piece up to a final draft, I'd suggest that you smooth out the organization and development of details so that they are presented in well structured sentences and logically sequenced paragraphs, set within a storyline containing a beginning/middle/end framework. In revising, you might also want to establish a clearer central focus, conflict and theme. As suggested earlier, you might also want to use Smarthinking.com for detailed feedback on your essay drafts; access info is on your Angel homepage. Overall Joseph, your writing here generates intense interest with its authentic truthtelling and emotional impact. Grade for Essay 1 is B.
This is my idea for either a memoir or an essay of place. When I was young, the people who were baby sitting me had a daughter Angela, who was still in diapers, while I was about five or so. Although I don’t remember pushing her down, a neighbor across the street called and told the mother I did, and I was tormented for years by her two brothers, one my age, the other a few years older, and the other teenagers in the neighborhood. What follows is random ideas that I have had about that time, ideas that I hope to use and incorporate in the development of my essay. .
02/19/2012-
What follows is all I could excavate from my mind at the event of being falsely accused of pushing Angela, a toddler down, when I was around seven years old. I had been placed in this house by my grandmother, as she needed a baby sitter until she got home from work. The Angela incident was not my first contact with her or her family. I realize now that I had pushed her away from me as I had seen her pull turds out of her diaper, and I didn’t want her filthy hands touching me, or she was trying to offer me her feces. I could get no further than what I currently have at the moment. I just came to a blank wall. It brought up painful memories and reignited old truths of my family. I think the next step would be to figure out in what order theses pieces go to tell the whole and real story. But for now I’m stumped.
Write about where malice came from (angela and then bullying),
I am outside with Angela in the front yard in the summer, the youngest of the current crop of the family named Christian. For some reason we are outdoors, near the road, in the front yard of the house this family owns. I am here because my grandmother had the need of a baby sitter, and somehow had come upon the woman of this household in which she felt completely safe to leave me.
The family consisted of the mother who had the mind of a baked potato, I think even then I was able to intuit on some level that she was just a baby making machine, a collector of children. The father was a truck driver who would give an awesome show of tucking his shirt in his pants in the morning before he went to work, with his pants unzipped, and wide open. He seemed awfully comfortable with whatever came flying out into our view, regardless of whether the audience was his children, or somebody else’s. Then there was the older brother Robert, and the other brother a dim-witted fool named Jason who was my same age. Apparently he got hit on the head with a hammer when he was a baby, a story that he had told me more than a few times in order that we may come to some kind of level of understanding, or as a result from being hit on the heat with a hammer during his developing infancy. Apparently the hammer dropped spontaneously by its own free will off of the top of a shelf and struck poor Jason the toddler crawling unattended by the morons that comprised his family. Robert used to tell me how great he was. Where was Robert when the hammer fell, I wondered to myself
The last of the family that I come to meet is the toddler of the family, the youngest of them, named Angela. She was a beautiful little girl, with the fearless personality of childhood until the reality of humanity smacks you on the bottom, and shreds your peace of mind with their yelling.
Generally we did not come into contact with one another, me and Angela, as I was usually in school with her brothers, or with them wandering the neighborhood after school, or watching television in their living room as I waited for my grandmother to pick me up after work. I believe this happened when I was in the first grade, as I came to be enrolled in this school when I decided to tell my grandmother that the teacher at the old school was giving me a hard time, when I was really embarrassed from some embarrassment at some chastisement that she had given me in front of the class. I decided that I no longer wanted to be in this school, and tell my grandmother that I was having problems with the teacher.
I think I was only one of three people at the house at the time-mother, angela, and me, she falls to the ground and cries loudly, the lady across the street calls the mother who comes rushing out of the house to accuse me of pushing the girl down, and grabs Angela and takes her in the house to check for wounds. I stand there thinking, “I didn’t push her down, why would she say that against me?”
I don't remember if I did, after that constant antagonism from the two brothers and the neighborhood kids,
parents should have never kept babysitting me after that,
One day I decided to take a nap, and the boys bedroom was where I was allowed to go for my slumber. I awoke some time later, arising because of my need to urinate, and I stumbled half asleep to find the door of the bedroom locked for some reason. It had happened before they had told me, Angela likes locking doors. A timid boy, I was uncomfortable with having to attract attention to myself, in order that I may be released from a room that I should never been allowed to be incarcerated in to begin with. If I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, I probably would have laid back down and daydreamed until someone had the need to unlock the door to my freedom. I knocked. I yelled for Angela. How could my door be locked unless she who was known to be responsible for locking doors, was here in the house somewhere? I pleaded for her to come to unlock the door, the sensation for the need to urinate becoming stronger with every moment. I looked around the boys bedroom, this sensation beginning to burn deep inside of me now. I notice a vent on the floor by the window. I go back to the door, in one more futile attempt to get someone to come to my aid by yelling and pounding on the door. All I hear is quiet, I must be the only one in the house. I can’t stand it anymore so I go back to the vent and stand over it, aiming as surely as I could in order not to get anything on their carpet as evidence of what I was about to do. I urinated in stops and starts, in order that my pee went through the holes in the vent, rather than pooling and spreading over onto the carpeted floor as it had threatened to do when I started. I also worried about someone coming along to liberate me, hoping that they could wait until I had finished what I already started. Finally I emptied my self of the contents of my kidneys into the household ventilation, generally not my first choice Christians and the time I got locked in bedroom and pissed in vent, locked in boys bedroom had to pee down the drain,
hid banana in chair cushions, Mrs. Christian said, “if you don’t want the banana don’t take it, but don’t hide it in the couch Joe”.
older bro hides my bike and said he threw your girls bike in neighborhood pond, Is this where I beat Jason with a stick?
When did I fight with them in the front yard of the grandparents place, when I got the scars on my face from the gravel under the mailbox?
I could never remember the actual event, but I remember standing in the living room of the Christians, after I had apparently beat Jason with a stick, his mother yelling at me “look what you did to my son” over and over again as he lay on the couch with both eyes blackened. I don’t remember if I did, or for what particularly was the reason for my attack, or whether I felt glee, or shame, or wrongfully accused of beating up Jason.
ask g-mom how I came into their being,
ADIP- describe the angela incident, the torment of the neighborhood, bullies growing up,
climb tree w/ Jason we were in this fir tree that was twice as tall as a telephone pole.
my gmom always telling me if I didn’t have you I’d have a million dollars, other things to that effect, believing suicide was my only option for many years finally goin to , childhood as a necessary part of the novel
Later on this Spanish kid, olive-skinned like me, moved into the neighborhood when the torment of years had grown quiet, a mutual understanding between and the rest of the kids in the neighborhood becoming that they wouldn’t harass me or my grandparents apartment if only I stayed indoors after school, and on the occasions where I had to take the bus, sat as far forward to the bus driver as possible, and kept my head down and my mouth shut.
This kid moves in and I see he has a lazy eye. Joel, a few years younger, and my only friend in the neighborhood, informs me that his name was Carlos, and his lazy eye was the result of an accident with a B.B. gun. One eye would be looking at you and the other would be searching the sky for stars overhead. I would get creeped out more by his eye, more than I ever would from this small statured mouth piece. I felt sorry for him, and I think I understood on some level that his taunts were somewhat valid, as I shouldn’t have pushed her down, as they had made me aware from the years of overt hostility whenever I left my home to go outside, to stroll to the two malls that existed behind our neighborhood, or ride my bike through the neighborhood to visit Joel, my single friend. Carlos, unlike me, had to stare at the world through his obvious disfigurement, and always seeing ugliness reflected back at him. One day I would escape this neighborhood, and begin another life, with other people, in the real suburbs and not this watered down, white trash version of suburbia. While Carlos, on the other hand, would always be an obvious spectacle wherever he may go in life, and so I forgave him for what he was doing to me.
But when he called me a child molester one summer afternoon, I had to become hostile.
“HERE COMES THE CHILD MOLESTOR”, he brazenly declares to the crowd, as the neighborhood kids played a game of baseball, in an empty lot between houses. Some of these children, like the Christians and the Hispanic kid, were far down the street and around the corner from where they really lived. I was on my way to my friend Joel’s house, my only friend in the neighborhood, and who associated with a variety of these children through his activities, and those of his younger brother and sister. I stopped my bike and sat upon it.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DEAD EYE MOTHERFUCKER”, I roared at him one day, as callous, as hateful, and as spiteful as I could summon from all the years of my twisting torment at their hands.
“I AM NOT A CHILD MOLESTOR AND I’LL FUCKING KILL ANYONE WHOEVER CALLS ME THAT AGAIN. I’LL GO HOME AND GET A FUCKING BASEBALL BAT AND BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU YOU FUCKIN SPIC. FUCK ALL OF YOU”. I remember the looks I got from them, they knew not to push me too far. I was probably close to being hysterical, but Jason knew for all of them, too well that my threats were real.
After that they never said a word in the next few times I came across them playing softball in that field. After awhile they abandoned the lot for some other group activity, and I came and went as I pleased.
when I am near the group of children, he makes boasts, challenges, and taunts in an attempt to
Forks in feet
Angela – Christians, neighborhood, (grandmother making me go tricker treating) ( grandfather’s death, (timmy) sammy and pepys death, fathers death, great grandmothers death (washington D.C. boy scouts) April of same year my grandfather died.
describe the bullying after angela, the Christians, the whole neighborhood,
Early- when I get antagonized by somebody I flashback to the time when Jason smother was yelling at me “look what you did to my son” as he laid on the couch, his eyes all black and blue, he looks like he was near death and I don’t even remember hitting him.
Beating up Jason
his mother yelling at me look what you did to my son over and over as he lay in bed/couch with black eyes,
Jason hit w/ hammer on head as a baby
angela
Bullies forcing me to trun inward
Telling the story of being tormented by the bullies which was their belief that I intentionally pushed her down according to neighbor across the street.
Angela started the fire
Jason and Rob putting laxative in something I ate or drank
Specter of angela throughout book
Flashbacks to childhood bullies tormenting him on the bus over angela and he wonders regretfully why he didn’t stab them at random. I would probably have gotten less time. Prison isn’t so bad. Does he make this a story where he goes back for revenge?
She lures me up to the top of the jungle gym, a girl that lived in our neighborhood, but who still seemed not to be involved with any of the other children in the neighborhood. I never saw her on the streets, only on the bus, she talked to this red headed kid, who lived directly behind the Cushman’s, whose children were around my age, Cindy and Andrew, a few years younger. Jill Van tassel throws/ pushes me off the top of the jungle gym after luring me up there, “that’s for Angela”, she says to me from the top of the jungle gym, looking down at me, at my stunned and probably concussed form. It was one of those circumstances where there was no other children around in a play ground full of them, no teachers that must have been around happened to be looking in that direction, or came to notice the prone body of a child as I laid there staring at the sky for a few minutes. I remember laying there in the sand, the wind knocked out of me after falling from what must have been a considerable height, wondering why no one was coming to my aid.
climbing the big fir tree five stories high, all these years later wondering if it was a ploy to get me to the top and push me off and he chickened out, or did this happen in the peaceful years!!!, before “Angela”. , ask g-mom how I came into their being,
A never healed concussion resulting from the push off the jungle gym by Jill V.
Headaches as a kid, being brain boiled by bullying, slovenly fat boy without friends in a neighborhood full of children.
My grandmother who was alternatively overly fussing, or standoffish, who got irate when you interrupted her from the internal world that she often swam in during the years of my youth. I quickly learned to go into my own mental retreat, some how as a little boy knowing that my grandmother was only good for feeding me, housing me, lavishing gifts on me but never reliable for any kind of conversation that was of any substance or meaning to anyone that had ever walked the earth. I remember starting a conversation in the hopes of hearing something rational, I would have settled for anything earthly, but then, like now, I could only find some blasphemy of the English language that contained no useful filler for either the intellect or the imagination. Only a mish mash of nonsense that sent the boy to spend the precious years of his youth in inventing the entertainment to occupy him in his own solitary confinement. I think the only thing that brought me up from the basement, or after I graduated to the electronic loneliness of my bedroom, was my grandmother calling me to me, informing me that dinner was ready, or the food she brought home was here, or when she made popcorn to entice the monster that she was creating to exit the comfort of his cage and spend sometime in entertaining the babbling of her defective brain.
I had no escape from the house but into my own internal world. This world comprised all my toys and possessions. I had all the G.I. Joes that the store could sell, along with Star Wars characters and vehicles, He-Man, a sizeable amount of Legos which became ever evolving prototypes of vehicles and devices/ weapons for the various battles. I took a plank of wood my grandfather had . G.I. Joe and Star Wars characters combined together to fight the all powerful Cobra Commander and his strong but secret army, hidden in various strongholds that were surreptitiously built to avoid discovery. Generally the Cobra Army attacked various locations throughout the globe for political and economic gain. My hybrid G.I. Joe, Star Wars, team would assemble, some of them fortunate enough to wear the exoskeleton that explained why the larger figurines of the He-Men were on the field of battle. There would be land, sea, and air battles that always led to the climatic infiltration of Cobra headquarters that I imagined were in deep caverns underneath the middle of a desert, but whose actual location was in my grandfather’s work area, passed on to me after he succumbed to cancer, a result of being in contact with Agent Orange that my grandfather had dropped form helicopters while serving in Vietnam.
Flashbacks to the day I allegedly pushed Angela to the ground and wonder if I really did that.
I am standing in the driveway of the Christian’s house waiting for my grandmother to return to pick me up after she got out of work. Angela, the beautiful toddler comes out into the sunshine with her mother. The family moves around me . I see Angela pulling turds out of her diaper, holding them in her hand like small treasures. I am disgusted on all levels of my being. She holds them up for my inspection, the most disgusting things I have ever seen.
“Look Joey”, she says holding them up to me as if she was making burnt offerings to a deity. I was sickened.
“Look Joey”, she says holding them up to me as if she was making burnt offerings to a deity. I was sickened.
I had no choice but to let the family know what was going with their precious Angela.
“Angela is pulling her shit out of her diaper”, I inform them.
“She does that”, Jason informs me. Then they go on to tell me that they have even said that she had eaten them before, and I had seen her one time pull her turds out of her diaper, and was holding one in her hand, so may be that one time I did push her down, or push her away from me not wanting her filthy hands on me but forgetting this until later in life, filthy handed kid touching me.
I remember playing with the brothers in the front yard of my grandparents apartment. It was a child’s basketball hoop, which came with one green rubber ball, and a red version. I remember Robert telling me that he was taking the red ball with him as it was time for the brothers to go home. I followed him to the end of the driveway, ordering him to give it back to me. He refused. I attacked him like a dog and sank my teeth into his arm. I remember a brief struggle where I was eventually shaken loose. I could see my grandmother observing from the front door. I ended up in the gravel, cuts on my face from the rocks.
“YOU MADE MY ARM BLEED. I’M GOING TO TELL MY FATHER”, Robert threatens me, but I was more concerned about having the red ball back in my possession.
I told my grandfather that Jason had punched me in the stomach on the bus, thinking he was going to rescue me by going and having a conversation with Mr. Christian about his boy’s behavior.
“That’s why you gotta hit him back, you gotta hit him hard”. And so to make my grandfather proud I beat Jason about the head with a stick.
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