Anonymous (Second moment assignment)

Tears were streaming down my face as I walked to the mirror.The events of earlier came flashing back to me as I examined every aspect of my being.


"Those shoes are hideous. Get Uggs!" The leader cried. Her twin nodded and added "Black. Like Ari's," motioning to my former best friend. The rest of the girls nodded like clockwork dolls.


With a sob I yanked off my shoes and hurled them at the mirror.

"And cut your hair. You should straighten it too," piped a minion. The leader glared at her but nodded. "Yuh," she said "you should. And visit Lululemon. Tie-dye is in." Pointing at her mottled blue sweatpants. They were hideous. "And they're slimming! I love it!" She was 4'1'' and weighed 68 pounds.

I examined my butt in the mirror, certain it looked huge.

"Maybe some eyeliner," said Ari softly. "Purple might look nice."  Jessica the leader grinned fakely at me. "Sure," she forced out, "why not?"

I ran to my mother's bathroom and grabbed her jar of makeup.

"OMG guys, we should paint her nails!" Yelled her twin. They all squealed and rushed towards me, grabbing my hand and almost pulling me down the heavy concrete steps.

I grabbed the purple eyeliner.

"Ew, do you bite your nails?" minion Hannan screeched. I nodded. "Ew," said minion Miranda vacantly, "you shouldn't do that." They nodded. "Color them pink!" said Jessica, waggling her oval fingernails. "Yeah," said Ali, her twin. She showed me her ice-cream-pink nails.

My hand shook as I dragged the eyeliner across my eyelids. I stared in the mirror.

"Oh, and get your ears pierced," ordered Jessica. They had been pierced since first grade, but no-one remembered. Meekly, I nodded. "You need stud earrings," said Miranda vacantly, staring at a tree.

A fat clown stared back at me. Shocked, I dropped the eyeliner, ran to my bedroom, and cried for hours.

"Oh, and you need lip gloss," droned Jessica. "Oh, I got  new one!" Shrieked Hannah. "Look!" She thrust it at Jessica, who dismissed it with a smile. "And you need to go to Juicy. Get sweatpants."

I cried.

The bell rang, and we all lined up by the four-square courts to be let inside. We shuffled mechanically up the stairs.

I cried.

Pulled off our sneakers and put on our indoor shoes. Together we filed into the classroom.

I cried.

We sat quietly in our groups of four and turned our attention to the teacher.

And I stopped crying. Slowly I walked to the mirror and looked at my reflection. I sat and I touched her hand. And I stayed there for a long time.

Second Moment Assignment ~Anonymous

Over the past few weeks, I had started looking forward to visiting my dad less and less.


It was because, two months after seperating with my mom and moving back to the States, he'd gotten himself a girlfriend (who I liked more than I liked my dad) and moved in with her.


He'd changed.


With these thoughts clouding my mind, I trudged to the car, following Torrie, halfheartedly opened the door and clambered inside.


I stared absently at him as he started the car, and then as he attempted an awkward conversation about how school was going for me, which, disappointingly, involved me having to inform him that I was in fourth grade.


Seeing that the previous dialogue was quickly fizzling out into oblivion, he tried to change the subject, "So... What's new with you?" I could hear the tension in his voice, like he was putting off telling me something I needed to know.


It was frustrating, to say the least.


"I have a boyfriend," I informed him, not really wanting to make a big deal out of it.


"Well, then... What kind of... Boyfriend/girlfriend activities do you two do?"


"Uh... We went to a movie with my mom... I think we held hands once... Wait- what was that supposed to mean?"


"... Never mind."


We drove in complete silence for what seemed like forever.


For almost the entire ride, I stayed almost utterly still, with my eyes glued to the window, lost in my thoughts.


My dad coughed.


I looked at him expectantly.


"Amy's pregnant." He said it like it was nothing.


My mind reeled, and I was lost for words for a good minute, overcome with emotions that I felt shouldn't have been mine.


When my brain started working again, I asked the first question I could think of, "Is it a boy or a girl?"


"Girl."


"I thought so."


"Why?"


"I'm a girl, aren't I?"


"Yes, but what's that got to do with-"


"You have girl sperm."


He stopped talking.


I turned on the radio and went back to staring out the window, desperately hoping my father couldn't see the tears streaming down my face.

Images

Voila des images:

The Garden

The Basset Hound

Out Of Ice

The Alley

The Bird

New Life

The Wall

Living in the Moment

My grade 8 students at FACE high school in Montreal are exceptional people with wild imaginations and an intense hunger for creative writing. We started off the year working on descriptive writing. I gave the students your standard, "tell me what you did this summer", but asked them to zero in on one incredible moment where time seemed to stand still. From there, they've completed three moment assignments where they've had to hash out a "timeless" point in their lives.

For their final moment assignment, I threw them a curve ball. I introduced seven images to the class that I'd taken at some point over the past couple of years. Using one picture, the students had to create a fictional moment from the individual perspective of a character they conceived in their minds.

There is no doubt in my mind this is a challenging writing assignment.

However there's a treat at the end of the moment project. Each image is attached to a moment that I've had, or an important moment of a friend or family member. I'll be sharing these moments with the class and they'll share their fictional ones. Moments, after all, are creations of our own memory and are just as malleable as memory itself.

"We do not remember days. We remember moments" (Cesare Pavese)