extra credit- 6 word story

Daddy's girl, Momma's baby, spoiled rotten

Want kids-you can't have any

Love horses, dogs, cats, and cows

Books, I read my life away

Country music makes me very happy

Girlfriend, daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend

Cowgirls Don't Cry- Brooks & Dunn

I have listened to this song more times then I can count and I tear up every time. It reminds me of me and my dad. This is something he would say to me and has said to me. Especially now that we know my dad has cancer and he very well could die, the last stanza just breaks me up. "The phone rang early one morning, her momma's voice she'd been crying, "it's your daddy, you need to come home, this is it I think he's dying" I think of my dad and me being 5 and half hours away and how that really could be how it all ends. I know that is really morbid, but in a way it makes me feel better because I know that he wouldn't want me to morn him to long, and that he would say it is just life and death is something that comes along with that.

SA

I have decided to do the quest narrative. I would like to do the personal renditions, but I am so OCD and structured that it would turn out to be a quest narrative anyways. I see my spirituality as a long road with lots of twists and turns along the way but it is all headed towards a common goal. I think I will learn a lot about myself while writing this...maybe a lot I didn't want to know.

p.123 # 8: Racism

I grew up in Memphis, TN where the black and white population is about equal. I first noticed racism at a very young age although I didn't know what it was. I realized that certain people were treated certain ways and that was that. For instance if the teacher was white she was very forgiving and overly kind to all her black students, however, if the teacher was black she was just as tough on the black students as she was the white. That is not to say that there were not teachers who treated both groups the same, but they were rare. Outside of school, in the everyday world I noticed that people either consciously or unconsciously segregated themselves according to race.
I could gain authority on this subject by actually studying it first-hand, or I could just gather as much second-hand information as possible.
I demonstrate first hand knowledge by telling the reader of my experiences with the subject.

Cancer-Salient Memory

We were sitting on the porch listening to the birds. The air was warm and the sun shone softly on my face. I was just staring off into space not really paying attention when I suddenly heard the words "cancer". "What?", I said, "you have what?". I realized that my dad had just told me he had terminal cancer...terminal, that means most likely deadly in the case of cancer. My mind was blank. I didn't know what to think, feel, or do.

8 Seconds

A light shines through the small window of the orange and purple trailer home. Inside a couple, Lane and Kelly, prepare for bed. Kelly nervously twists her wedding ring around her finger and in a thick Texas accent hesitantly says, "Lane...I got somethin' I wanna say to you."
He continues to unpack his bag and talk on the phone to Tuff saying, "No, no I just don't trust them little bitty planes...I know it would be faster but I don't like um!"
When he finally gets off the phone Kelly tries to get his attention again, "Lane...Lane?"
"Hmm, baby?" he replies. "Lane I need to talk to you..." He doesn't reply. "Lane? are you listenin' to me?" Kelly yells.
"Yeah, baby, what is it?" Lane replies although he continues unpacking and shows no signs of actually paying attention to his wife. So Kelly decideds to just blurt it out. She tells him what has been eating on her conscience for the past week, "Lane, I been with other men, Lane" There is a long pause as his hands still and his eyes go wide with shock. Not shock that she has cheated on him, but shock that she has reveled to him the very thing he had been trying to tell her about himself for the last month...he had cheated on his wife.
All of a sudden Lane's control bursts. He lashes out at her with all the mean, horrible things he has been saying to himself all this time. "Kelly I been out here bustin' my ass at these rodeos for you! I been travelin' non-stop to try to give you what you want! I was tryin' to make a life for us, Kelly! You ruin it by sleeping with another man!" He grabs her arm and roughly pulls her to the door. As she cries begging him "Lane, I'm sorry, Lane. I love you!", he opens the door and shoves her outside into the night.
After the door slams shut she quitely stands staring at the trailer house. Slowly she turns and walks across the yard into her parents house.

Memories

Memories
The auditorium was silent except for the sound of the preacher’s voice and the quite shuffling of those who just couldn’t quite sit still. I was young and, I am ashamed to say it, bored. I know that it is unrealistic for my grown-up self to wish that my 5 year-old self had paid better attention to Sunday morning sermons, but it’s true. As I sat in the uncomfortable fold out chairs I began to wiggle and squirm like a worm that had just been freshly baited. My legs started to bounce to a rhythm that only I could here. Right leg up, up, left leg up, up. Over and over, I repeated it, until finally my dad’s big hand came, none to gently, crashing down on my afore mentioned appendages. Before he could take his hand away I grabbed it, and began to study it like some bacteria on a microscope.
My dad had big, strong hands, the kind of hands that he called, “Workin’ man hands.” They were at least four times the size of mine and his fingers were like thick sausage links. His fingernails were brutally short. They were wide and very dull with not even a hint of the florescent light gleaming off them. I bent his fingers backwards and forwards. I flipped his palm one way and then the other. His monstrous calluses seemed to intrigue me the most. I could not understand how anyone’s hands could come to be hard as rock in just a few specific spots. Mine were soft as a baby’s bottom and I couldn’t comprehend such rough work that must have caused his calluses.
Pretty soon he began to play a game with me, a quite game that would not interrupt the church service. He held his hand out straight and stiff as a board. Then I cautiously put my index finger into the center of his palm, and then snatch it back as fast as possible. When I wasn’t quick enough my dad would capture my finger with all five of his. I loved it! It kept me mostly still and fairly quite for the rest of the service. I was entertained and my dad saved himself from the embarrassment of having a daughter who could not sit still.

Cues: Week 2- p.46 #2

• "If I had to write something, this is how I would write it"
• "To me it was simple"
• "I thought of it as a race"
• "Maybe it was wrong, but..."

Mountain Man: Week 1-p.23 #5

Uncle Marvin is a man like no other. He is somewhere in his 60's and it shows. On any given day you can find him wearing wrangler jeans, a short-sleeve, plaid, pearl snap shirt and camo moccasins. He always carries aroung a paper towel in his back pocket and brings it out to wipe his nose, more from habit than because his nose actually needs wiping. He is known as half-a-day-Marvin because he only works part of the day at his cane factory in the ozarks. He makes wine but doesn't drink it. When he speaks everyone stops to listen...some because they know he has a lot of wisdom built up and some because it is so entertaining to hear his mountian speech..."we wus back indat holla an' I was startin' in on hurtin' sumtin fierce cus I didn't take my rat poisnin' this mornin'. WOOSH it was cold an' I knew i'd better get myself home! before I got kilt out there." Every morning his wife, Betty, gets up and fixes him fried eggs, biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage, toast, and one glass of orange juice, which he pronounces "oorAnge juice". Marvin would give the shirt off his back to anyone who needed it, but heaven help those who get on his bad side!