Draft 1 -
12 Sutton Lane, Hewlett, NY 11557 – House of the mad doctor and scary wife.
My neighbors were the kind of scary people you see in movies. They were much older than even my grandparents and the scary wife used to walk up and down the block. She used to steal our balls if they rolled into her yard and she would keep them in her garage.
When I was 2 years old I had a high fever and I started to convulse; my parents thought I was going to die. They went to the mad doctor’s house and he told my dad to give me CPR and take me to the hospital. Fortunately, my fever came down and all I was okay. I still have some scars from that experience as the medications they gave me at the hospital permanently ruined my teeth.
Draft 2
My neighbors were the kind of scary people you see in movies. They were much older than even my grandparents and the scary wife used to walk up and down the block aimlessly for hours. She used to steal our balls if they rolled into her yard when we were playing on our lawn and she would keep them in her garage. My brother and I once devised a plan to try and steal back the balls, but we were unsuccessful and she told my parents that we were trespassing.
When I was 2 years old I had a high fever and I started to convulse; my parents thought I was going to die. They went to the mad doctor’s house and he told my dad to give me CPR and take me to the hospital. Fortunately, my fever came down and all I was okay. I still have some scars from that experience as the medications they gave me at the hospital permanently ruined my teeth.
Recently I heard that the doctor’s wife passed away. It turns out that she was sick for a very long time and being outside made her feel better. I feel badly that I never really knew her and that we made up all kinds of stories to try and explain behaviors we never understood. I’m sure she didn’t like having to deal with young kids who seemed to always be in the way.
This one story isn't finished yet, but as you can see the first version is different from the second one...
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6 comments:
About the community map project, I want to know if I had to write any story that I've experience for question #2.(WRITE A STORY ABOUT EACH OF THESE LOCATIONS AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT.) For example, I chose my school, PS107. Do I have to write a story anything that I did there??? Please answer this question!!! (P.S. Can the rough drawing as big as I want, because on a regular piece of blank paper I can't fit all of my locations...)
THANK YOU~!!!
Christina, You can write the story about the place, about things that happened there or about people you know from there. And the rough draft can be as big as you like.
Do the stories have to be really short or can it be about a page long????
They can be as long as you need them to be. As long as there is a clear beginning, middle and end, you are golden:-)
Bill Moose
Growing up in a middle-class community in suburban New York in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I knew a man who lived in a house close to our community playground. He is a fixture of my childhood and is tied to my earliest memories. I do not know what his real name was. We called him “Bill Moose”. I have a memory of knowing somehow, almost instinctively, to be kinder to Bill Moose. I also knew, in that same intangible way, that not all the children were kind to Bill Moose all of the time.
I know now that Bill Moose was a man with mental retardation. I only knew then that he was different. I remember that his facial features where somehow distorted looking. He seemed to lack control over his face, in fact he seemed to lack control over his whole body. Bill Moose was a big man, probably six feet tall, but he didn’t look or act like any of the other adults I knew and saw at the park. He wasn’t strong and capable, like the fathers who coached the Little League teams, or distracted and stern, like others. He wasn’t even busy and tired looking like the men who worked there – though he seemed to be there as much as they were. Even though he was clearly a man, Bill Moose was also somehow a child.
My brothers and I spent most of our days at that playground, most of which was un-chaperoned. We were, like all the children of our community, trusted to fend for ourselves most of the day. Our parents tended to grown up activities at home or on the other side of the park drinking coffee, socializing with each other, and watching our siblings play sports. Bill Moose preferred our company and spent most of his time with the rest of us children.
Bill Moose had a sort of uniform. He wore the same outfit, or some manifestation of the outfit, every day. He wore shorts, a tucked in polo shirt, high socks, sneakers, and a baseball hat. He also had a whistle around his neck. It was clear that Bill Moose saw himself as a guardian of the children. He may have believed, or was told, that he was responsible for keeping order over us. Perhaps, he was given the whistle as a safety and told to blow it if something was wrong. In his way he may have turned that instruction into a purpose. He was purposeful in that way. He believed he worked for the park. I remember him blowing his whistle at us when he thought we were out of line. The children paid him no mind at these times.
The only time the children took interest in Bill Moose where those uncomfortable times when they would egg him on to do his famous “seagull” call. My memory of discomfort at these times is of some understanding that Bill was being teased. The peels of laughter that arose from Bill’s bleating cries of “Caw, caw” were raucous, bordering on violent, and I wished the other children would stop asking him to perform.
I have no other memories of the man than what I have described. Because I live now in the same town some 30 years later, I do know he no longer lives in the house close to the playground. He is no longer there in his shorts, polo shirt, cap and whistle. I never hear him talked about. There is no plaque to mark his contributions to our small town society, like those for the baseball fathers whose names are marked on the three-foot brick wall memorial at the park’s entrance. Bill Moose simply vanished from the landscape. I only know that he was a living person. He also happened to be a man who had mental retardation.
I have grown up from my childhood days at the Floral Park Playground and never cared to find out about, or discovered, what happened to the man with the slurred speech and whistle around his neck who was a fixed character in my childhood drama.
Although Bill Moose seemed to be working from a different script, and never quite mastered his lines, timing, or delivery, he executed perfect stage presence. He consistently took his place in the play, acting out his role to the best of his understanding and ability. In his enthusiasm and dedication to his assigned role, he created a supporting character whose importance to my moral development is invaluable. As a child, I learned so much from. He remains important in my continued moral development as I reflect on those interactions and observations as an adult.
I wanted to post my first draft of my first piece for my CMM for all of you. As you can see, my writing leans toward the self-reflective rather than the linear (that means it doesn't always go in chronological order). Remember the freewriting exercize we did in class? I have been using freewriting practice for many years. Because of that, my ability to "get a lot" on paper is pretty good, but then I need to work on ordering my work, or fitting into a particular writing genre. Since we are writing memories that have a beginning, middle, and end, I will need to look at this piece and determine a sensible order. Would you read it and give me some ideas? I'd like to hear your suggestions.
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