One night in early September, there’s a crab feast in the cafeteria for dinner. Everyone’s so excited, especially the students from Maryland. I’ve never had crab before. John, sitting next to me, demonstrates for all of us. He whacks his crab a few times with a mallot, and then pulls the crab apart. I watch closely but can’t see how he knows what’s the meat and what’s pieces of bone or innards. It looks like brain surgery.
Tag: albinism
End-of-School-Year Fire Drills – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 17
This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade. This is final episode, I mean installment for this chapter (which is way too long and needs some epic editing sessions). This story comes to a close.
To start this piece from the beginning, click here.
Late in the school year we took another musical instrument test. I didn’t even look at my grade, just filed the paper deep in one of my black folders with the neon pink and yellow squiggles. The folder was so full now that it was starting to tear at the crease. Mom would have to look through a lot of dittos to find it. I would find this folder years later in the basement of our new house in New Jersey. I’d gotten a D. Mom had never found it, or never said anything.
In the last week of class, we had a lot of fire drills, to meet some regulation. One time, Matt Peer was behind me in line as the class filed in and used the water fountain on our way back inside. Matt Peer, my 107 true love. I drank some water then swirled away in what I imagined was a supremely flirty move.
Continue reading “End-of-School-Year Fire Drills – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 17”
Sleepovers and Upward Social Mobility – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 10
This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade. Here’s a short lighter moment.
To start this piece from the beginning, click here.
A girl named Holly invited me to a sleepover. She had come over my house a few times before. It was a household dinner table joke that she’d once asked my mom if she could use the bathroom. As a joke, because the question was so silly, my mom had said no.
At Holly’s there was a punching bag in her big living room. I beat the shit out of it. All of the girls stayed in Holly’s room. We did girl things like tell the boys we liked. Matt Peer, I confessed. He was quiet, mysterious, and seemed nice. A few of the girls were doing some complex algorithms with names. “You guys are a 107!” One of them shrieked. “Oh my god, you guys are like true love!” I was so excited I couldn’t sleep.
~~~
Next Segment in this Piece: Walking Home and Crossing Streets
So this is an excerpt from a chapter from a project I’m working on called Eclipses of Jupiter. It’s in its infancy still, but it’s about growing up with albinism and being legally blind in my crazy family, and all the school and social implications. It’ll also focus on blind camp and related programs when I get into teenage years. This chapter, which will be broken up into installments and posted over the next few weeks, is all about fourth grade, which was a bit of an epic school year.
Check out the Samples Page, as well as Published and Early Work, to read more of my writing!
~Chrys
Related articles
- The “Truth” About Me – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 1
- Instrument Analysis – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 2
- Mystery Worlds – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 3
- Bathroom Jungle Gym – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 4
- Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5
- Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6
- Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7
- From Secret Passages to Aliens – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 8
- The Birthday Cracker Wrapper – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 9
- Driving Blind Under a Desert Moon
- Dusky Waters, Orcas Island
- Music Takes Me Back – Camp Marcella 1993
- Writing as Time Travel
The Birthday Cracker Wrapper – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 9
This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade.
To start this piece from the beginning, click here.
On my birthday, I was reading a book at the lunch table. I think it was The Long Secret, the sequel to Harriet The Spy. I was sitting by myself. My mom had let me buy lunch in the cafeteria for my birthday. I ate some chicken nuggets and tater tots and a pack of saltines that were supposed to be for people who got soup but the lunch lady gave them to anyone. I unwrapped them and started nibbling while I turned the page, devouring the words faster than my food. When lunch was over, I was almost at the end of a chapter and I kept reading, finally closing the book and running to catch up to my class.
“Christine,” Mrs. Domaracki’s voice. I stopped and turned around. “Were you just going to leave this here?”
I couldn’t see what she meant from this far away so I went back to the table. It was the clear plastic wrapper for the soup Saltines. “I’m sorry,” I said, closing the plastic in my fist. “I didn’t see it.”
Continue reading “The Birthday Cracker Wrapper – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 9”
Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6
To start this piece from the beginning, click here.
Early that winter, I went on my first overnight Girl Scout camping trip. My mom was working more at the newspaper, so for once, she wasn’t one of the troop leaders. We arrived at a big cabin called Hammond House. The walls were the color of wood and little cots lined the walls. The cabin was a long rectangle. One of the girls had recently learned the “Light as a Feather” game and we played it incessantly. One girl would lie in the middle and we would all surround her, purring two fingers from each hand under her. The person at the head gave a fake eulogy and then we all intoned, “Dead as a doornail, stiff as a board, light as a feather” over and over slowly lifting the scout in the middle up off the floor and up, up, over our heads. There were a lot of us, girls and girls and girls lifting, and it felt magic. We even did it on our troop leaders. I only got to be in the middle once.
Continue reading “Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6”
Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5
To start this piece from the beginning, click here.
“What on Earth were you doing?” Mrs. Domaracki asked when she caught me slithering out under a bathroom stall door. She ushered me out into the hallway.
“I was just, well the lock was stuck, so I—“
“I saw you climbing over the stalls,” she said.
“Fifth graders were doing it too!” I blurted.
She looked around swirling her head dramatically. “I don’t see any fifth graders.”
“Not now. They were here earlier. They told me to.”
She put one hand on her hip. “Who? What are their names?”
“I don’t know, fifth graders.”
Continue reading “Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5”
Instrument Analysis – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 2
To start this piece from the beginning, click here.
And at first, I tried to be good. All my dittos from class were filled out and filed neatly in my folders. I swept the floor even though I couldn’t see the dirt, going around the kitchen systematically until a dark pile formed in the epicenter. I scrubbed the bathroom sink and only complained silently to my favorite doll Jenny and my Care Bears in my room. I went to the Centerstream after school program with my seven-year-old brother Randy and didn’t cause any trouble.
One day early in the school year, my music class had a test. It wasn’t a real test, our teacher assured us. She just wanted to see what we already knew coming in. Up front she had about twenty-five big glossy photos of instruments lined up side by side, all seated in that little tray that’s supposed to hold chalk and erasers, and leaning back against the blackboard. The teacher told us to get out a piece of paper and number it one to twenty-six. Next to each number, we were supposed to write the name of the instrument in the matching picture.
Continue reading “Instrument Analysis – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 2”
The “Truth” About Me – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 1
I was excited for fourth grade. I had been assigned the teacher I wanted, Mrs. Domaracki. I had new school clothes. I had all my school supplies in order—folders for math and reading and science and social studies and spelling. Some had covers with graded coloring going from almost white on top to a deep fuchsia pink on the bottom. Others were black with hot pink and yellow squiggles scattered about. They were all packed in my backpack, ready for the new school year. There was only one thing left to do.
Continue reading “The “Truth” About Me – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 1″
Music Takes Me Back – Camp Marcella 1993
On the Sunday that marked the midway point of the camp session, the routine changed. We got to sleep in an extra hour, and after breakfast, we had Sunday Morning Program. Phil opened the program with a new song, a slower song than the whale song or “Great Balls of Fire” or the aorta song.
“Welcome to my morning
Welcome to my day
I’m the one responsible
I made it just this way
I made myself some pictures
To see what they might bring
I think I made it perfectly
I wouldn’t change a thing
La-la-la, La-la-la-la-la-la…”
Warding Off Eclipses with Sex and Music: A Memoir Chapter
I was fourteen. I was an alternative rock goddess. I’d found Nirvana. I was in love with a dead man.
I sat with my brother Randy, my neighbors and my friend Lissa from blind camp in the very back of the backyard on pink plastic chairs. “So, which would you rather do?” said Ryan from across the street, turning to me. We were playing Questions. “Have sex with Kurt Cobain for one hour, Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam for ten hours, or the guy from Silverchair for twenty hours?”
I was a loyal girl. “Kurt,” I answered without a thought. “Okay, Lissa. If you were going out with a guy and he wanted to 69, would you do it?”
~~~
Hahaha, so, it only continues from there. This chapter was published in Shark Reef a few years ago and so is also available through the Published page on the site, but I know sometimes those things can be hard to find so I thought I’d bring it out for this week’s writing sample. Fair warning: it’s not a particularly easy read. Still though, I once was reading a passage from this piece at an Open Mic type deal and was laughing so hard I was crying and could barely read and almost peed my pants.
As always, for more writing samples, you can always check out the Samples page. There’s also a section for Published and Early Work (most of this latter section is downright mortifying, but you know, oh well).
~Chrys
Chrys Buckley 