Tag: fourth grade

Samples, Writing

Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7

Chrys Buckley

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade. This one’s a little dark.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

tlww7imagesAs winter deepened, Mom’s bad moods got worse. I didn’t want to come home from school. Every time I walked inside the front door on days that Randy and I didn’t have Centerstream, there was something in the way the low winter sun fell through the big wide living-room window and onto the wall across the room, across from the front door. Something about the way the light fell on that off-white wall that I saw as soon as I opened the door made me feel sick to my stomach, like it reminded me of something bad I couldn’t quite remember. It made me feel haunted.

I felt so unsettled as I ate my afternoon snack each day, then went upstairs to play Barbies murder mysteries and write my little “books.” I was amassing a collection by then, a handful of stories that were about twenty pages each handwritten. I wasn’t really happy with any of them; I always felt they couldn’t quite capture the darkness of my soul. So I kept writing more.

Continue reading “Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

cabin-snowEarly 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” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

hall1“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.”

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Samples, Writing

Bathroom Jungle Gym – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 4

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

tlww4indexI started asking to go to the bathroom way too often in Mrs. Domaracki’s class, especially when she was about to check homework and I hadn’t done it. It wasn’t a good plan—she always checked mine when I got back—but it delayed things a bit. I got a good sense of when she was as about to check, raised my had and then wandered slowly to the girls bathroom with its pale green walls and three stalls with low walls. I sat on the toilet and read a chapter in a book or thought up what I wanted to write in my next “book “ about secret passages and baby-sitters. Or I did math problems or recited in my mind facts about the Solar System until I couldn’t anymore because it had been more than five minutes and I had to scurry back to class.

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Samples, Writing

Mystery Worlds – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 3

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

the_secret_passage_by_nelleke-d5eoh7j_largeAt every indiscretion—a not perfect grade on a test, talking in class when I wasn’t supposed to, not coming in from the playground in a timely manner after recess, not doing my homework completely or on time (a bad habit I’d quickly slid back into), reading during lunch instead of socializing with kids who made fun of me—Mrs. Domaracki called my mom. Even if it was just one thing in a day, it always counted for two warnings.

Night after night, several nights a week, I was sent to bed at seven. I lay in bed, watching the sky still light out outside my windows. Sometimes I’d stare at the tree out my east-facing window by my bed. Or stand at the south-facing window across the room with no big trees outside it but way more sky. I listened to the fire siren as its moan ebbed and flowed. In my head, I talked to my Care Bears on the white shelves near the south-facing window, telling them why it, whatever it was that day, wasn’t my fault. Sometimes they believed me. Sometimes they sided with Mom and Mrs. Domaracki.

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Instrument Analysis – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 2

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

jazzy-cello-susanne-clarkAnd 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.

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

The “Truth” About Me – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 1

Chrys Buckley

tlww1imagesI 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.

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