Nuts to a Good Year

The story is told from the point of view of the narrator. Whatever the narrator sees and hears is what is written on the page and you know nothing that the narrator doesn't know.

I would suggest working on the flow of the paper. As its a first draft the most important thing is rereading everything and making sure the voice and the diction stays constant through out the essay.

All of the context around the story radiates off of the central focus of the mouse. The mouse runs away but the narrator is still looking for an explanation. Why did the mouse leave? Is it something I did? How will he survive? How could he just leave!? These are all questions the narrator asks himself and the questions range from worried to angry. The mouse running away also raises questions within him as to whether he can care for a mouse let alone a child.

The major conflict in this story is whether or not to keep the mouse when he finds it in free parking. Once that decision was made all other consequences of that action, such as letting a mouse loose in your apartment, stem from that one decision/conflict.

The writer does use anecdotes most notably in the conversation with the stranger who's car he was trying to wedge Goodyear out from under.

Tragedy [Developed]

I have always been close with my dad. One of the most important things to him has always been his attitude towards his family. He grew up in a small town of just over a hundred citizens to a family that made up that entire population, or pretty close to it. The man always has a smirk on his face, its where I picked it up. The day that smile disappeared from his face my heart sunk.

He set the phone down back on the charging station. He walked into the living room where we all had gathered sensing the phone call from my uncle Al in Arizona was not expected. He told us that he was going to need to go to Arizona in the morning. His mother, my grandmother, was a 93 year old woman named, Edith. She traveled to Arizona every winter from her home in Bellechester, MN to get out of the cold for the winter months. She had been doing some grocery shopping at a local store and had fallen and hurt herself.

The damage to her frail body was severe enough that she would not recover. My fathers siblings and him were all on their way to Arizona the next morning to see grandma in the hospice before she passed.  The funeral was the following week at the local cemetery by her house. I stayed by his side the entire time because as a little kid, that was the most tragic thing I had ever seen.

Tragedy

Brainstorm:
      - Girlfriends Step dad passes away, leaving behind 5 biological children that are her half-siblings to a single mother.

      - My mother's mother, my grandmother, diagnosed with Leukemia and later passes away leaving my mother distraught.

      - My dad having to fly to Arizona to visit his dying mother in a hospice to say goodbye.

      - Putting my dog down at the beginning of second grade because of his advanced age.

      -

Mutiny

I walked into the class not expecting much for the day. Looking around the room I noticed nothing new. The whiteboard was wiped clean with blue and red markers sitting on the ledge. The projector screen had been pulled down indicating that the overhead would be used this period. I went over to my assigned seat by a wall that was made out of closets. A white paper ball about three and a half inches in diameter zoomed across the room. I inhaled and the scent of old wood and middle school body odor crept its way through my nostrils. I set my notebook on the table and stared at the floor.

As Mrs. Eddy walks into the room the classroom goes from howling with voices to silence with some stifled whispers. She walks to the front of the class and sets a pop quiz on the overhead.

"Class, you have 15 minutes to answer all of the questions?" She said in spanish, her first language, clearly showing she was at a point of no patience with the class full of Introduction to Spanish students.

A student on the opposite side of the classroom from me raised his hand and asked "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Do the quiz!" She snapped back.

We all sat in silence. Looking around occasionally to see if she was looking at us or if we could try and sneak a peak at another paper. Slowly we all started to finish and turn our papers over. Mrs. Eddy stood and said we had five minutes left on the quiz. She then left the room. At 9 o' clock in the morning on a weekday in middle school everyone falls asleep. I laid my head down on the desk and waited for her to tell us to turn in the quiz. I was startled to hear a pounding on the door leading into the classroom. At some point somebody had locked the door while Mrs. Eddy was gone and nobody wanted to let her back in.

Mrs. Eddy

If I had to describe to you the worst, most infuriating teacher I have ever had it would be my 8th grade spanish teacher Mrs. Eddy. Her actions as well as my inability to understand her correctly led to one of the worst classes I have ever been enrolled in. To be fair I think it wasn't really her fault that people thought she was a bad teacher. I just happened to be enrolled in a class that basically held a mutiny against the teacher everyday. Slowly, her attitude would change from her walking into class asking, "and how was everyone's morning?", to muttering some odd thing or two in spanish and asking the class to sit down. 

"All four feet on the ground!" She yelled across the room. 

"Sorry!" A student would yell back. While proceeding to hold up his middle finger towards her back in defiance. It was like a silent "Fuck you!" felt by nobody.

Now that I have had to sit down and write about this class, it appears to me that Mrs. Eddy was not the worst teacher I've ever had. I have had generally good teachers but the students are what ruined classes for me.