I don’t understand why you people keep
pronouncing me late. Why, I missed the
entire school day, plus a couple more! If my absence can be dubbed “tardiness,”
than my dead newt can certainly pass as art work. I cannot believe that you would be so shallow
as to say it is trash. Really, The insolence of some people. My newt was
top notch. No one should ever be allowed
to judge art work unless they understand the simple beauty of it all. If anything expresses the miracle of life, it
is a newt’s organs pinned to a poster board. Abstract art, some would say, but
not I. Abstraction is the mystery of
life, but functionality of a newt is the proof of it. And what more is art than
the celebration and proof of the miraculous world that we all inhabit? Ah, but that is not the point of the matter. My tardiness, or absence as I would say, is
the matter at hand. It was a frightening
experience, and cannot be expressed in a 100 words, as you had instructed
me. I will take the liberty of using
whole sheets of paper (sheets I say)
to thoroughly explain my “tardiness.” Perhaps if you enjoy the absolute truth
of my tale, you might be persuaded to give some extra credit for my art
project? My grades were quite high
indeed, until The Atrocity occurred and my Newt was not accepted.
Never mind that, though. I must go on in life, although my feelings
are perfectly smashed to pieces. Pieces, I
say! It does not help that I was recently traumatized, either. My mind is in disarray at the moment, as the
horror of my journey is now over but you are forcing me to relive it. The
audacity. Ha! You do not know I am insulting you at the moment, but you will
find out soon enough. Yes, you will find
out. And then you will feel your heart break, because of the awfulness I had to
survive, and how you treated me with cruelty shortly afterward. It really was a most awful situation. I reckon it could have ended in a disaster of
sorts had my wits not been as sharp as they are. But they are sharp. And that is a fact. A fact, I say. I reckon that if I
were you, I would graciously hand out
lots of extra credit to students who have sharp wits. Dull witted people are extremely boring. Not me though, I am certainly not boring!
Well, here’s the story if you must
know. I certainly don’t care a mite if
you call me a liar and throw me out. In fact, I don’t especially mind being
thrown out; for sure I’ve had enough of this place for a lifetime. It has been most excruciatingly boring as of late. I just hope you see the power of my wits and give me a second
chance at life. A newt project should
not be the end of a young person’s career.
A merciful teacher would see the light!
I dearly hope that you will open the creative windows in your mind, and
experience my story with daring freedom of mind, which is needed to see the
truth when it happens upon your path.
It was early Monday morning, and
glittering droplets of dew hung on the weeds and marvelous dandelions which I
stooped to observe. The freshness of
each morning is quite the wonder. Life
you see, is beautiful, and dew is yet another proof.
The wind was a blowing all around me,
and I decided to give “caution to the wind,” as so many people have done
before. It is a most marvelous
invention, the action of giving “caution to the wind.” It fills you up with a
courage and importance that most souls never receive the chance of
experiencing. It is a sort of
“fullness,” if you get my drift.
So, after observing the dew and giving
caution to the wind, I went on my way with happiness undaunted (The Atrocity
had not yet occurred). I carried my work
of art, or my Newt Project in my left hand, and my lunch pail in the other. My
lunch pail was a bright pink, and the prettiest lunch pail out of all the girls
in my class. I absolutely love my lunch pail. However, the time I usually spent swinging my
lunch pail and watching it glint in the sunlight was cut short by the object I
held firmly in my other hand. I was very
preoccupied with protecting my dead Newt, as the sun would dry it out for sure
if it wasn’t kept in the shade.
Worry began to set in, as the early
morning sun grew hotter and hotter still.
I turned my eyes up to the bright blue sky and stared directly into the
brilliant orb. Ah! Never do that, never. But somehow I always get a jolt of adrenaline
from doing stupid things such as that. I
enjoy watching the bright spots, as well.
They are very pretty and quite colorful. Sometimes when I am bored to death in church and one more ominous word
from the bald minister will certainly turn me into dry bones I look straight up
into the high ceiling and stare into the brightest light for a sparse second.
Then when I start to see spots and shapes of all sorts I move them down with
great effort until they are placed directly on top of the minister’s shiny bald
head. It is very challenging to keep the bright spot there when the bald head
bops up and down as if it had a mind of its own, but the effort keeps me from
being bored. I certainly do not want to die of boredom. It seems as if that would be the absolute worst way to go. Or maybe not the
worst. After this experience, I am
convinced I narrowly avoided the worst fate possible.
After staring into the sun, however, my eyes
gradually shifted from seeing colorful spots back to normal, and I began to get
concerned for my Newt. He really had
been a good Newt. Sometimes the minister at First Baptist Church talks about
Heaven and Hell. I’d like to think that
good old Newty went to Heaven after he passed, but when I asked the minister,
he said that to go to Heaven you have to ask Jesus into your heart, and to ask
Jesus into your heart you have to have a soul.
“Newty doesn’t have a soul,” I remember him saying ominously, in his
usual monotonous tone. He tore my heart out
that day. I so wanted to argue with the bald minister because I did not think
he was right at all. He must have been lying. But my mother with her pastel
blue bonnet pulled me away, and I let her.
I did not move my feet though, and I was certainly a sight. Feet
dragging and the most horrible expression on my face.
Eventually Father talked to me. He told me that no, Newty would not be in
Heaven, for it was true, he did not have a soul. But, he said, there would be other newts in Heaven. And those newts would not die. As this joyous
news sunk in, I began to clap my hands and skip around the garden with
gladness. I was feeling so happy and so exultant that I began to figure things
out in my mind. Ah! You will see the demonstration of my wits here. Pay attention!
You see, if there were newts in Heaven, which I was certain now that there would be,
and if those newts will never die, than I must take advantage of the dead one I
have here on Earth, so that I will fully understand the anatomy of the ones in
Heaven.
So, without pausing to further my plan I
found a white piece of cardboard for myself as well as a sharp stick and some
pins, and got out my dead Newty which I had lovingly placed in a cardboard box
for burial. But you see my reasoning
now, that if he hasn’t got a chance of going to Heaven, than there is no need
to bury him.
I then started to poke at his outer
epidermis of skin, and finding this squishy and easily cut I severed it down
the belly. Mind you, the evidence of my
anatomical and artistic ventures is in your possession today. His lovely little
pancreas, tongue, lung, heart, and brain tissue are all on display, as well as
some other pieces that I don’t know much about.
If you want to know more about those you can ask my father. He is a professor of Veterinarian Science at
the university, and knows all about the tiny parts that newts are composed of.
Anyhow, I was carrying poor little dead
newt in my left hand, and he was drying out. And I thought… (mind you here’s my
sharp wits again) that would just not do for my art project to be a dried
newt. He must be moist! So I quite a
different route to school, and, oh my, did it lead to adventure. I am almost
glad that I took a strange route that day, because true adventure in life is hard
to come by, and when it does, you have to grab it by the handles and hold on
because it’s going to fling you all over creation. An adventure is a gift that
is rarely offered, but when received it changes a person… forever. For better
or for worse.
Of course, I’m not entirely sure if my particular adventure made a
positive impact or a negative one, but it surely made an impact of some
sort. I reckon I’ll find out after a
while… it’ll come down to some recklessly important choice and everyone will
expect me to choose a certain path, and I won’t. I’ll do exactly what they
think I will not do just for the fun of it. And then everyone will, say, “Oh,
the horror of June 28th 2012 has finally sunk in. Poor darling girl!
We should have listened to her before it was too late!” And I will just chuckle
because I won’t have actually gone insane, and will be laughing hysterically on
the inside because of their dreadfully sympathetic faces.
You, my friends, might be among
those. You misunderstand me but that is
perfectly fine. You’ll see. I’ll blow you
all out of the water some day, all because nobody believed me. Better believe
it.
So here’s what happened. I took a different path to school. Big whoop.
But the thing is, I hadn’t been that way since the middle of last summer, and
as I was walking up Patterson Street and skipping down West Coast Avenue, and
running all joyfully like as usual, when I abruptly stooped to tie up the long
droopy strings of my shoe and noticed something interesting.
I have a tendency to become enamored
with the slightest intriguing bit of nature.
A dandelion in seed is what I saw, and I froze for a moment or two and
simply stared at it. It was
breathtakingly beautiful. Late summer does that to dandelions. It rids them of the gaudy yellow petals, and
slowly, ever so slowly, they are crowned with fantastical particles of gauzy,
gorgeously fuzzy, impeccably softly organized pirouettes. Take the most beautiful dancer, the most
intricate spider’s web, and the most complex of math algorithms, and you find
yourself looking into the wonder of a dandelion in seed. Topped off with dew of a glorious array and
one cannot possibly stare long enough at it.
And
this I did. I stared at it for quite a
long time, or at least until my back started to ache and my lunch pail began to
slide out of my sweaty fingers. Which
reminded me, I must get back under the shade. If not for anything but the sake
of my Newt! Which is, of course, why I chose the other path two days ago-
because it gave birth to more shade and more shade was needed so that Newty
didn’t dry out.
So I straightened up and plunged back
under a merciful tree. From then on I
hurried my footsteps and kept an eye out for more dandelions, which I saw none
of, until I broke from under the trees, and the path curved a little, and I
came upon a clearing most wondrous.
Dandelions in seed were like downy
blankets spread across the sunny field.
It was so beautiful, I almost squealed with joy and dropped my lunch
pail. But my fingers were used to
holding on, and my voice was hoarse from the slight chill the autumn morning
oppressed upon me, and I didn’t do either.
Sticking a sneaker clad foot delicately
out in front of me, I paused and teetered for a moment. To crush some of the
dandelions seemed to be a sin… a sin that not even the worst human could
possibly commit. And yet, I had to get
to school.
So I put my foot down, and slowly trod
into the vast field of snowy wisps. It was like wading through mist.
Hurting something beautiful, however,
always has a consequence of some sort, and for me it was extreme guilt. I stopped in the middle of the field where
there was a slight clearing, and surveyed the dandelions again. I had desecrated
the sacred region of beauty and hardly thought about it. The guilt suddenly hit me with full force and
I collapsed on the dirt, so as to survey the dandelions more
closely. Perhaps I could tend to the
ones I stepped on, and somehow repair their fragile corpses.
But crawling around the circle with
wetness in my eyes and staring at each dandelion, I could find no
discrepancy. I stood up, utterly
confused. I looked out into the field,
straining my eyes for any disorganization that I might have caused. None was to be found.
Suddenly the whole situation seemed very
sinister.
I had
walked through the field of dandelions, and they had to have been disturbed.
It’s not as if I hovered over them, for goodness sakes. But they were
fine. They were as usual,
beautiful. Not a single spirally white
needle was missing.
Ominous indeed. I plopped my lunch pail on the floor, removed
the food from it (for it was in baggies) and placed it upside down. My small feet climbed atop it, and I looked
out, peering for miles. No trees could
be seen in the distance. No people. No buildings. The only thing I could see was
a fence, about 10 feet away from the space where I was standing.
Hmm.
The sun was glaring down on me and my
newt. Poor Newty. He would roast in the sun if I didn’t do
something quick.
I thought about keeping on, and plodding
through the rest of the dandelions until I got to the school house. It couldn’t be that far still. I’d gone this way before and remembered it
alright. I was certain I hadn’t made a wrong turn. But something wasn’t
right. The field hadn’t been this big
before.
Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to
step on another one of those needly dandelions.
It seemed like something bad… horrible
even, would happen if I did.
So I sat in the dirt for a long
while. Very long. I didn’t have a clock with me, and if I did,
I’m sure it would have been distorted just as everything else became. I dreamed
of houses in the distance, and my father and mother hovering toward me, so as
not to harm the dandelions, and offering me a hand.
Things were really looking unfortunate,
and the sun was going down, when I remembered my lunch. My pail was sitting next to me, still upside
down, but I there was a sandwich- peanut butter and honey, a loaf of banana
bread that I had planned to share with my friends, a small baggy of grapes, and
a pocket of apple juice. I placed the banana bread erect and let it shade my
precious Newt project. It was too bad I
hadn’t thought of it before.
I opened the baggy of large, luscious
green grapes and moaned. Food… it was so
beautiful. Plopping one grape into my mouth, I chewed it and let the sour sweet
juice flood my parched mouth.
From then on I planned a survival kit.
My grapes must be eaten one by the hour. I didn’t know when the hours were, but
they were certainly often because the coveted grapes disappeared much too
quickly… I ate a small portion of my peanut butter honey sandwich, and forced
myself to close the bag and put it out of sight. The juice was rationed carefully.
There I sat. I stood, and watched, and climbed up onto my
pink, gleaming lunch pail often enough.
There was no sighting of land.
None at all.
Just a sea of dandelions in seed. The needly things.
You know, I was beginning not to like
them so much as I had before. They were losing beauty by the second. Perhaps I should just stomp through them and
reach the fence. It really wasn’t all
that far away.
But somehow I knew not to step on
them. My wits were sharp, and they
warned me.
But wits, however sharp, cannot save one
from a situation that is inescapable. It was horrible experience. An adventure,
you might call it, as it dragged on to the second night, (I knew this because
the sun set again) and sure, it was an adventure. But it certainly wasn’t one I would like to
relive. Which, I may add, you are making
me do currently. The audacity! Ugh.
I reckon it was two hours into the night
when a plan began to form in my mind.
The moon was bright in the sky, quite bright enough for me to take
action. The dandelions didn’t seem to
watch me as well when it was night.
So I took my Newt Project in hand, and
my lunch pail in my other hand (I had long since eaten and drank my vitals
except for the bread), and my baggies in my teeth.
The dandelions were as ominous as ever,
but somehow I thought I would survive, if perhaps my shoes themselves didn’t
touch the horrid flowers.
So I put carefully reached out and placed
my lunch pail down. Then I threw a clear
bag a little further ahead. I stepped
with one shoe onto the pail, and hurriedly searched for the moonlit glint of
the bag. I put my other foot on that
one. The other bag I threw in front of
me, (oh thank you dear mother for the pail and my baggies of food) and stepped
onto that one. Then I reached back as
far as I dared to grab my pink pail and set that in front.
You can guess how it when from
there. It was slow and treacherous, as
the slightest misstep would result in horrors unknown. It was also hard to
manage while carrying a Newt Project in one hand. No way would I step on Newty.
But
slowly, steadily, I reached the fence.
After carefully retrieving my pail, and holding my baggies in my teeth,
and climbed up the fence and clung to it.
I’ve never been so glad to see a fence in my entire life. I had avoided my fate.
A great triumph blew through me, almost
as if I was giving caution to the wind.
But then I glanced back at the field,
and the triumph dissipated as fast as it had swelled up inside of me.
The dandelions were disturbed. They were crushed and destroyed, demolished
and crucified, wherever I had placed the pail or the bag. Fear moved inside of
me.
I was frozen, and as the dandelions
began to move, I realized I had no
weapon to defend myself with. The horror
of it dawned on me.
They were swaying, as if in a gentle
night’s breeze, in unison. It would be
alright, and perhaps calming to watch, but all
of them were swaying in the same direction, as if in a slow dance, and the
tempo gradually progressed. All of them were swaying. Every single one as far as I could see. And
you know what happens when dandelions in seed are blown around. They lose their
needles.
Suddenly I knew that if I didn’t get
out of there now, I would be enveloped by the needles that were steadily coming
loose. There was one on me now. I screamed as it poked itself into me
mercilessly. It was like a metal needle
that a doctor uses to give shots, but with a mind of its own. It pulled itself in and out of my skin and
re-stabbed me every time.
Welts were left wherever the awful
needle had been.
When I looked up again, momentarily
looking away from my assailant, I saw that there were thousands upon thousands
of needles, flowing in the air; all traveling in the same direction with
growing speed. It was like a foggy
tornado made of harmful, puffy white needles.
I grew steadily more and more
alarmed.
I used my pail to balance, and rose
to my feet just in time to avoid the first full on assault of needles. They
were like swarming bees, and I was their prey.
I ran. My red sneakers flew across the top of the
fence with great speed. I had to be
fast, or I would be killed by them for sure.
The sun was rising! I could see it
on the horizon! The 2nd day of my trial ended and the 3rd
began!
Miraculously, the needles dropped as
the sunlight hit them. They fell to the
floor with remarkable leisure. I
watched, eyes as big as saucers, as they stilled. The dance was no more. I was not being stung anymore.
I was a survivor.
I sat there on the fence for a
while, just so I could get my breath back.
I still had my newt project in my left hand, and my pail in my
right. The baggies were pressed firmly between
my teeth.
It was odd for a second though,
because I thought I saw someone walking alongside the fence. It was Paul! My heart flew into my mouth and
I screeched. “Paul! Run!”
He looked at me strangely and I
wanted to throttle him. We would both
die if we didn’t get out of here. I was foolish to catch my breath in the first
place.
Then I looked around, and with shock
realized that I was on top of the last rail of the fence, and the ground was
there at the edge of it, with no dandelions growing in it.
I sighed with joy and crept slowly
to the edge and down the side. Paul was
still walking, smiling nicely.
“Hello there my friend!” He said
politely, and tipped his hat. “Did you finish your art project?”
I gawked. The art project had been due two days
ago. What was he thinking?
“Y—yes.” I stuttered awkwardly, and
held my cardboard up. It was tattered
beyond repair, but all of the organs were still intact.
He smiled at me strangely, and I
thought again that some people will never understand true art and the beauty of
creation.
Then we both walked into the
classroom and received a detention for being 20 minutes late.
So here I am, sitting here in the
classroom with Paul, documenting my story and reliving my nightmare. I can certainly say that I hope it will never happen again, but I
cannot be certain. Legends are legends,
and dandelions are something of a legend to me, now. I won’t ever walk that way
again, but maybe next time the trees will choose to make poke fun at me, or the
butterflies will decided to poison me with their antennas. You never know about life- especially mine!
It seems to get stranger and stranger by the minute. It’s not often that one
lives for two days and then is only 20 minutes late.
However, I do hope that you will consider giving me more credit for my Newt
Project. I thought it was a marvelous idea, and I certainly cannot imagine how
anyone could think otherwise. It’s a bit
dried up, but I did try so awfully hard to keep it moist…
That is all.
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