Band Kids Lunch

Band kids have special privileges in the fact that they get to eat lunch in the locker room that acted as storage for the orchestra instruments, girls tennis team, and the girls marching band changing room with the occasional boy walking in at the end of school. I am in fact one of those privileged few who did not have to deal with the noisy cafeteria. When I walked past the cafeteria on my way to class I would catch some of the noxious lunch fumes wafting out of the immature teenager infested room. No, the only reason I ever had to go into that terrible room was to get food. I never packed lunch because that would require me to get up at 4:45 in the morning to make my bus. I just could not find the will power to roll out of bed before 5.

Getting lunch form the cafeteria was the cool thing to do in my school. Why, I really do not know but I could have cared less what anyone thought about my lunch, it was just easier for me. Well kind of easier, I just had to make sure I put my money in an envelope and then put that envelop in the cash box located in the guidance office or the cafeteria before 3rd period otherwise I was going to starve. My principle in an attempt to make buying lunch faster made depositing lunch money automated so all I had to do when I went to the register is swipe my school id that I was required to wear throughout my high school career along with maroon polls and khakis. I did not understand the reason for the detention getting id; it wasn’t like they wouldn’t know I went to this school without the id to identify me as a Stroudsburg kid. The polo said it all.

I would always hear some kid asking the pathetic question “can you buy me lunch?” I always felt bad for the kid but I did not want to buy them food because I knew that I would never see my money again. After getting what they call a “healthy” lunch from the cafeteria I would then whip out my year round band pass, which I forged, for the lunch lady that would but glanced at it and motion me on my way. Lunch in the locker room without supervision and my best friends, was fun. The orchestra director dubbed our little group the losers club. I can understand why she named us that when you have Jake and Jordan playing on their calculators the entire lunch period. Occasionally they would tear their fingers away and join in the festivities. Oh did we have fun. We played games like spit, ratscrew, dirty twister, and rumycube. These games always ended up with people cursing and cards flying especially if you played with Jordan who was no very good and hated to loose. The Losers club always managed to have me rolling on the dirty cold floor dying of laughter.

I remember this one day when Gretchen decided to tie Jordan’s shoe to Devin’s backpack. She can really tie knots. Neither of them noticed this until she was done and for some reason Devin decided to get up and run around the locker room with Jordan hoping along after him trying not to fall on his face. Jordan did manage to keep up for a couple of laps but in an act of survival he decided to leap upon Devin and try to wrap his legs about Devin. This did made Devin stop but Jordan ended up on the floor.

A Writer Am I?

Writing has never been the most pleasurable thing for me. I have never been the most eloquent writer but over the last couple of years I have made great strides in the right direction. I improved greatly by just paying attention to how the author writes, when reading a book, and learning from their great expertise. There are things I need to improve on and some skills that I have honed and made my own. I am good at incorporating my voice into things I write. My writing has a personality that makes reading it fun and easy. Some things are just too dry, they have no sarcasm. Incorporating this voice into my writing gives me great pleasure but is not appropriate for formal papers.

I find myself often struggling when writing a more formal paper that asks me to analyze something. Trying to get what I am thinking down on paper in a coherent manner is difficult. I often repeat the same point just in a different way because I am struggling to find a way to convey my meaning to my audience. Sometimes what comes out of my head just does not make sense to anyone else but me. I have to improve my sentence structures to help better convey meaning through my writing. During the last school year I read “Madame Bovary” written by Gustave Flauber. (For more information about Gustave Flauber and his controversial book go to http://www.madamebovary.com/) Flauber creates these amazing descriptions that allow you to see what the character sees. The thing about Flauber is that everything he writes has a purpose; he often uses seemingly meaningless things to convey a very important theme in the book. He made me relies just how much each individual word means and that when writing I should strive for deeper meaning and creating a more vivid seen.

Another skill I have when writing a paper is taking my past experiences and things that I have read and incorporating them into a paper. I stay away from writing about what I do not know; I am just setting myself up for failure. I often use lessons that I learned the hard way and things that I have read in books as examples to support my points or often to convey meaning about a hard to understand subject. Another weakness I have is that I often just write only a rough draft and never make revisions. When writing I really need to improve my proofreading skills. I recently read “As I Lay Dyeing” by William Faulkner and I absolutely hated. (for more information for to http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/asilay/) Reading this book was painful because Faulkner wrote in the cultural tone of his characters, which they were all uneducated. Trying to make sense of the improper English was very difficult, some things just made no sense. Despite the book being very hard to understand I took a lot away from his writing. The way he portrayed each character in his book, making them very real to the reader, influenced how I described characters and gave them their own voice in the book, making them more lifelike.