When I completed my success assignment for English, I showed it to Mom because she’s kind of like a writer. Because she writes, of course. Funny about that. She keeps writing these stories and then she bugs us to read them. We read them and it’s a real drag, like who wants to read stories all the time that aren’t so hot? Anyway, she says she wants us to read them and then give her some critical commentary.
She says positive criticism, as she calls it, can be helpful. I’m sure she really wants us to say whatever she writes is really great, because when we do criticize, she gets all huffy and says she won’t let us read them anymore. We kind of brighten up then, because we believe her, but it doesn’t work. She just keeps giving us more of them to read.
Poor Daddy. Whenever Mom says she’s just finished writing another story, you should see his face. He says, “that’s nice, Dear”, and you can tell he just doesn’t mean it. Because Mom always says “want to read it?” and of course Dad can’t say no, because like, he can’t hurt her feelings. So he’s stuck and he’s got to read the new story and he’s also got to like the stories. Sure, parents are so grown up.
Okay, so Mom writes these stories. Well, some of them aren’t too bad, and some of the others aren’t so good. So she sends them out to magazines. She’s always after Daddy to go to the post office for stamps and envelopes because she uses them like they’re going out of style. No matter how many Daddy buys they’re gone in no time at all, because Mom also likes writing letters, lots of them. She has pen pals, other people who write like she does, living in other places. So the stories go out and next thing you know, they’re back with a little form letter. Rejects, Mom calls them, and snarls when you ask her any more questions about them.
In her better moods she says she has just about enough reject slips to paper a room and I’m just hoping she’s really kidding, because my bedroom could use some new wallpaper and I don’t want her to get the brilliant idea that she’s going to paper my room with rejects. She has been known to do goofy things.
Anyway, like I said, I showed my assignment to Mom, and after she went through it, criticizing my awful spelling and dreadful sentence structure (according to her expert opinion), she said she was pleased with the content. So I thought, great, that’s really great. Like I wrote that success to me means happiness. Like you’re content with what you’ve achieved and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a lot of money or to be famous or anything like that. Just that you’ve tried to be good and happy and to make other people you really love happy too, and that’s success to me.
Actually, when Mom finished reading it, she looked at me for a long time, then she grabbed me and hugged me. She always tells me she’s a very impulsive creature. I guess she is. Poor Daddy, she’s always grabbing him too, and the boys. We’re kind of used to her, though.
She did say something about having goals and working toward achieving them, and if you’re successful in doing that, you can consider your life to have been a success. She said it’s a nebulous concept, whatever that means. That it means different things to society than it does to individuals. She’s entitled to whatever she thinks, I suppose, but it’s me that wrote the definition, she said, and it’s my perceptions that count. There’s another new word for me.
So at school I handed it in feeling pretty good about myself. I thought I had a sure thing and then forgot all about it. I saw some of the other kids’ stuff because we kind of compared how long they were and stuff like that. Some kids wrote a lot and other kids didn’t write very much There were a couple who forgot to hand them in, like Kerry. But he said he just had to write a couple of sentences about Evel Knievel since everyone knew all about him anyway, and he’d hand his in in the afternoon.
Week after next we’re through with Industrial Arts for this session and we’ve got to start on Home Economics. Ugh. Jennifer and me will work together on stuff we’ve got to do in Home Ec. Because the other kids told us when you’re cooking and baking you have a recipe between you. I’ll give the stuff I make to someone else. I’d have to be crazy to want to eat the stuff we experiment with. Lots of the kids give their stuff to Kerry. He’s a walking sewer, he’ll eat just about anything that doesn’t move by itself.
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