Web Graffiti Zine 12

WEB GRAFFITI ZINE
Zine 12
Collated by William Hillman

CHICKEN SOUP FOR SCHOOL

A Mother's Letter to a Son Starting Kindergarten
by Rebecca Christian
Found in Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul.
http://www.chickensoup.com/

Dear George,
When your big brother and your little dog and I walked you up to school today, you had no idea how I was feeling.
You were so excited, you had packed and unpacked the washable markers and safety scissors in your backpack a dozen times.
I am really going to miss those lazy mornings when we waved your brother and sister off to school. I'd settle in with my coffee and newspaper, handing you the comics to color while you watched Sesame Street.
Because you are my youngest, I had learned a few things by the time you came along. I found out that the seemingly endless days of babyhood are gone like lightning. I blinked, and your older siblings were setting off for school as eagerly as you did this morning.
I was one of the lucky ones; I could choose whether to work or not. By the time it was your turn, the glittering prizes of career advancement and a double income had lost their luster. A splash in the puddles with you in your bright red boots or "just one more" rereading of your favorite book, Frog and Toad Are Friends, meant more.
You didn't go to preschool and I'm not exactly Maria Montessori. I hope that doesn't hold you back. You learned numbers by helping me count the soda cans we returned to the store. (You could usually charm me into letting you pick out a treat with the money we got back.)
I'm not up on the Palmer method, but you do a fine job of writing your name on the sidewalk in chalk, in capitals to make it look more important. And somehow you caught on to the nuances of language. Just the other day, you asked me why I always call you "Honey" when we're reading stories and "Bud" when you're helping with chores. My explanation of the difference between a cuddly mood and a matey one seemed to satisfy you.
I have to admit that in my mind's eye, an image of myself while you're in school has developed. I see myself updating all the photo albums and starting that novel I always wanted to write. As the summer wound down and more frequent quarrels erupted between you and your siblings, I was looking forward to today.
And then this morning, I walked you up the steep hill to your classroom with a picture of the president on one wall and of Bambi on the opposite. You found the coat hook with your name above it right away, and you gave me one of your characteristically fierce, too-tight hugs. This time you were ready to let go before I was.
Maybe someday you will deliver a kindergartner with your own wide-set eyes and sudden grin to the first day of school. When you turn at the door to wave good-bye, he or she will be too deep in conversation with a new friend to notice. Even as you smile, you'll feel something warm on your cheek . . .
And then, you'll know.
Love, Mom
Rebecca Christian

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." — Les Brown
Late for School

All my life, I've had this recurring dream that causes me to wake up feeling strange. In it, I am a little girl again, rushing about, trying to get ready for school.
"Hurry, Gin, you'll be late for school," my mother calls to me. I am hurrying, Mom! Where's my lunch? What did I do with my books?"
Deep inside I know where the dream comes from and what it means. It is God's way of reminding me of some unfinished business in my life.
I loved everything about school, even though the school I attended in Springfield, Ohio, in the 1920s was very strict. I loved books, teachers, even tests and homework. Most of all I longed to someday march down the aisle to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance." To me, that song was even more beautiful than "Here Comes the Bride."
But there were problems.
The Great Depression hit the hardest at large, poor families like ours. With seven children, Mom and Dad had no money for things like fine school clothes. Every morning, I cut out strips of cardboard to stuff inside my shoes to cover the holes in the soles. There was no money for musical instruments or sports uniforms or after-school treats. We sang to ourselves, played jacks or duck-on-the-rock, and munched on onions as we did homework.
These hardships I accepted. As long as I could go to school, I didn't mind too much how I looked or what I
lacked.
What happened next was harder to accept. My brother Paul died of an infection after he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with a fork. Then my father contracted tuberculosis and died. My sister, Margaret, caught the same disease, and soon she was gone, too.
The shock of these losses gave me an ulcer, and I fell behind in my schoolwork. Meanwhile, my widowed
mother tried to keep going on the five dollars a week she made cleaning houses. Her face became a mask of despair.
One day I said to her, "Mom, I'm going to quit school and get a job to help out."
The look in her eyes was a mixture of grief and relief.
At fifteen, I dropped out of my beloved school and went to work in a bakery. My hope of walking down the aisle to "Pomp and Circumstance" was dead, or so I thought.
In 1940, I married Ed, a machinist, and we began our family. Then Ed decided to become a preacher, so we moved to Cincinnati where he could attend the Cincinnati Bible Seminary. With the coming of children went the dream of schooling, forever.
Even so, I was determined that my children would have the education I had missed. I made sure the house was filled with books and magazines. I helped them with their homework and urged them to study hard. It paid off. All our six children eventually got some college training, and one of them is a college professor.
But Linda, our last child, had health problems. Juvenile arthritis in her hands and knees made it impossible for her to function in the typical classroom. Furthermore, the medications gave her cramps, stomach trouble and migraine headaches.
Teachers and principals were not always sympathetic. I lived in dread of the phone calls from school. "Mom, I'm coming home."
Now Linda was nineteen, and still she did not have her high school diploma. She was repeating my own experience.
I prayed about this problem, and when we moved to Sturgis, Michigan, in 1979, I began to see an answer. I drove to the local high school to check it out. On the bulletin board, I spotted an announcement about evening courses.
That's the answer, I said to myself. Linda always feels better in the evening, so I'll just sign her up for night school.
Linda was busy filling out enrollment forms when the registrar looked at me with brown, persuasive eyes and said, "Mrs. Schantz, why don't you come back to school?"
I laughed in his face. "Me? Ha! I'm an old woman. I'm fifty-five!"
But he persisted, and before I knew what I had done, I was enrolled for classes in English and crafts. "This is only an experiment," I warned him, but he just smiled.
To my surprise, both Linda and I thrived in evening school. I went back again the next semester, and my grades steadily improved.
It was exciting, going to school again, but it was no game. Sitting in a class full of kids was awkward, but most of them were respectful and encouraging. During the day, I still had loads of housework to do and grandchildren to care for. Sometimes, I stayed up until two in the morning, adding columns of numbers for bookkeeping class. When the numbers didn't seem to work out, my eyes would cloud with tears and I would berate myself. Why am I so dumb?
But when I was down, Linda encouraged me. "Mom, you can't quit now!" And when she was down, I encouraged her. Together we would see this through.
At last, graduation was near, and the registrar called me into his office. I entered, trembling, afraid I had done something wrong.
He smiled and motioned for me to have a seat. "Mrs. Schantz," he began, You have done very well in school."
I blushed with relief.
"As a matter of fact," he went on, "your classmates have voted unanimously for you to be class orator."
I was speechless.
He smiled again and handed me a piece of paper. "And here is a little reward for all your hard work."
I looked at the paper. It was a college scholarship for $3,000. "Thank you" was all I could think to say, and I said it over and over.
The night of graduation, I was terrified. Two hundred people were sitting out there, and public speaking was a brand-new experience for me. My mouth wrinkled as if I had been eating persimmons. My heart skipped beats, and I wanted to flee, but I couldn't! After all, my own children were sitting in that audience. I couldn't be a coward in front of them.
Then, when I heard the first strains of "Pomp and Circumstance," my fears dissolved in a flood of delight. I am graduating! And so is Linda!
Somehow I got through the speech. I was startled by the applause, the first I ever remember receiving in my life.
Afterwards, roses arrived from my brothers and sisters throughout the Midwest. My husband gave me silk roses, "so they will not fade."
The local media showed up with cameras and recorders and lots of questions. There were tears and hugs and congratulations. I was proud of Linda, and a little afraid that I might have unintentionally stolen some of the attention that she deserved for her victory, but she seemed as proud as anyone of our dual success.
The class of '81 is history now, and I've gone on for some college education.
But sometimes, I sit down and put on the tape of my graduation speech. I hear myself say to the audience, "Don't ever underestimate your dreams in life. Anything can happen if you believe. Not a childish, magical belief. It means hard work, but never doubt that you can do it."
And then, I remember the recurring dream-Hurry, Gin, you'll be late for school-and my eyes cloud over when I think of my mother.
Yes, Mom, I was late for school, but it was all the sweeter for waiting. I only wish you and Dad could have been there to see your daughter and granddaughter in all their pomp and circumstance.
Virginia Schantz As told to Daniel Schantz As appeared in A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul

Accused of Plagiarism -- My Highest Compliment

It seems to me that all writers, including those who deserve to be classified as geniuses, need encouragement, particularly in their early years. I always knew I could write, but that just meant I wrote a little better than the other kids in my classes. That I might one day write well enough to derive income from my efforts, oddly enough, never occurred to me during my grade school and high school years.
There was a particular teacher at Hyde Park High School in Chicago, Illinois, who, simply by concentrating her attention on me, made me believe that I might be able to master the knack of writing well enough to consider the craft as a profession. Her name was Marguerite Byrne, and she taught English, which, of course, involved writing skills. Whatever instruction she shared with me was exactly the same as all her other students enjoyed, but the difference was she encouraged me to begin the process of submitting things I was writing, in that day, chiefly poems.
To my surprise the Chicago Tribune not only thought enough of several of my verses to publish them, but also paid me -- inadvertently -- the highest compliment a fledging author can receive. The editor wrote a confidential letter to Miss Byrne, asking her to see, if by chance, one of her students -- a certain Stephen Allen -- might be guilty of plagiarism. The editor’s suspicions had been roused because, he was kind enough to say, he found it hard to believe that a seventeen-year-old could create material on such a professional level.
When Miss Byrne shared the letter with me, I was ecstatic! It was wonderfully encouraging. Maybe I really as a writer, I thought.
Miss Byrne also encouraged me to enter a contest sponsored by the CIVITAN organization. The assignment was to write an essay titled "Rediscovering America." I was literally astonished when I received a letter saying that I was the winner of the contest. The prize was a check for one-hundred dollars and an invitation to an all-the-trimmings banquet at a hotel in downtown Chicago.
My mother, at the time, was not even aware that I was interested in writing, or if she had somehow found out about it, she took little notice. When I arrived back home tat evening, she didn’t ask how the evening had gone. I placed the one-hundred-dollar check on the breakfast table where she would see it when she awoke in the morning -- and went immediately to bed.
This scenario demonstrates the tremendous importance of giving young people caring attention and encouraging them to develop and practice such gifts as they might have. Years later, I was able to repay my debt to Marguerite Byrne by dedicating one of my books, Wry on the Rocks -- A Collection of Poems, to her.
On the other hand, without encouragement talented students may never be motivated to learn, develop skills, or reach their full potential. For example, at the same high school, there was a teacher whose Spanish language classes I attended but from whom I, unfortunately learned very little simply because of the woman’s cold sarcastically critical attitude. She seemed to know nothing about encouraging students, and she was gifted speaking contemptuously of those of us who weren’t learning fast enough. Her negativism drove me away. Partly because of this teacher’s negative influence, I am not fluent in Spanish today.
You see, I had already learned that one can derive instructive benefit from bad examples -- by avoiding that behavior. Alcoholism was a serious problem in my mother’s family. As a result of having seen enough examples of alcoholic excess in my childhood, I have never had any interest in drinking. The same applies to smoking. My poor mother was a two-pack a day victim of nicotine addiction, and because of the endless clouds of smoke, the coughing, the overfilled ashtrays, and the ugly smell of cigarette smoke in the house and in my clothing, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life.
Again, young writers need to be encouraged. Because of Miss Byrne’s influence, I have enjoyed a lifetime
writing books, songs, and TV scripts. And guess what? I haven’t plagiarized a single word of any of it.
By Steve Allen from Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul

Ronny's Book

At first glance, Ronny looked like every other kid in the first-grade classroom where I volunteered as the Reading Mom. Wind-blown hair, scuffed shoes, a little bit of dirt behind his ears, some kind of sandwich smear around his mouth.
On closer inspection, though, the layer of dirt on Ronny’s face, the crusty nose, and the packed grime under his fingernails told me he didn’t get dirty at school. He arrived that way.
His clothes were ragged and mismatched, his sneakers had string for laces, and his backpack was no more than a plastic shopping bag.
Along with his outward appearance, Ronny stood apart from his classmates in other ways, too. He had a speech impediment, wasn’t reading or writing at grade-level, and had already been held back a year, making him eight-years-old in the first grade. His home life was a shambles with transient parents who uprooted him at their whim. He had yet to live a full year in any one place.
I quickly learned that beneath his grungy exterior, Ronny possessed a spark, a resilience that I’d never seen in a child who faced such tremendous odds.
I worked with all the students in Ronny’s class on a one-on-one basis to improve their reading skills. Each day, Ronny’s head twisted around as I came into the classroom, and his eyes followed me as I set up in a corner, imploring, “Pick me! Pick me!” Of course I couldn’t pick him every day. Other kids needed my help, too.
On the days when it was Ronny’s turn, I’d give him a silent nod, and he’d fly out of his chair and bound across the room in a blink. He sat awfully close -- too close for me in the beginning, I must admit -- and opened the book we were tackling as if he were unearthing a treasure the world had never seen.
I watched his dirt-caked fingers move slowly under each letter as he struggled to sound out “Bud the Sub.” It sounded more like “Baw Daw Saw” when he said it because of his speech impediment and his difficulty with the alphabet.
Each word offered a challenge and a triumph wrapped as one; Ronny painstakingly sounded out each letter, then tried to put them together to form a word. Regardless if “ball” ended up as Bah-lah or “bow,” the biggest grin would spread across his face, and his eyes would twinkle and overflow with pride. It broke my heart each and every time. I just wanted to whisk him out of his life, take him home, clean him up and love him.
Many nights, after I’d tucked my own children into bed, I’d sit and think about Ronny. Where was he? Was he safe? Was he reading a book by flashlight under the blan-kets? Did he even have blankets?
The year passed quickly and Ronny had made some progress but hardly enough to bring him up to grade level. He was the only one who didn’t know that, though. As far as he knew, he read just fine.
A few weeks before the school year ended, I held an awards ceremony. I had treats, gifts and certificates of achievement for everyone: Best Sounder-Outer, Most Expressive, Loudest Reader, Fastest Page-Turner.
It took me awhile to figure out where Ronny fit; I needed something positive, but there wasn’t really much. I finally decided on “Most Improved Reader” -- quite a stretch, but I thought it would do him a world of good to hear.
I presented Ronny with his certificate and a book -- one of those Little Golden Books that cost forty-nine cents at the grocery store checkout. Tears rolled down his cheeks, streaking the ever-permanent layer of dirt as he clutched the book to his chest and floated back to his seat. I choked back the lump that rose in my throat.
I stayed with the class for most of the day; Ronny never let go of the book, not once. It never left his hands.
A few days later, I returned to the school to visit. I noticed Ronny on a bench near the playground, the book open in his lap. I could see his lips move as he read to himself
His teacher appeared beside me. “He hasn’t put that book down since you gave it to him. He wears it like a shirt, close to his heart. Did you know that’s the first book he’s ever actually owned?”
Fighting back tears, I approached Ronny and watched over his shoulder as his grimy finger moved slowly across the page. I placed my hand on his shoulder and asked, “Will you read me your book, Ronny?” He glanced up, squinted into the sun, and scooted over on the bench to make room for me.
And then, for the next few minutes, he read to me with more expression, clarity, and ease than I’d ever thought possible from him. The pages were already dog-eared, like the book had been read thousands of times already.
When he finished reading, Ronny closed his book, stroked the cover with his grubby hand and said with great satisfaction, “Good book.”
A quiet pride settled over us as we sat on that play-ground bench, Ronny’s hand now in mine. I at once wept and marveled at the young boy beside me. What a powerful contribution the author of that Little Golden Book had made in the life of a disadvantaged child.
At that moment, I knew I would get serious about my own writing career and do what that author had done, and probably still does -- care enough to write a story that changes a child’s life, care enough to make a difference.
I strive to be that author.
By Judith A. Chance from Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul

SHOES IN THE SHOWER
Chicken Soup for the College Soul: Inspiring and Humorous Stories About
College by Jack Canfield , Mark Victor Hansen, et al

You've never done this before. You can't even come up with some neat comparison to a past experience to make you feel less awkward. It doesn't help that everyone else is doing it, since it's because of them that you have to do it in the first place. Suddenly you have to accept this totally backward behavior as if it were logical, from now on, no end in sight.
In college you wear shoes in the shower. You are halfway across the country living by yourself for probably the first time. Your childhood seems like it's over. You are surrounded by people you don't know, from places you've never been, who probably all have athlete's foot. Your dorm room is supposed to be the same one you saw on your college tour, but you know it's smaller, colder and uglier than the one you saw when your mom was with you. You walk in and are standing in front of a girl you've never met, who you will have to live with all year. She is dressed differently from you and is from a state you've never visited. You probably have nothing in common. No amount of protective footwear is too drastic under these circumstances.
The first few days are like a dream. The shower continues to be the testing ground for your ability to adapt to these conditions. You are sure that everyone but you has figured out how to shave her legs in these small cubicles. You glance wistfully at the people in the hall wondering who could possibly fill in for the best friend you left at home, in whose bathroom you could always go barefoot.
You cry yourself to sleep a couple of times and find yourself counting the days until Thanksgiving. What were you thinking? The state college thirty minutes away would have been just fine, probably much safer. You call home and tell your parents how homesick you are. Sure, you went to that party Saturday night, which was okay, but surely they understand that that's nothing compared to your misery. Your parents say "Give it a chance" so often that you become convinced that they are putting the phone down next to the family parrot and walking away.
But after a while, the Shoeless Night happens. It comes to everybody, sooner or later. Perhaps for you it is a midnight McDonald's run with some girls on your floor and a post-McNugget conversation, way into the night. Your fear of various foot diseases begins to fade somewhat. You might actually like some of the girls.
You might still cry yourself to sleep that night, but something's changed. For a few hours, you got to remove the mythical shoes from the feet of your soul. Because the important thing about The Night is that it is followed by Other Nights. The night of party hopping is preceded by a two-hour primping session with the same girls, before piling far too many of you into one car. The night of stealing other halls' furniture together allows you to let them see you in the morning after an "I'm too tired to wash my face" night.
Eventually, when you need to cry (because you still might, for a while), you find yourself walking down the hall to someone else's room instead of getting on the phone to your parents. When you do call them, all you can talk about is that girl down the hall who understands everything you say and listens so well. Your parents are thrilled and begin teaching the parrot to say, "That's great, Honey!"
One night while standing at a party you turn to your friend and say, "Are you ready to go home?" Then you realize you're referring to your dorm, that place that seemed so cold and ugly the first week. Well, they must have turned the heat up, or repainted or something. You still wear shoes in the shower, but you and your friends know it's just because of those people on the next floor.
You can't be too careful.
(c) Lia Gay and Rebecca Hart, 1999. All rights reserved.

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