Childhood Narrative:
Pluff Mud and Peanuts
We spent childhood summers at our beach house on Edisto Island. One especially long summer, we sat around a pile of Mama's home-boiled peanuts with a view of the marsh that could keep us occupied for days with its own story. The cooking peanuts stank up the whole house, but they were worth it. Davis and I fought to collect the most "jackpot peanuts", our term for a pod of four or even five nuts. I was convinced they tasted the best.
We are too close in age, my brother and I, and it has always gotten us into trouble. Some careless span of summer-time later, we found ourselves in the shed rummaging through beach relics, old but still holding on to their manufactured tropic charm. Old kites and broken beach chairs littered the room, but led the way to another kind of jackpot for my brother and I: a box of matches. We were mesmerized by the quick scratch against the box, the whoosh when ignited, the sizzle and smell of the burned out flame. We lit match after match, blowing them out like birthday candles, or holding them between two fingers until we got scared and extinguished the tiny fire, burning just millimeters from our skin.
The same nose that thought it wise to boil 10 pounds of peanuts in a small, hot house also had the keenest sense for danger, or misbehaving children. My mother burst into the shed, furiously yelling, "You're gonna burn this house down! How stupid are you? Where did I go wrong?!" Whenever we get into trouble, Mama likes to go on about her failures as a mother. She began her long-winded lament as my brother, a true middle child used to being scolded, stood remorseless. I, on the other hand, felt as red hot in the face as those matches. I could have burned the house down. I could have killed my whole entire family. They would have burned to death in this house that smells like boiled peanuts and pluff mud.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
1/19/2017
Sarah Nickles
ENGL 4850
1/19/2017
As a young writer, I viewed writing as deeply personal and never to be shared or discussed openly. Assignments were for the teacher's eyes only, and if given the opportunity to write in a more public forum, my language, style and tone had to be kept in constant check so as to elicit the ideal response. As I got older, my English major parents practically begged to edit my high school papers. I rejected this favor every time because of how embarrassing I imagined sharing my writing with "critics" would be. Not everything I wrote was a diary entry, but I saw writing as an extension of my thoughts, intellect and potential, exposed to the world. (And why wouldn't I think that if writing in high school is either a punishment or a graded assignment??). College finally helped me accept help from my parents, professors and peers as it became not only a requirement at times but a beneficial learning process. I have been pushed out of my comfort zone when asked to share writing but have seen the huge improvements in my own writing and collaborative skills as a result. Because of this, I hope to incorporate peer review and more casual writing assignments in my future classroom. For me, writing should not just be something done for a grade. I relate to Joan Didion's "Why I Write" in that I find it hard to accept being a "writer" without an explicit purpose other than to write, or to discover things I have yet to write. She ends her piece by saying she would have no reason to write if she had all the answers. I feel this is a healthy approach to writing in the classroom; writing should be exploratory and open-ended, not to be hindered by the remedial cycle of unmet standards described by Shaughnessy as part of "Guarding the Tower".
We already know the prevalence of writing in current students' lives on sites like Twitter or Facebook; I think honing in on the writing people often overlook could increase the value of the skill by making it more accessible. Personally, I write to remember or to reflect, or to entertain. I have a friend who keeps a notebook in which she scribbles down funny things she hears throughout the day. I write my goals and fears down, I write out my prayers, I write long angry emails that I immediately delete, I even write what I tell myself could be some amazing, profound short story or poem but ends up being one sentence. I spend too long composing Instagram captions or Facebook statuses. The content of this constant writing shifts based on the audience and the medium, and I honestly don't really know why I write most of it. Maybe for the likes? Maybe so I can remember the day 10 years down the line? Maybe to organize my thoughts? All I know is that writing for me ranges from random scribbled lists to extensively composed papers, with a million things between.
ENGL 4850
1/19/2017
As a young writer, I viewed writing as deeply personal and never to be shared or discussed openly. Assignments were for the teacher's eyes only, and if given the opportunity to write in a more public forum, my language, style and tone had to be kept in constant check so as to elicit the ideal response. As I got older, my English major parents practically begged to edit my high school papers. I rejected this favor every time because of how embarrassing I imagined sharing my writing with "critics" would be. Not everything I wrote was a diary entry, but I saw writing as an extension of my thoughts, intellect and potential, exposed to the world. (And why wouldn't I think that if writing in high school is either a punishment or a graded assignment??). College finally helped me accept help from my parents, professors and peers as it became not only a requirement at times but a beneficial learning process. I have been pushed out of my comfort zone when asked to share writing but have seen the huge improvements in my own writing and collaborative skills as a result. Because of this, I hope to incorporate peer review and more casual writing assignments in my future classroom. For me, writing should not just be something done for a grade. I relate to Joan Didion's "Why I Write" in that I find it hard to accept being a "writer" without an explicit purpose other than to write, or to discover things I have yet to write. She ends her piece by saying she would have no reason to write if she had all the answers. I feel this is a healthy approach to writing in the classroom; writing should be exploratory and open-ended, not to be hindered by the remedial cycle of unmet standards described by Shaughnessy as part of "Guarding the Tower".
We already know the prevalence of writing in current students' lives on sites like Twitter or Facebook; I think honing in on the writing people often overlook could increase the value of the skill by making it more accessible. Personally, I write to remember or to reflect, or to entertain. I have a friend who keeps a notebook in which she scribbles down funny things she hears throughout the day. I write my goals and fears down, I write out my prayers, I write long angry emails that I immediately delete, I even write what I tell myself could be some amazing, profound short story or poem but ends up being one sentence. I spend too long composing Instagram captions or Facebook statuses. The content of this constant writing shifts based on the audience and the medium, and I honestly don't really know why I write most of it. Maybe for the likes? Maybe so I can remember the day 10 years down the line? Maybe to organize my thoughts? All I know is that writing for me ranges from random scribbled lists to extensively composed papers, with a million things between.
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