Amy Dillon
English 484- Writing Workshop Topics- The Short Story Cycle
Dan Stolar
4/16/19
Emulation #3
Your First Day of School
You wake up a minute before your alarm goes off. The alarm clock/radio is bright blue and screams at you in intensity the color you most associate with anxiety. The sunlight floods through your room, some into the blinds, some escaping them. The world you knew yesterday has gone out the window, into the street, skipping across the water of Lake Michigan like smooth, cold rocks.
Your mom calls your name twice before you tell her you are up. Your head is under your pillow, your hands holding it down.
“Get up, sleepy head! I am making your favorite breakfast,” your mom yells from down the hall.
Your sheets smell like lilacs, the scent of the laundry detergent your mom uses on them. Benjie, a Doberman puppy that your uncle bought you for your birthday trots across the room and drops a teddy bear squeak toy on the top of your blue and yellow quilt. You sit up at once at the feeling of pressure on top of your blanket, at the foot of your bed. Benjie barks until you throw the blankets to the right side of your bed, over your clothes on the floor. You swing your legs over the side of your bed and walk through the hall to sit at the table and eat the eggs and ham your mom made you for breakfast.
You are about to walk out the door when you remember you left your digital camera on the ledge of the kitchen counter. The camera is waiting there for you, and you place it carefully in your backpack and walk out the door. Your dreams of being a photographer for National Geographic flood your mind as you see Izzy, your best friend and next door neighbor, hop in the driver’s seat of her car and wave.
“Good luck on your first day, Seth!” Izzy yells through her open car window.
“Same to you!” you say. Izzy pulls out of the driveway and turns the corner, and her car fades into the distance until she is just a dot far down the road.
You turn the corner to get on the bus at the corner of Clark and Harlem. Twenty minutes later you are at the entrance of Wright College, the community college you’re planning to attend to get your prerequisites done, until you can go to Northeastern with Izzy.
You strut into photography with one goal in mind for the semester: to take at least one amazing photograph every day, in order to build a portfolio you can submit to all of the successful art magazines when you graduate. The ceiling of your room is plastered with photographs of your friends, family, nature, basketball games, and your dog, so that not even one speck of tan paint peaks out from under it.
The first picture you take as a college student is of the dark room. An hour into the class the teacher has called all of the students into it, into a small door in the corner of the room that opens up into a huge space once you walk through it. You are standing in the back of the dark room as Mr. Colgens explains how to develop pictures, and you are left flabbergasted because you have used a digital camera all of your life. Your teacher names the type of camera he wants each student to buy as you snap a picture of the back of the head of a student who is standing in front of you. He is wearing a Florida Gators baseball cap, the same mascot of the hoodie you have on. The colors blead through the red glow of an otherwise pitch black room, and this intrigues you because no colors should show up in the dark. You have your first picture.
Fifteen minutes before class is over, you and your fellow students are sitting in an oval in the center of a classroom, and the brightness is still burning your eyes. Mr. Colgens asks if anyone is interested in pursuing photography professionally. Your hand goes straight up and waves in the air.
“Yes, is it; Sam?” the teacher asks from the other side of the oval.
You roll your eyes impatiently.
“Seth,” you say, your name floating out into the center of the room. “And yes, I want to be a photographer for National Geographic, once I get my undergrad in art and my masters in photography.”
“Tell me, Seth,” the teacher says, her tone of voice mimicking a screeching cat pawing at a screen door, “What motivates you to pursue photography?”
Your eyes almost roll to the back of your head in excitement.
“I like capturing the moment,” you say, the simplicity of your words contradicting themselves.
“So what,” Mr. Colgens says, “What makes you think that that qualifies you to become a photographer?” Her eyes are glassy and cold, and you can see the green in them flicker from across the room.
“I think I have the stamina to create the perfect picture,” you retort, trying to keep the tone of your voice as serene as possible. “I believe art is perfect, even when someone thinks it is not, as long as you are sincere in your work. I think that it is everyone’s and my obligation to capture the moments we have and share them with others so that we can live on forever, even after we are dead. Even when people can’t hear our voice to understand what we speak; even when people can’t see the light in ours eyes that comes with the miracle of being alive.”
Mr. Colgens froze for a moment and then placed his hand over his chin. He sat in thought, placed his hand back down on his lap, and smiled.
The clock in the front lobby reads four o’clock when you reach the lobby, after your last class. There is a big brown armchair in the corner, and you sit down on it and plant your backpack on your lap. You take out your wallet to get out your U-Pass and to see if you have enough money to buy a sundae at the McDonalds across the street. You have three dollars and seventeen cents. You shove the money in your back pocket and walk across the street to the McDonalds. The sign in front advertises a coffee and hash browns for a dollar and fifty cents. The sun is sitting on top of the arch of the McDonald’s sign. You contemplate taking a picture of it, but you don’t because you don’t want to be blinded by the light. It seems dangerous, like trying to capture an eclipse with the inappropriate camera. Going blind is one of you greatest fears, because if you ever go blind, you wouldn’t be able to create your portfolio and be a photographer for National Geographic. Creating the great American photography portfolio is number one on your bucket list, and you won’t let anything or anyone stand in the way of your goal. Not even a snotty photography teacher who thinks he knows it all, you think to yourself as vanilla ice cream runs down your chin. You catch the bus home two hours later, after you do some homework alone at the booth. When you get home, Izzy’s car is pulled into the driveway, and the moon is suspended over her house.
I chose to emulate the second person point of view in Visit from the Goon Sqaud’s chapter 10, Out of Body. I liked reading things from a second person point of view, I thought it was an original an interesting way of writing, and so this was the element I chose to imitate from the book.