Family Ritual

One of my family’s rituals on Christmas Eve is that my grandmother buys things we call “poppers”. They’re shiny red, green, silver or gold long tube-like things. You pull both ends at the same time and they pop open. Each one has a different colored paper crown, a stupid joke, that always seems to be a lot more hilarious to us than they actually are, due in part to the drinking of wine and poinsettia’s (champagne and cranberry juice), and a small, silly plastic toy. The toys range anywhere from a “fortune telling” red, cellophane fish that you hold in your palm, a little pink plastic hair clip, or a little cardboard number game. Everyone wears their paper crown during the entirety of dinner, which when thought of in reality, seeing my grandfather and my twenty-nine year old male cousin, is hilarious because it doesn’t matter if they end up with a hot pink crown, they still have to wear it. Before we even begin to eat we open our poppers simultaneously at the same time and the things inside usually go flying out onto our plates. It’s a holiday tradition I remember following for as long as I can remember. I always look forward to it because even though it’s such a silly thing, it means a lot to me. My Christmas Eve wouldn’t be complete without it.

Free Write

I am always sick. If it's not one thing, it's another. I had mono around this time last year, and had pneumonia about a month and a half ago. Pneumonia didn't come as much as a surprise, seeing as i get it every winter, but it came early this year. My immune system sucks and it conflicts with school and work. Because when I get sick, unfortunately, I get REALLY sick. I even take vitamins on a regular basis and still manage to end up with the most random illnesses. I suppose I'm done ranting about that. I'm leaving for New Orleans tonight and I'm really excited. The one downfall is that right now, surprise surprise, I am sick. The weather while I'm their shouldn't make it any worse because the forecast for this weekend in Louisiana is sunny with a high in the 70s and low in the 50s. I'm going to pack prepared for rain and also accordingly to the expected temperature. It's me, my boyfriend Jake and our friends Lauren, Patrick and Bennett. We're going for Voodoo Fest and we're staying at La Maison St. Charles (long story as to how we ended up staying there). I need this vacation so bad and i especially need to get out of Memphis. School is kind of tough, but that's to be expected, there's drama at work, Jake and I have a sick kitty that we're trying to take care of and I'm all around just sick of Memphis.

"Under the Influence"

The green bottles in Under the Influence are very predominant throughout the essay. Sanders writes of these green bottles like they are more than just alcohol, but more like the demons that take his father away from him and his family. It is often mentioned how they are hidden in tool box drawers, crushed beneath hay in a barn, hurled into the woods and denied when found. He is just a little boy trying to protect and salvage as much of his family as possible. Not only does he write about the green bottles, but there is also another incident involving a bottle. His father threatens to "shut his mother up" by holding a milk bottle up above her face while he has her head yanked back by her hair. Sanders also uses the bible story of the lunatic and the swine, among others, to show his hatred for alcohol and confusion towards its appeal. Even on his 21st birthday, as well as throughout his adult life, he's very hesitant to even sip anything alcoholic. He see's how it affected him, his brother, his sister, and his mother and feels that it's his job as a parent to keep any thing of such nature as far away from his children as possible. He'd rather have his daughter label him a workaholic than an alcoholic. He fears the person he could become because of his father and his abuse of alcohol. Even though his father could go days, weeks, months, or years without a drop, Sanders and his family would still fear the day he would pick up those green bottles, beer cans, or wine and let the awful "dragon" back in that would control and change his father from a Dr. Jekyll to a Mr. Hyde. They all lived in fear, not only for his health, but fear of him leaving and really never coming back, fear of his harsh words and fear of the prospect of being hit. They were all so fearful and silent. The children felt the need to tiptoe around their sleeping father, or the dragon as he was labled in the essay, and they would lay still and quiet in their beds at night fearful of even moving an inch. His mother knew what was going on and did beg him to stop, but because of the angry nature of the beast and the disease as a whole, she never could quite get him to stop completely. It wasn't until doctors warned of how near to death he was that he put the bottle down, only to pick it back up 15 years later. Sanders never wanted to be like his father and that fear reflected upon his choices as an adult. He avoided bars, clubs, and parties where he knew alcohol would be served. He compared compared all the other neighborhood families and their own drunken fathers and husbands. He saw what they were capable of and feared it for his own family. He hated the gas station his father frequented for his booze. He even hated the picture of the brothers pictured on the label of the green bottles. He even wrote about how he would kill them if given the chance. His imagination went to great lengths when it came to thinking of ways to stop his father from having any sip of liquor. His 10 year old thoughts raced trying to come up with a way to change him completely. He wanted so badly to protect him of the nightmare he had become. He often wondered throughout his childhood if maybe he had been the perfect student or the perfect athlete that maybe the outcome would have been different, that maybe it was actually his fault. In all reality, it wasn't his fault or his familys, it was the fault of his father for making the decsions and poor judgements in his own life.

Reader Response to The Rake

The round kitchen table in the essay, The Rake: A Few Scenes from My Childhood by David Mamet, was made of wrought iron and had a glass surface. The author and his sister often associated this table with blood because of their violent and abusive step-father that often shattered the glass due to outrages of anger. The reason the glass and blood were associated with each other is because whenever Mamet’s step-father would break the glass, it seemed that he would also cut some part of himself from the impact and because when he or their mother would pick up the pieces, they would cut their hands on shards of glass thus resulting in it being the fault of the children for the whole incident. It is also mentioned that the glass was shattered by Mamet’s step-father multiple times due to his outbursts and angry nature. Therefore, in the minds of Mamet and his sister, that round, glass kitchen table created many violent scenes and resulted in replacing the top of it several times. Throughout the essay, the author refers back to yet another incident at that table. Not only were there the numerous incidents with his step-father shattering the table, but he points out another particular occasion when his sister was to be the lead in the school play. That night his sister sat down at the table for dinner and for whatever reason, she wasn’t hungry. This resulted in their mother pressing her for reasons as to why she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat. It’s explained as nervousness and excitement from the events of the evening to come. Unfortunately for her, their
mother’s strict demeanor resulted in her calling the drama teacher and telling her that her daughter would not be attending the play that night and that it wasn’t because of illness and that she understood that the teachers and students had worked very hard on the play, but still gave no explanation as to why she wouldn’t be performing that night. All because she was excited about her part in the play and couldn’t contain her excitement which resulted in a lost appetite and a very stubborn mother. Although Mamet wasn’t present during this incident, he was aware of it. The glass table in the nook of the family’s kitchen isn’t considered as a good place for memories and happiness in their home, but rather a place of unfortunate and violent events.

Relation to "Hashish is Marseilles" and "Street Hauntings"

I relate to these two essays in two ways. One being that when I travel, I enjoy time to myself to walk around and do what I want to do. Never has it been in a foreign country because I haven't been fortunate to experience that yet. Second being that I'm intrigued by the unknown. I'm quite a curious person. If I'm not sure of something, I ask. If i don't know how to do something, I figure it out. In the end it all pans out to me being hard-headed and curious all at the same time, two characteristics of mine that rarely go hand-in-hand. Chicago and New York are two places that I've visited more than once and both times I found and discovered new things to love about both. Chicago is cleaner and the cab drivers aren't as neurotic, but New York has the better hot dogs and the cab drivers are just crazy. I suppose that is a generalization, but I find it to be true. I jumped on top of a not moving cab once and the cab driver didn't even blink an eye. He actually drove off, but I'm sure I would have done the same if I were in his position. It was almost like, who is this crazy chick from Memphis jumping on the hood of my cab, and why? The second time I was in New York was during the Presidents Day blizzard. It was awesome. My two friends were bummed that they couldn't go shopping because everything was closed, but I got them to appreciate it because we rarely ever get snow like New York does, actually I don't even remember a time that we've had snow like that. Chicago is the same way. I fell in love with the art school there and I was actually surprised to see how clean their city was. I went with my art class one year and that was one of the best experiences of my life. We were given the opportunity to run around and do what we wanted at least three different times. It's were I actually met and became close to one of my best friends now. I enjoyed both essays in that they were both almost completely opposite, yet had a lot of the same things going on. I like different approaches to writing whether it be a personal experience written about a few days after, or just a written out chronological order of things in a story. I couldn't pick which one I enjoyed most if I wanted to, really. Because they were both the same yet completely different. And I find that I am more and more of an ambiguous person every day.

Personal Response

Around 6:45 a.m. on Monday October 1^st, I received a text from a friend saying there was a shooting on campus. I was immediately freaked out, yet still went back to sleep. When I finally woke up for the day a friend of mine, Jessica, came over and told me it was a student on the football team. I immediately thought about and called my best friend, Mackenzie, because she is a cheerleader for U of M. I also thought about Keenan, the football player that’s in my English class. Before Jessica came over I went to lunch with my mom and that’s all we could talk about. I’ve lost friends through train wrecks and car accidents, but never a shooting. It ties my stomach into knots just thinking about it. Jessica is five months pregnant and we got to thinking and talking about how life is going to be in 17 or 18 years when her daughter is in college. It’s really scary to think of it that way. Later that night I heard about yet ANOTHER shooting at Ole Miss. It all makes me feel so uneasy, anxious and sad. What makes a person fell that they have the right to take someone’s life from them? How could they possibly justify their actions? They can’t. They aren’t God. I don’t know the motives behind either shootings but it certainly is unfortunate and horribly wrong all together. Taylor was only 21 years old, just a year older than me. I feel like my life has just begun and that his had as well. It saddens me that there are such cruel people out there. It would be nice if everyone could just get along but it’s human nature for us to hate. And it’s human nature for us to make bad decisions, and to do the wrong thing. But to take someone’s life? Someone that has a family, friends and a social life? It’s disgusting. I’m not saying that people that don’t have those things don’t matter, I’m just focusing on Taylor here. It’s really disturbing that Memphis is the number one dangerous city in the U.S. And this is just another prime example as to why it is.