Shaving

Hello! I'm sorry that I have been absent for so long, life got busy. But hey, I'm back! My new lit teacher is really into quick writes and such, so a lot of those are going to be making their way up here. Updates will begin more regularly, so yay!

Okay back to the writing. We were given a picture of my lit teacher's children being "shaved" (with a comb) by their father. It was cute and heartwarming, and we had to do a quick write about it. She said any form of writing was okay, so I started to write a paper about how shaving is a symbol of growing up in our society. After not writing enough to hit the required word count, I decided to switch what I was writing about, and this is what resulted. I ended up not finishing in class but having to finish at home. Enjoy!

Shaving

One day my sons walked up to me and asked in unison,

“Daddy, can you teach us how to shave?”

I gave them a peculiar look. Why would boys so young want to shave? I wondered. My boys were twins, and they were both turning 11 the next month. There was not even a hint of peach fuzz on either of their rounded faces. Beyond that, the idea of taking a razor to my sons’ faces scared me. What if I accidentally cut them with the razor? I can’t do this to them, I thought to myself.

“What’s up? Why do you want to shave?” I asked.

“Well, all of the bigger boys said that they shave, and they teased us because we don’t. They called us children and teased us all week,” one of my sons replied. I thought about it, and decided there was a way I could do it without the risk of harming them. I would shave them without a real razor. I would use a comb.

“Well, let’s fix that! I’ll shave you both tomorrow morning,” I replied cheerily.

Sunlight streamed through my blinds and shot into my eyes. I squinted against the light. There was a big flomp as two extra bodies flew onto my bed. They jumped up and down, trying to get me to move.

“We’re shaving today, we’re shaving today!” They both shouted.

“Yes, yes boys, we are shaving today,”

“C’mon Dad, let’s go!” They practically dragged me out of the sheets and straight into my bathroom. I flipped on the light switch and blinked the blurriness out of my eyes. Opening the cabinet, I groped around for my stuff. They practically twitched with excitement as I readied all of the shaving supplies. I pulled out the shaving cream, my razor, and the comb I would be using for them. I lathered up our shaving cream in my bowl, then spread it onto my face first.
“Okay boys, I’m going to shave first to show you how it’s done. Then I will help you two shave. Sound good?” I asked.

“Yup!” They smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

I picked up my straight razor and began to skillfully pull it across my face, with the grain of the hairs. After creating a wake of smooth skin in the shaving cream, I dipped the razor into warm water to clean off the stubble filled cream. My sons looked amazed, as if I were some sort of magician. I continued to shave until I had cleared my entire face of the cream. Turning on the faucet, I washed off my face and gently patted it dry with a towel.

“And that’s how it’s done,” I finished. “It’s your turn now!”

I walked over to them and began to cover their chins in cream, just as I had done on myself. After I finished covering both of them, I walked one of them over to the mirror with me.

“Okay, I’m going to start. You ready?”

He nodded, trying to keep his smile from breaking across his face. I picked up the comb and turned his head gently so that I could get to the side of his face. Using the same motion that I had on myself, I cleared a strip of cream off of his face and then cleaned off the comb. I “shaved” him until I had completely cleared his face. I told him to wash his face off the same way that I had, and he did. He studied his reflection in the mirror, leaning in ever so slightly. He rubbed his cheeks and stepped back. I pulled my other son towards me and repeated the cycle. After washing and drying his face, he rubbed it as if he was checking its smoothness for a hint of missed stubble. He looked closer and nodded, showing his satisfaction.

“So, how was it? Did you enjoy shaving for the first time?” I asked. One of them frowned at his reflection in the mirror.

“It was different, but I don’t understand why the other boys bragged about it so much. It wasn’t that great,” he said.

“Yeah, I don’t see the big deal,” the other agreed.

“Well, now you’ve done it. Don’t let those boys tease you anymore, okay? If they tease you tell me right away,” I ordered.

“Okay, we will,” they chorused. “We’re gonna play outside today.”

“Be careful,” I said. As they ran out of my bathroom, I began to carefully put back the shaving supplies. Suddenly, I felt two sets of arms around my waist.

“Oh and Dad?” they said, “Thank you.” I smiled to myself as they sprinted out of the door once again. She would have loved to be here today. She would have been so proud, I thought to myself. I had been worrying about them since my wife had died, but at that moment I came to a realization. Even without her guiding grace, we could still be a family. Our family would turn out alright.

"Foolology"

In Language Arts, we had to write essays based on the poem "Foolology" by Ishmael Reed. I had a lot of trouble writing this one (due to extreme procrastination) but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

Here's the original poem:

Foolology

Shaken by his bad press, the wolf

presses north, leaving caribou to 

the fox,

Raven, the snow player gets his

before buzzards with bright red 

collars move in to dine near the 

bottom of a long scavenger line

This poem is about a skunk, no

rather about a man, who though

not of the skunk family uses

his round-eye the way skunks do 

After he eats, his friends eat

He is a fool and his friends are

fools but sometimes it's hard to 

tell who is the biggest fool this

fool or his fool friends

By the time they catch us

we're not there

We crows

Nobody's ever seen a dead crow

on the highway

First moral: Don't do business 

with people for whom April first

is an important date

they will use your bank balance to 

buy eight thousand pies, tunics,

ballet slippers with bells and 

a mail order lake in the middle of

a desert for splash parties

Second moral: Before you can spot the 

fools in others you must rid yourself

of the fool in you

You can tell a fool by his big mouth

Wow.  The section of Inquiry by Design we are working on as a class is supposed to be hard, but sheesh, I had trouble wading through this one. Even after breaking it into pieces (snow player= drug dealer?) I had no idea what to make of the poem. We worked in groups to decode the difficulty, and ended our discussions with a class Socratic Seminar. I finally came up with a thesis that I liked, and I had to write about the message that Reed was trying to send. All in all, I was proud what I came up with in the end.

My paper:

“Foolology”

“Next time you point a finger, I’ll point you to the mirror.” One of the key lines in the song “Playing God” by Paramore, its message is similar to that stated in the poem “Foolology” by Ishmael Reed. The message in the poem is that personal faults must be acknowledged before looking for faults in others, even if it is difficult. The entire poem demonstrates this theme from the “morals” that it gives, to the perspective of the author.

The poem includes what the author calls “morals” at the end, little lessons to be taken away from the poem. The second moral states, “Before you can spot the/ fools in others you must rid yourself/ of the fool in you” (30-33). To be able to accurately judge someone, the person judging must know that they themselves are imperfect. His second moral also means that only people who have no faults can judge others, when in reality, nobody is perfect. By this logic, there should be no judging within a group or society, because only people who are faultless should be able to judge others.

The perspective that the author chooses to take also furthers this theme. The final message stated in the poem, “You can tell a fool by his big mouth” (34), combined with the previous part of the moral make the author seem as though he is a fool. This is because describes ways that other people can be fools, therefore he thinks he has ridden himself of the fool within him. The tone in which he writes the poem makes it sound as if he separates himself from the fools, or that he is greater than them. He takes on a gloating tone, and by doing that, he makes himself a fool as well, because of his bragging or “big mouth.”

Reed spends the entire poem describing fools and the ways not to be a fool. He gives morals to help, and also demonstrates how he himself is still a fool. This proves the idea that it is hard to stop being a fool, because it becomes a habit. This message can be related to life too. People have the capability to be better, and not be fools, by being humble without bragging and not judging others when they are not perfect either. It may be hard to change, as Reed shows, but making the small changes will better society as a whole.

Set Pieces

This blog is called A Set Piece a Day for a good reason. I love the idea of set pieces. Little snippets of writing that tell simple stories without having to be too straight forward, or overly explained. Like little gems, set pieces glitter, and they enthralled me when I first heard about them in Language Arts. We got to try our hand at them, and I fell in love with the first one that I wrote:

It was cold. Strange for such a sunny city, but it was. I swam out far into the bay, the waves urging me on like playful nymphs, tugging me further out. I looked over, to assure myself that I was not alone. She was there, swimming by my side. We cut through the small swells, as smooth as the breeze. We began laughing with the joy of it all, effortlessly paddling out, further and further. We mused about going clear to the other side. Laughing some more, we began to swim back, as to not frighten our parents. The water was cold, but we didn't care. We were happy.

Now for the explanation. I spent the last week of summer in San Diego with my Dad's girlfriend and her daughter Kim (She is now my stepmother, and Kim is my stepsister). We were swimming in the bay by our hotel, and it was the first time that I truly connected with her. I had so much fun in San Diego. I decided to write about the one moment where we truly connected, and this was it.