Lovers
My mother went to Barnard on a full scholarship. She commuted from home, two hours a day on the subway. One night after a Columbia party, she was up a ladder taking down crepe paper when an orange hit her on the back of the head. It thumped to the ground and rolled under a stool, where my father knelt to retrieve it. He tossed the orange across the room to a friend — his intended target — and offered my mother his hand.
In my version, she shakes off his attempts to help her down from the ladder. Does not speak to him for months because she’s so offended at being hit on the back of the head with the orange. Looks the other way when he passes on the street. Starts dating his roommate. In my version, the roommate can’t be there for a date they’re supposed to have. He has an emergency to deal with — a death in the family, a last-minute pinball competition at the pizza place, what have you. My father answers her knock with as much grace and charm as he can muster. "Hello," he says. "Are you here to see Bob?"
"Yes," she says, stepping cautiously over the threshold.
"He isn’t here," my father says. "He had to go to a funeral/pinball semi-final/what-have-you."
My mother: "Oh." Of course, she could just step back across the threshold and find another way to spend her evening. But in my version she does not. She sits on the couch, tugging her mini skirt to cover more of her nicely shaped legs. My father brings out a basket of butter crackers and wedges of cheese. They talk about politics, literature. Something. What would my parents discuss during their first conversation? Now, after thirty years of marriage, their communication isn’t even verbal; each speaks through the other’s eyes. But how did they communicate then, when they were still new?
Of course, this night kicked off the ravenous affair that would become my parents’ marriage. In my version, they could not keep their eyes (or their hands) off each other. They went everywhere in each others’ company: the dining hall, where my mother sneaked my father in on her meal ticket; the library, where he tossed spitballs into her hair; the movies, where they nuzzled at the back of the room, my father attempting a hand on her thigh, my mother staring straight ahead, her arms and legs rigid.
In the 19th century, the population in Chicago was quickly rising to great numbers. In 1850, population reached a great 30,000. Areas in all parts of Chicago started to become extremely over crowded especially downtown. At this point, all structures were built out of wood including buildings, streets, and even sidewalks (“Chicago Fire of 1871”). About one hundred days before the great fire occurred, not even an inch of rain had fallen throughout the city, and heavy, strong winds were blowing through Southwest. Fires were a very common obstacle at the time, but nothing was even close to the fire of 1871. On October 8th, firemen received a call from the neighbor of Catherine O’Leary. Neighbors reported seeing a number of flames appearing from the cow barn. Firemen instantly spotted the fire but miscalculated how big it really was. This event became historically known as the Chicago Fire of 1871 (“People 7 Events”). The three effects of the Chicago Fire of 1871 were the financial and political
The following story was told by a University of Maryland senior, told to her before moving into her dormitory freshman year. The girl, an Indian born and raised in Maryland, now twenty one years old, recounted the story in a coffee shop in a dimly lit corner over a cup of black coffee late at night.
Chelsea, the daughter of Ethel and Norman, is at a very difficult stage in her life. She has divorced already and is back in the dating game, this time her partner is a dentist named Bill who has a 13 year old son, Billy. Billy stays with her parents while her and Bill travel around Europe, and elope in Brussels, consequently causing her boyfriend’s son to become her step son. Step parent/step children families are becoming increasingly commonplace now. Divorce and remarriage rates are higher now than ever in the past, and with that comes a rise in the blended family. The relationship between Billy and his step mother, Chelsea, seems quite amiable. Though she is an adult now, her father’s acceptance is something that Chelsea has always craved. After returning from Europe, much to her delight and dismay, she learns of how well Billy and her father got on while she was away, despite the initial
When she first invites Michael to sleep in her home, she does so instinctively--then later wonders to her husband whether he'll steal something. She tells off her friend for suggesting there's something inappropriate about having a "large, black boy" sleep in a house with her teenage daughter, then goes home and asks her daughter if
Mrs. Rayfield wrote a great article about the devastation left over after this massive fire. I found that her accounts were very detailed and had good pictures to go along with them. I decided to use this source in my essay because she also showed the good effect that the fire had on the city not only the bad. She had a complete different point of view.
To understand the issue of concussions in the NFL we must first understand exactly what a concussion is. A concussion is a minor traumatic brain injury that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull. Severe concussions can cause loss of consciousness and/or forgetfulness. However, you do not need to lose consciousness to have a concussion. Minor concussions usually cause headache, nausea, dizziness, and tiredness. An NFL study showed that most concussions occur when one player delivered a hit to the side of the head of another, and when the player was either standing still or moving slowly. These hits that cause concussions pack an average force of 980-pounds. Concussions affect professional athletes as well as amateur or youth football players. Studies have shown that high school football players are nearly twice as likely to get concussions as college football players and high school athletes in other sports. Also, they show that 47% of high school football players say they suffer a concussion each season. As a result about 250,000 people under the age of 19 went to the emergency room with concussions in 2009, compared with 150,000 in 2001.
Gaitskill’s “Tiny, Smiling Daddy” focuses on the father and his downward spiral of feeling further disconnected with his family, especially his lesbian daughter, whose article on father-daughter relationships stands as the catalyst for the father’s realization that he’d wronged his daughter and destroyed their relationship. Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” focuses on Mel and his attempt to define, compare, and contrast romantic love, while leaving him drunk and confused as he was before. While both of my stories explore how afflicted love traumatizes the psyche and seem to agree that love poses the greatest dilemma in life, and at the same time that it’s the most valued prospect of life, the two stories differ in that frustrated familial love causes Gaitskill's protagonist to become understandable and consequently evokes sympathy from the reader, but on the other hand frustrated romantic love does nothing for Carver's Protagonist, except keep him disconnected from his wife and leaving him unchanged, remaining static as a character and overall unlikable. In comparing “Tiny, Smiling Daddy” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, together they suggest that familial love is more important than romantic love, which we relentlessly strive to achieve often forgetting that we’ll forever feel alone without familial love, arguably the origin of love itself.
The start if college is like the end of one’s childhood. Yet I had no intension of letting that go when I woke up yesterday at 7:00 am. Still, like high school, my mom dropped me off and picked me up; copping almost the exact same routine from the four years I spent in high school. Just as I thought this ought to be the easiest way of transportation, my mom proved me wrong once we reached the University of Washington’s parking lot.
Indeed, the reader is given such diverse accounts of marriage, and it is the intricate task of the reader not only to integrate the meanings of tales, but to individually excavate the narrative voice to understand this meaning.
Although their love has endured through many years, it has come to an end in the story. All throughout the story the couple is reminiscing about their life and while they are there are some odd details that are strewn throughout.
It was my first year at the most venerable institution in the world, and my high-school dreams had been achieved. Yet, that fall, I was feeling empty inside. As I drowned my sorrows in a latte at Au Bon Pain near the "T" entrance, I noticed a large crowd gathering outside. I later learned that a short time before, an undergraduate running to the co-op had carelessly knocked a homeless man to the ground. As I looked up from my latte, I saw a homeless man crawling around the sidewalk, yelling something about being
Did you know that the best kinds of lovers are the people that start out as your friend? This is shown in the lyrics of the R&B song "Lovers and Friends", sung by Usher, Ludacris, and Lil Jon. This song is about two people who have been friends for a long time and now are ready to take the step into being lovers. In "Lovers and Friends" the writers use sensory description and figurative language to show the theme that friends make the best lovers.
Pyramus was the cute boy next door, and Thisbe the prettiest girl in the entire neighborhood. They lived right next door to each other. Their parents were in a dispute over rent money; Thisbe’s father was the manager of the apartments and Pyramus’s parents had been late on their payments for a few months now. The kids were not allowed to talk or to see each other. One thing, however, they could not forbid- their young and carefree love that pound in each others hearts. They conversed by signs and glances, and the fire burned more intensely for being covered up.
As a family's lineage develops, there may be apparent differences in the way of thinking, attitude, and devotion to tradition between the generations. These differences or developments can either build up friction between generations, or in some cases ultimately heal the discord between other generations. Both Julia Alvarez's contemporary short story, "The Kiss," and Chinua Achebe's classic "Marriage Is a Private Affair" reveal the conflict that can erupt when one generation of a family diverges from its traditional or family values. Both accounts display differences in the way of thinking of the conflicting parties and touch upon the aspect of healing their generation gap by offering some kind of appeasement.
Awaking at 7:00 a.m. on the cool morning of December 7, 2003, I prepare for a long day. I put on the spandex and T-shirt that I will wear during the tryout at Northeastern Junior College. By 7:30 a.m., my family is walking over to the neighboring hotel's restaurant for our breakfast. It did not take long to decide that I wanted two golden-brown, buttermilk pancakes with warm maple syrup for breakfast. Both of my parents knew what they wanted right away and as usual, we were all waiting for my little sister to decide. Finally, she decided on the pancakes. It took only ten minutes to get our food and what a relief that was considering my stomach sounded like there was a lion inside. The pancakes were delicious, and my dad's biscuits and gravy was yummy. However, the cinnamon roll my mom order was hard as a rock and she had to pour maple syrup over it. That did not help it at all. After breakfast, we returned for some lounge time in the hotel room.