The Mouse

"At Chuck E. Cheese you can act like a kid
You can have more fun then you ever did
You can wiggle, you can giggle, you can flip your lid
Chuck E. Cheese's, where a kid can be a kid. " - Chuck E. Cheese Slogan


Hey allemaal,

Vandaag geen nieuws, maar wel een stukje tekst dat we in ' Creative Writing ' hebben besproken. Dit is een verhaaltje over een leerkracht die praat over een junior ( dat is een leerling in het voorlaatste jaar van high school ( ongeveer 16-17 jaar oud )). Hij beschrijft het feit dat leerlingen voor leerkrachten veel meer kunnen zijn dan namen op een puntenlijst of persoonlijkheden die ontoegankelijk lijken.

The Mouse

Tyrone is a junior in my creative writing class
during the day. After school, in order to support
his family & Tyrone Junior, he puts on his costume
& becomes the giant Chuck-E-Cheese Mouse.

He likes the job, likes to stroll around the restaurant
wearing the big mouse head, talking to the little kids
making them laugh, but once in a while, he says,
one gets scared & cries, so he scurries off to another table.

Often Tyrone, a heavy set black fellow, will fall asleep
in class, his head on the desk. Sometimes he even snores.
Today, however, he is alert, teeters way back in his chair
smiles largely, and happily flirts with the girls in the class.

I begin to explain that sometimes poetry doens't strike
us solely at the cerebral level, that we respond to it in a more
intuitive way - to its music, its nuance, its cadence & sound -
or to its shape on the page, the white negative space.

For instance, I continue : " Here is my favorite line of poetry
from Wallace Stevens : "They who left the flame freaked sun
to seek a sun of fuller fire." I have no absolutely no idea at all
as to what this line means, but it thrills me each time I hear it.

Tyrone leans back further in his chair until it touches the wall,
smiles his handsome know-it-all smile, and says : " Shit, man, I knows
what that mean ! These peoples, they be at a really good party,
but they just gets up & leaves to go to a much cooler party . "

I'm about to laugh at the simple mindedness of this -
his facile interpretation of the Steven's line that had for twenty
years enchanted and baffled me - when I realize how right he is,
this cheerful and mannish boy who was already a father -

a father who for his son each night becomes the mouse.

- Gary Blankenburg

Reaction by Ellen Shull ( college professor, Texas ) :

" This poem surely is the proof that we must love our work and consider our students as whole persons, not merely as names on the roll book or roster. I honor and emulate this poem's teacher, who can look beyond and understand the student who sometimes sleeps in his class. A teacher who is aware as all teachers must be "

X,
Pieter

P.S : Vragen mogen altijd gesteld worden als je iets niet begrijpt !