This certainly brought back memories of our Christmases in FL and TX. But we did have some Christmases when we needed heat on. Just no snow.
As always, I suggest that you read your poem aloud to see if there are any lines that need tweaking. I used to offer suggestions on this, but fixed another's poetry is quite different than making suggestions about spelling and grammar in stories and articles.
Welcome to Writing.com. I hope that you find it as welcoming and educational as I have in my 23 years of being here.
I enjoyed your word picture of the writer, Alex. Your descriptions were both sensible and entertaining.
I wondered about him waking unwilling to exert himself very much. But I thoroughly understood him being full of anticipation and apprehension. Oh, the life of a writer.
Indeed, where is the blame? You presented this to us in 2009, but little has changed. It certainly has not gotten better.
Your poem is good, as is your piece about how you chose the topic.
My heart has always aches for the children who are bullied. When baby boomers were young, we were taught to ignore people because "sticks and stones can break your bones, but names will never hurt you." But words can hurt.
I used to love Saturday Night Live...in the early days, when comedians could and did make fun of everything and everybody and were funny. People didn't get their feelings hurt, mainly because if they were making fun of one group now, we knew that they would be laughing at another group in the next skit or the next show.
My son and I did watch the week before when Shane Ellis was back. For a short time, we were reminded of the old shows.
I'm sorry that you have experienced these things. I wish that I could say that I've never seen such things, but I have.
I remember being 7 years old when a beautiful black family came to our church on Christmas Eve. The 2 girls and I waved at each other, and I planned on talking with them when church was over and we had cookies and hot cocoa. But then they were gone. I was told that one of the ushers had told them they might be more comfortable in another church. Believe me, even at that young age, I was thrilled to learn that the pastor had told the long time usher that he might be more welcome elsewhere.
I was in 6th grade when the first black family moved into our suburban neighborhood. My parents told me to be nice to the 6th grade boy, which I thought was an odd thing to say. I was nice to everyone. I heard some of my friends' parents talking about how property values would decline now. Our little neighborhood gang wondered how that could be true. Most of us had blue collar dads and stay at home moms. The black mom and dad were professionals. He was a doctor and she was a nurse. To us, it sounded like property values should increase with them in the neighborhood.
In high school, we moved from the suburbs into the city. On the street where we lived were just as many black families as white ones. The deadbeats were white trash, people who scammed the system and everyone knew it. The best dads in the neighborhood were the black dads. One chose his work schedule just so he could greet his kids (and all of us who passed their house) after school. He would ask about our day, inquire about our tests. He was awesome.
Children are not born with prejudices. Parents and society train them that way.
My own son didn't even see skin color in kindergarten. His class consisted of only 10 kids. When he came home grinning because he had a girlfriend, I asked if she was the redhead. Nope. Was she the blonde? Nope. So I asked if she was the black girl. He informed me that there was no black girl in his class. Then he described the most beautiful skin color that he had ever seen, a caramel color that he wished we could all be.
We do all perceive things differently. Take my high school. I moved from the suburbs where in high school, there were 2 black families to the city where I perceived the percentage of black kids to be 30%. At our 50th graduation anniversary, we learned that the black kids thought that they were only 10%. And all of us were wrong. The actual percentage was 20%.
I graduated in 1970. Our class president and secretary/treasurer were both black. Our star quarterback was black, as was the head cheerleader.
We fully expected that the world would become what Rev Martin Luther King Jr wanted, one where people were judged for their character, not their skin color.
We're all still waiting for that, aren't we?
You have written this well.
Thanks for sharing both your story and your faith.
What a wonderful story. Makes me want to live in a world where we all have huge oak trees like that one to wish upon and spouses with which to walk. It does make me curious, though, about how that worked. Guess I'm going to have to look at one of the oak trees nearby.
Everyone should be seemingly foolhardy when it comes to the rest of the world. They are not walking in our shoes!
I was always one who took the words of people quite seriously. If they decided that I could not possibly succeed at something, I had to prove them wrong. 99% of the time, I did. The other 1%, I valiantly tried.
We likely don't share the same box category, but it appears that we have both been bold. Good for you. Only you can define you.
In my early days here at Writing.com, I would have eagerly made suggestions about how to perfect your poem. Today, I do things differently. I do think that it needs to a bit of tweaking, but that is your job. Reading your poem will reveals a bit of awkwardness. Perhaps as you do so, you will see what I mean. Focus on the length of the lines, the number of syllables.
Your spelling and grammar are perfect. Your piece was written in 2020 and updated in 2022. I wonder what your feelings are now about the world around us.
Will there ever be a time without war? Or will it always be topsy turvy?
Thank you for sharing this experience with us. I already knew from your introduction that everything was going to work out. Still...it was a bit frightening to read. I have had a few of those incidents myself. (I think that I wrote about one here. Miracles Do Happen)
As always, you completed your task and followed the prompt well. And you shared one of your faith stories. Thanks for that.
As I read your poem aloud, the flow and rhyming were good. The message was one that we have all at least thought, if not expressed. Why are some taken from us in the midst of their prime?
My Grandma had some thoughts about that. She would say that God needed another tenor or alto or whatever for the Heavenly choir. Or God needed another violinist for His orchestra. We'll never know until we get to Heaven ourselves, but will we care then?
Hi, John. Welcome to Writing.com. I first read your article, then I read your bio. It made sense that you could present common sense or wisdom in so few words, and do it well. Being a marketing person and a writer is a good combination.
I loved how you showed us the number of minutes, hours, even seconds that every individual has to make a difference each and every day.
Personal responsibility is important, isn't it? As is giving credit to the One.
You definitely followed the prompt. Your poem does convey being far away and uncertainty.
As I read it aloud, it flowed well.
With the reference to your country, I had to look at your portfolio to confirm what I concluded. Yep. It says that you are from Australia. Of course now I'm wondering if you are a fan of The Block.
I truly enjoyed reading this. I have been here over 22 years and have developed friendships and discovered wonderful writers. It's always nice to hear what others think about the experience.
As I read your poem aloud, there were a few lines that I might tweak a bit to make it flow just a tad better. In my early years here, as I was working as an editor for a newspaper and being paid for content on 4 other sites, I probably would have given you specific ideas for those tweaks. Today, I just suggest that writers read their own writings aloud. If they don't stumble like I did, then the problem is probably mine and not the writer's.
Love the title. And live that you decided to write a poem using words beginning with P and Q. It was fun to read, and I have to admit that you sent me to the dictionary for one word. Way to go! Grandma always said that we should strive to learn something new every day.
Your poem is an excellent reminder that what we do and say affects others. It's heartbreaking when someone's loved one dies and the last thing that their family member said was unkind.
Wow. What a way to leave everyone hanging. Well done. It allows the reader to ponder what might have happened.
I would change thos rather long sentence:
It first happened in high school when he would walk outside his Berkeley home in the middle of the night not knowing where he was going, he would walk for miles before returning home exhausted by his nighttime rambles.
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