Charlie at the Museum

One hand holding onto his older sister, Anna's hand, Charlie kept the other one clutching to the black metal bars that encased the dinosaur display at the local museum. He looked up to his mentor with wide, glistening chocolate eyes. 

"Anna, w-will you tell me about the dinotaurs?"

The blond girl grinned at her little brother, glad to have him. The look Charlie gave her further showed that viewed her almost like a second mother.

"Of course," Anna messed with Charlie's light brown hair.

"Yay!" Charlie jumped up and down, clapping his hands wildly. He listened tentatively as Anna explained the difference between carnivores and herbivores.

"So... so d-do carbimores eat only meat and no plants? What am I? Am I a carbimore or a ermishore?" Charlie was eager to know.

"You," Anna started slowly, still grinning at her little brother as they made their way to the next exhibit. "Are an omnivore."

Charlie looked as though he had just been told the meaning of life. 

"A-a omnivore?" He stuttered. "What's that, Anna?"

"An omnivore is someone who eats both plants and meat. And although sometimes you don't want to eat your plants, and mom has to beg you to eat your broccoli, you still eat it. Which means you're an omnivore. You see?" 

"Oh." Charlie nodded his head matter-of-factly as though this was something he knew all along. Anna pretended he had.

Charlie shrugged his shoulders, still gripping Anna's hand as they sauntered over to the next dinosaur skeleton. 

"Anna what kind of dinotaur is that?" Charlie furrowed his eyebrows.

Anna was milking the feeling of being relied on.

"A T-Rex."

"What sound does a T-Rex make, Anna?"

Anna made a loud "Rawr" sound, enough to make the people around them stare. But she didn't mind.

"Now you try."

Charlie copied her.

"Good!" Anna giggled. "Now, I'm a T-Rex, I'm going to get you."

Anna happily chased her brother throughout the museum, knowing she shouldn't be running, but completely not caring.

As he was running, Charlie got caught up in escaping from the big bad T-Rex. His heart was racing, palms were sweating, and he knew he had to get away somehow. But how? That's when he saw it.

Yes! There it was! Right in front of him. A bush in front of a "Plants are cool!" display. This is where he would make his escape. Silently, he slipped into the grass bush, still breathing fairly heavily, but definitely feeling safer. That was when he heard the roar of a dinosaur right behind him. 

But when he looked behind him, it wasn't Anna. No, it was a real life dinosaur. He stood up and ran the opposite direction, the orange, red, and yellow striped Tyrannosaurus following closely behind him. He ran as fast as he could, until his legs just couldn't run anymore. But when he looked around, he noticed he wasn't in the museum anymore. Charlie knew when he saw the barren landscape, volcanoes, and caves that he had gone back in time and was in the time of the dinosaurs!

Charlie quickly found a cave to hide himself in, his heart racing as he sat down on the dirt floor. The young boy heard the T-Rex coming for him, his feet stomping wildly on the dust ground. Charlie was silent.

Luckily, the dinosaur stomped right past the cave and and past Charlie as well.

"I'm safe!" Charlie said to himself triumphantly. I'm safe.

But where was Anna?

"There you are you little booger. Now I'm going to eat you!" Suddenly, Anna emerged from the shadows of the cave behind him, and scooped him up, and shaking him wildly.

Just as Charlie was about to ask how Anna had gotten here, he realized that he wasn't in the land of the dinosaurs anymore. He was back in that museum. And while boring in comparison to the time of the dinosaurs, Charlie loved the museum; for the reason and the reason only that Anna was there with him.

Anna set him down on the carpet gently. 

"Okay you little monster. Do you wanna go look at the mummies now?"

Dinotaurs

Charlie is five years old. He learned about dinosaurs today.

Did you know there are two types of dinotaurs? One kind eats plants, and the other kind eats meat. But they are both types of dinotaurs. My favorite kind of dinotaur is the t-rex, and he goes like this-- RAWRRRR. He is my favorite because he is the scariest type of dinotuar. Another thing I like besides dinotaurs is to play at the park with the other kids. Today, I met a boy named Riley and he likes the swings best but I like the slides more. I like the slides because, uhm, you can like slide down them and they're fast and I like to go fast. Do you know what else I like? I like popsticles because uhm, they're cold and when it's hot I like cold things, and I really like the flavor orange. But you can also get grape popsticles, and strawberry popsticles, and cherry popsticles. Do you want to know another fact about dinotaurs? Some dinotaurs have spikes on their backs and they use them for when an emeny attacks them they charge at them and go like this-- RAWRRR!

Today I drew a pitcher for my mommy, and it had, uhm, it had a sun and it had me and mommy holding hands. I drew it because I was at the doctors, but I wasn't sick, I had to go because my sister Anna was sick but, in the room where I waited for Anna to get done talking to the doctors, they had crayons and papers and I colored the pitcher for mommy and I was going to draw one for Anna but I couldn't, because she got done too fast. It made me sad.

But also, today my babysitter came over and her name is Kate and she always makes me brownies and lets me have a whole brownie. She told me that giraffes eat leaves. I want to eat leaves. Mommy says that I can't because leaves are only good for giraffes and not little boys like me.

What it takes to be a Poet

Teagan Matthias
March 6th, 2013
Period 1
Creative Writing: Spare
What it takes to be a Poet  


Poetry. The word itself is a broad term, and when most people think about it, they think of some old guy who died two-hundred years ago and the life of whom is not important to life today, and does not pertain to you. I know I sure did. Truth be told, I walked into Creative Writing class on the first day of second semester, and when my teacher told me that I was going to be writing poetry, I groaned internally. Why you may ask? Because poetry had always been presented to me in a way that wasn’t exciting. Wasn’t important, or pertinent to my everyday lifestyle. And if you think that way, then prepare to be proven wrong.

In the documentary "I Am", Tom Shadyac discovers the world around him, most likely for the first time as he has been so sheltered as a child and even as an adult, living a kushy life as a director. Living in big castle-like homes and bathing in bathtubs that were twice the size of my bedroom, while watching television on his seventy-two inch plasma is most likely all he's known for his entire life. The movie presents Shadyac interviewing historians, scientists, and many other important people, asking them crucial questions about life in general, and what it takes to be happy (spoiler alert: the answer is not being super-rich). So when the question is posed: "Is Tom Shadyac a poet?", the fast and simple answer is "No. He doesn't write poetry. Duh." But then you have to dig deeper. Do you have to write poetry to necessarily be a poet?

One of the easiest things to do, would be to automatically say yes to that question. This is because that's all we've been taught our entire lives, is that everything is black and white and there is no deeper meaning to anything. And isn't that what society wants us to believe? But then on the opposite side you have all these conspiracy theorists who believe that nothing is what it seems and everything you've experienced and will continue to experience is a lie. Plain and simple. Don't like it? I'm sorry. That's how life is. And like Taylor Mali's poem "How falling in love is like owning a dog" and "The art of disappearing" by Naomi Shihab Nye similarly, Shadyac proves to us that almost nothing we see in life is genuine. Even those we believe love us so dearly, like a boyfriend, or girlfriend or significant other or whatever can as easily turn around and bite us as easily as they can be our best friend or loved ones. Of course, some may argue that family is forever, and that may be true, but it's not always like that, and that's one of the many lies that society loves oh-so-much to spoon feed you as a child.

So realizing that, and how similar Shadyac and the above poets who do write poetry are, it's easy to tell, for me, personally, that Shadyac is a poet. My reasoning? Don't poets like to convey us valuable messages about life in a creative way? That's what we've always been taught, correct? And isn't that exactly what Tom Shadyac is doing in his movie? Arguably, yes. That's exactly what he's doing when he takes us to different people, scientists telling us that we are affected by the universe and vice versa, and that our heart is so much more effective than our brains. So doesn't that teach us overall a lesson? And isn't that lesson that people are not affectionate, but animals are and that basically we should be more like animals in general? Not only that, but that compassion is the only thing that will really truly satisfy us, and not greed and money.

In my mind, Shadyac definitely qualifies as a poet, whether he writes poetry or not.