The Imp

Written in the style of a memoir. Probably someday will become part of them. Just me. Perhaps the Prologue on a book of them.

     I was just 16 years old when I grabbed my diploma.  I did not want to come to this graduation ceremony.  I hated this place.  I came from a bigger city, where I grew up my whole life, just 10 miles down the road.  That is where I should have been graduating, and I wouldn't have done it until next year.  Instead I was doing it now, in a hall full of plastic faces, and serpentine smiles, like a bunch of cut out paper dolls, each one more phony than the last.

     I grew up in Springfield, Illinois.  I had my own set of friends.  In eighth grade I had already been chosen to be a cheerleader in High School. This was before the advent of a poms' squad.   I am afraid this was not due to popularity, although it was a part of it--those were a lot of my friends, or any great screaming talent on my part.  I had never taken tumbling or dance.  Nope, I was chosen for this honor because I was a little bit of an imp of a thing, that you could toss to the top of anything, and did not weigh much.  It probably helped I knew how to fall.

     Unfortunately in 1975/1976, there was racial unrest.  The busing issue came to town.  Now in eighth, ninth and tenth grades I stood at about 4'1' tall and weighed 78 pounds.  I also had, and still have, a very sarcastic sense of humor,  a strong sense of right and wrong, a very good vocabulary, and a mouth that just won't quit.  Although I lived within a mile of Springfield High School, where I should have went, when they talked about busing, I was suddenly going to SouthEast High School, who had race riots every day.  My parents, thinking I would be dead inside a year, put their house up for sale.  They bought this plot of land in Rochester, Illinois, 10 miles down the road.  Welcome to suburbia, outside a city that is not really big enough to have suburbs. Rochester was soon to be the up and coming place, and somehow my parents knew that.  At the time it was a country bumpkin town, ran by 3 people who had a "name".  However, due to the busing issue, in coming years, people began flocking to this backwater.  So ironically, and as I have grown up in life, there is nothing I appreciate more than irony, my parents moved to this Godforsaken place because of me, and all I wanted was out.

       I need to go back to grabbing the diploma, while bored out of my mind, I listen to a hundred names who artificially walk up and grab theirs.  At least I have done something here.  I am grabbing mine in 3 rather than 4 years.  No mean feat really when I have been out of school for 3 months.  They told me last year I could graduate this year, if I took political science as a Junior, which supposedly wasn't offered until you were a Senior.  I did, and here I am.  This all came about because in my Freshman year I had a study hall.  I took it in the library because I loved to read.  The librarian was a decrepit old lady with a beehive, way out of date, in locks of silver.  Some enterprising young man came to this study hall with a straw and blew a spitball in her hair which stuck in her shellacked curls, and was funny.  I made the mistake of laughing out loud.  I was banned from the library and forced to suffer study hall in a classroom.  I never took another one.  I took a class instead.

     I was out of school for 3 months, because I was sick.  I think I had Scarlet Fever, but don't really know.  See my acceptance in my previous town was hard won.  I grew up as the crazy kid from the wrong side of the tracks.  I went to a school that was a bunch of doctor's and lawyer's kids.  My daddy was a Union Carpenter and never graduated high school.  As the matter of fact, he never made it beyond the 7th grade.  If that wasn't enough my parents were the Christian Scientist religion.  I was a weird mix.  I never went to a doctor.  I had an exemption form for everything known to God.  I was pulled out of health class.  My daddy was the original Christian Scientist,  and my grandmother sued my mother over this religion and lost.  When I got really sick, they could not make my parents take me to a doctor.  They quarentined our house.    I could not come back till every evidence of any rash was gone.  For years afterwards if I was either hot or cold you could see the imprint of that rash under the palms of my hands or the soles of my feet.  I survived, as I have survived everything, inspite of being an imp.  And surely on the scale of being judged not to.

     My name is called.  It is time to walk up and feel like I have accomplished something.  I do not feel this at all.  I feel like for the last three years I have been in a prison cell, and I am finally being set free.  I do the required walk, shake hands and grab with a magazine smile on my face, yes you cannot live here and not learn how to get by, you might hate it, but such is life.  I do the required toss of my of gold hat.  Yes, gold.  Maybe I did not like the school.  But gold really?  Who the hell looks good in it? Springfield High would have had crimson and black.  Can I have crimson and black?  Do I need to look all these years back at me in gold?  A color that suits hardly anyone very well.  A speaking statement about the town.  It suits no-one.  Least of all me.

    

     

   

    

     

Author's Note

I am still learning to write stories. Any thoughts are welcome here.

Reviews

[wordman]

this is a great story,maybe a great book coming

[Cyndy Robinson]

Thank you so much wordman. Still working on the story thing, if I can ever give up my poetry, lol. I need to be retired already, lol. I never seem to have the time I want.

[C.R. Fritz]

interesting story! could use a touch of editing, but content is great. will keep following!

[Cyndy Robinson]

Thank you CRFritz, somehow I missed when you commented on this. Thank you. It does need a lot of editing, but it is coming along.

[richieb]

Cyndy,
You are a skilled writer so the mechanics of story structure are well done. Your memoir is interesting but where the actual story is heading is a bit muddled. I know we should write what we know but some times a memoir can be restricting.
Perhaps using your life's experiences in a fictional setting can be more liberating and creative. In most of my fictional stories this works for me. I think our personal memoirs work better when they have a dramatic appeal, tug at the heart or a little "rags to rich's" story line .
I have read enough of your work to know you can be a fine story teller.
Richie b.

[Cyndy Robinson]

Thanks Richie. This needs a lot of work, as well as the other one. I think my idea was to create a series of short stories that stood alone, that were memoirs that could be made into a book. LOL. From someone who has never written one before. What I have found out is I can stand up in front of an audience and tell a story and pull almost anything off. Getting one to do the correct thing is much harder. What is stranger than that is I read books all the time. You would think I would be paying attention to the finer details of them. Nope. I have been reading on point of view etc. I have kind of left this here because there will be pieces I will use in other things. I find I get forgetful in old age. Used to write with a paper and pen. Now half the time I just write on here.

[richieb]

A good practice is to copy a few pages of your favorite authors or books. This slows down the reading effort and lets you see the inner workings of the writers style.

[Cyndy Robinson]

Take another look at it richieb. I did some editing in here, and pulled some stuff out for a separate story etc. It's still a little flat and to much of a narratation. That is going to have to wait a bit, still studying that, lol. But the direction it is going has been limited to one. It is better somehow. I could use some help with where in here I just love to run my mouth and put an opinion in that doesn't need to be there, lol. The rest I can flesh out and put what needs to be there. Maybe think of this as an outline? lol.