Framing the Assignment: My students have just recently finished reading two very different stories, Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” In class we’ve discussed how the two stories relate by demonstrating that the environment (i.e., setting) of a story can have a significant impact on its conflict. In “Everyday Use,” the story’s conflict escalates when a mother’s college daughter returns to her mother’s house where she and her family can’t ever seem to get along — where disagreements and prejudices persist. In “To Build a Fire,” a subzero Yukon Territory serves as the environment in which an ignorant gold-seeking traveler painfully slowly digresses to eventual hypothermia and subsequent death. For the related assigned post, students are to create a narrative, in poem or short story form, that illustrates the potential for environment (i.e., setting) greatly intensifying conflict. This poem represents the conflict I face occasionally at the railroad tracks on Coleman Road. It never fails: When my kids and I are running behind to drop them off at their schools and for me to make it to work (at another school) on time, the train emerges from seemingly nowhere to slow us down. The sound devices and rhythm of the poem intentionally mimics the sound of a coming train.

__________

Poem Exemplar: “The Train”

Chirps in

Trees and

Three children’s

Cheeks on

Chilly days trying my patience.

Shifting,

Shouting,

Watching,

Charting

Traffic trailing some tractor.

Sleeping,

Slurping

Cheerios,

Staring at

Signals smirking at our slowness.

Optimism,

Expectation,

Denying all

Procrastination

Something sounding surging from the West.

The tracks.

The train.

The time.

Oh man.

School starts in 10 minutes.

__________

Short Story Exemplar: “Sick Room”

Early February. There’s no better time to go to the doctor’s office illness-free to get a physical for work. You definitely get the most for your money.

That $30 copay gets you more than an hour of waiting room Judge Judy reruns. It gives an opportunity to appreciate quality interior design. The evenly spaced mint-green, stiffly-padded wood chairs offer room-wide cohesion for comfort. The scuffed-up chair rail on every wall with chairs ironically no less than six inches from it gives the space character. Screen paintings of much prettier scenes than what’s offered in this room, and kindly framed messages informing patients of appointment cancellation fees. Only grandma’s house comes closer to the effective placement of ferns, People magazines, and Kleenex tissue.

But wait, there’s more. Your money also buys you a chance to people-watch. A five-year-old plays with his Batman action figure, picks his nose, wipes his finger on the chair next to his mother, then coughs a loud whooping cough and picks up a Motor Trend to look at the cars. A flushed woman with sweat dripping onto her glasses has her eyes closed, head back on the wall, and lets out an occasional groan as she resituates herself in her seat and briefly holds on to her stomach in pain. An elderly man, hard-of-hearing, walks in and says to the receptionist, loud enough for everyone in the plaza to hear, “My temp’s 101.7. My wife and two grandsons have the flu. I knew it was coming.” He pulls out a handkerchief, wipes the flow of dripping snot from his nose, puts it halfway back into his back pocket, grabs the countertop pen, signs in, and slides into the seat next to you as the handkerchief smears whatever from the place it first touches all the way to the back.

During this time, your reminded of other people who might’ve sat where you’re seating. A middle-aged man who appears to be a carpenter comes out from being seen by the doctor with what appears to be just-dried blood around a gaping rip in the knee of his jeans. Through the hole all you can see is gauze. A little girl comes out with a mask over her mouth. A distressed mother with a screaming baby.

Thoughts race through your mind. “What’s wrong with that baby?” “How’d that happen?” “Is that contagious?” “Where’d she sit?” “Did that person touch the door handle?” “Did I touch the door handle?” “Why’d I come here today?” “Is this worth it?” “Do I have any sick days left?” “How’d I get this stupid?”

You finish your visit. You turn in your physical at work.

Three days later. Back to the doctor’s office.