On Deciding to Skip Class (creative nonfiction, written today)

[original_lavi]

Something I just finished AN HOUR AGO. SERIOUSLY.

Because it's not like I'm posting stuff here that I'm ready to submit to publication. This was intended to just have my desperate attempts at original stuff, half-finished stuff and really bad stuff (*cough*lastsemester), etc. So I just wrote this.  I had a very certain mood I wanted to capture, and it took me a little while to get into it, but I think I managed it in parts.

It is creative nonfiction. Oooooh. I'm taking a class on it this semester, and we have a great anthology with pieces that are just amaaaazing and really inspirational. (Side note for the story essay beneath: it was an essay from that anthology I read before falling asleep. "High Tide in Tuscan" by Barbara Kingslover. Not my favorite, but still quite good, and I love The Bean Trees. On a related note, my anthology for my Short Story class [Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories] has just really weird ones that, apart from a couple exceptions, only leave me going, "WTF?" to some degree. Even the ones I like, like Gogol's "The Nose," are WTF. The story I read yesterday, for today's class, was "Her Table Spread" by Elizabeth Bowen. Just, no.)
 

On Deciding to Skip Class

So far this semester my Tuesdays and Thursdays have been perfectly lazy, and I gloried in it. It was perfectly all right for me to sleep until noon. My one and only class was at 1:15. On both days I had several work hours at different times in the afternoon, and that was all right too.

Then I got my complete schedule for one of my jobs, which called for me to come in from 10-12 both Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was furious, but realized that with my excessive hours placed in afternoon and evenings throughout the rest of the week, it probably wouldn't be necessary for a while.

This morning was the first time it seemed necessary; the first chance it might have been, anyway, and I didn't want to risk my boss expecting me to be there. So, even though I went to bed near three o'clock, I got up at 9:30 to go in.

She never showed up.

I finished one of my assignments and stopped, unwilling to start the second without knowing what I was supposed to do. I went for lunch, and upon returning, heard from the girl at the desk that she didn't expect Tracy to be in for a while yet. Apparently she didn't usually come in Tuesday mornings.

I was a little awake now, but I went back, took one of my books with reading for tomorrow, and lay in bed to do it. Naturally, I felt sleepy at the end, and so set my alarm for 1:00. It was 12:30. I dislike taking naps for any shorter time period than half an hour (an hour is ideal) since it's difficult for me to get to sleep, knowing I'll have to get back up in such a comparatively short time, and I was already contemplating skipping class. (As I regularly do. Every morning I seriously consider not getting out of bed. But I do anyway, 9.8 times out of 10. Before college, I almost always had perfect attendance. Skipping classes in college is a much bigger temptation, since they may be skipped a la carte instead of the whole day, but it still doesn't come naturally to me.)

I fell asleep.

I dreamed I was in class, the one in less than an hour. I wondered with some annoyance how I had gotten there, since I had no memory of actually going and had been planning to skip. The professor was talking to the boy at my table.

 I was close to the window, much closer than I actually sit. I realized it was raining hard, when it had just been sprinkling on my walk back to my dorm earlier. Through the rain, I saw children (or college students) were playing odd games, field-day games, in a post-Homecoming celebration. (Homecoming had been last semester.)

 Bailey was next to me, and she said, "Man, I want to go play with them when we're done."

 "What are they playing?" I asked.

 She looked at me as though I was crazy. "Does it matter? It looks fun. I want to play."

 The rain was falling, and a tall tree to the side of the games had green branches like broccoli, which I had eaten for lunch. They broke and fell as I watched.

 

 

I woke up and lay in bed, carefully reviewing the details of my dream. Especially important was my regret once I had gotten to class. Of course, I am logical enough to know I dreamed what I wanted and had been thinking, but in other times it would have been taken as an omen. I am glad to embrace it as that and let it make my final decision, just as I lazily welcome sleeping until noon.
 

I make up other excuses and justifications, as I get up to go to the bathroom (though still not irrevocably decided). One, I felt cheated in my sleep by my morning boss, so I was stealing it back (selfishly, from someone who had not wronged me, but in fact he wouldn't miss me, I was only depriving myself of a class which I had sacrificed an inordinate amount of money to attend - best not to follow that logic too far). Two, I had intensely disliked reading the story assignment for that class; I felt it was not a story, I had read it and received no benefit from it, not the slightest, as one should when reading a story; it shouldn't have been published and I didn't even want to be forced to understand it. Three, I wouldn't be required to do or learn anything in this class that might hurt me on an exam (there were no exams); we would discuss the story with the daily quiz, a fraction of a grade; perhaps another classmate might read one of their own stories, more discussion; perhaps in-class writing, which is good of course, but I had known after my dream I would write this. Four, I was using up one of my absences today, so I'll be much better motivated in future not to skip.

 

Then I came out of the stall to wash my hands, and saw in the mirror the prominent huge shadows stretching beneath my eyes, as they did every day, as they had done when I was a pre-adolescent child and before I had stopped going to bed before midnight.

 

Then, and for that reason alone, I went back to bed.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/romancandle_/]

skipped a la carte

♥

[lavinialavender.livejournal.com]

Hee, thanks. I really only learned what that even meant pretty late in my life.

[cleo]

Okay...

I know this is really picky, but the first independent clause of your first sentence is in present perfect (non-continuous) and the second independent clause is in past tense. The faulty parallelism is really jarring, especially since this is the first thing we read of the story. It should read, "So far this semester my Tuesdays and Thursdays have been perfectly lazy, and I am glorying in it"...

There is definitely a story here, and I think if you want to work on this and flesh it out, you are going to be able to capture the feeling you want throughout. But right now, the beginning is stilted in that it reads too much like a list. I would suggest adding more of the minute details and moving away from going through the routine so dryly.

And the end...I don't like listing the excuses that way. It seems like you are doing them each a disservice by making them incredibly clinical.

I do like the middle, the dream itself.

The rain was falling, and a tall tree to the side of the games had green branches like broccoli, which I had eaten for lunch. They broke and fell as I watched.

This part has a TON of potential in the clarity of detail.

[lavinialavender.livejournal.com]

Ha, I was hoping I could excuse myself from a lot of the messiness with my "omg I just wrote it and read it once and was really distracted." No, I'm still glad you pointed those things out.

Yeah, I'm aware the beginning needs a lot of work, it isn't really writing at all. It was just like I was starting another entry. Like I said, it took me a while to get into the feel of what I wanted to write. I'll go back and re-write it when I seriously tackle it again.
(Actually, I might go back now and edit the first few lines, since they are so jarring and I know it.)

And the line you quoted was the one I focused on the most after I woke up, so I would remember it after my second nap (when the story-essay-thing ends). I'm glad it was as good as I thought it was. The list of excuses I didn't have such hopes about; it was just in my head (like the rest), so I went with it.

If anything, it's just an exercise. Making myself write and all.

Thank you! ♥