Narrative Essays Assignment | Online Homework Help

This week I would like you all to talk about the two short essays you read: the “Introduction” to Kris Jenner’s autobiography, and the short essay from the New York Times entitled, “Dishing Dirt.” First, discuss which essay you enjoyed more and why. Then, discuss the artistic touches that each writer uses to keep the reader interested. Finally, discuss your impressions of the writers themselves. Can you relate to either or both of them? How? Do you think you would like either as person if you ever crossed paths in personLIVES; Dishing Dirt
By EMILY WHITE JAN. 27, 2002
The day I hear the rumor I am 14 years old, enclosed in a bathroom stall. Its walls
are light blue, exactly the color of mold. Through a crack in its door, I can see three
girls enter: heavy metal girls with tremendous eyelashes. They stand in front of the
mirror, speaking urgently:
”Did you hear about H.?” one of them says. ”I hear she did it with Mitch and all
his friends, like 12 guys at once!”
”Twelve guys?” says another. ”She is disgusting!”
The last chimes in. ”Oh, my God, she is such a slut!” she says, drawing out the
last word for effect.
From my vantage point, I can see their faces in the mirror as they talk; the way
their eyes open wide in amazement as they contemplate the horrors of what this girl
has done. I’m thrilled by their outrage. When they finally leave the bathroom, I
emerge, reeling with what I’ve just heard. Twelve guys. Impossible. So impossible I
believe it utterly.
I have seen the girl they’re talking about. She’s dark and womanly, with an air of
mystery about her that the kids in the hallway assume is sex. She is usually alone,
but she always acts as if she’s on her way somewhere, as if she’s late. I’d never admit
it in school, but I’m drawn to her. Everyone looks at her, while I’m a gloomy,
invisible girl with a maximum of three friends, a girl whose name nobody can
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remember. Beer, parties and kisses are remote. I’m a Save the Whales activist, so
antisocial I’ve convinced myself that whales are smarter than people.
But that day eavesdropping in the bathroom, I feel inadvertently included. As I listen
to the girls talking in the mirror, my heart starts to race. The scandal works on me
like a stimulant. Obviously the Night of 12 Boys is an event of vast importance, and
the urgency in the girls’ voices momentarily eclipses anything I’ve felt for H. in the
past. Emerging from the stall, I know what I need to do: pass the rumor on.
Out in the hallway, it’s lunchtime, and the three girls I usually eat with sit in a
circle in our usual spot, the gritty linoleum floor outside the science classroom.
They’re talking in a bored way about homework assignments and last night’s
television shows. I sit down with them and say with gravity, ”Guess what I just
heard?” Immediately they all stop talking and listen to me — the violin prodigy, the
knitting girl and the nervous girl who talks relentlessly. They’re captives of the
information I hold, which I offer to them like a wise man offering gifts: ”H. did it
with 12 guys at once!” Like the girls in the restroom, my lunch mates are shocked.
”Are you kidding? Ewwwww.”
Over the next few years, kids tell all kinds of wild stories about H.’s exploits.
Usually the stories have to do with her and a crowd of boys; the boys multiply
exponentially while she remains alone. In my mind, I imagine her in the backs of
cars, maybe with the windows rolled down and her hair flying, I imagine her kissing
anyone who’s in front of her, hectic and oblivious. I wonder about her future;
although as I sink into a deeper and deeper gloom, I should probably be wondering
about mine.
That day in the hallway, as I spread the rumor of the 12 boys, though, I am not
gloomy at all. Suddenly I feel a sense of communion with my lunch mates, a giddy
sisterhood. We’re like campers sitting around a fire telling ghost stories, huddled
together and gripped by fear, only in this story the monster is an insatiable girl. As
we become more and more worked up about what H. has done, it’s as if we’re
aligned against the darkness, against the frightening and limitless underground of
sex that she represents. Only later will I wonder why we wanted to talk about girls
this way and never boys; why we cared about what H. might do in the dark; why we
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so easily believed such a cartoonish story of sex, when there were so many things we
no longer believed.
Weeks pass, and the excitement of the rumor wears off. I return to my sullen
existence, made even more unbearable each afternoon when a boy at the bus stop
starts greeting me with ”Hey, dog” and barking. I give up on the whales when I
decide we’re all going to die in a nuclear winter. I don’t have anything to offer my
lunch companions anymore, so I sit by myself. Sometimes I loiter in the bathroom
stall, waiting for the thrilling girls to return with their rumors, but my timing is
always off.
Walking down the stairs on the way to class one day, I find myself alongside H.
She looks at me with a spaced-out expression of kindness, as if maybe she knows me
from somewhere but she can’t remember where. She looks real — not disgusting or
corrupted. She looks deep. Even then I think I suspected that there were no 12 boys,
only two girls walking next to each other, and the mutual feeling of being lost. In my
memory, she’s so close I can see ink stains on the tips of her fingers. But then the
last bell rings, and she is gone.
© 2017