...not meeting benchmark! I'm smarter than you think. You're just a stupid machine!"
I walked over to Lisa. She was sobbing, head on her arms, face pressed into the keyboard. Sensing my presence, her muffled, watery voice continued after a loud hiccup, "I'm NOT dumb!"
Looking around the lab at twenty-six other faces, the first traces of worry lines etching across nine year old foreheads, I sighed. Each child on a quest toward a magic number, they were mulitple-choicing their way toward state assessment scores.
Knowing there was no such topic, I didn't flip through the testing manual in search of Dealing-With-Children-Who-Melt-Down-Based-On-Our-Numbers.
Instead, while pressing a tissue into Lisa's hand I wondered how to comfort her with the response discussed at a pre-testing meeting:
"Oh, don't worry. Before May 15th, you can take the test again. Twice."
Different point of view from author Ric Hardson:
"Stop that!" Lisa shouted at her computer and pounded on the monitor. "Stop telling me I'm..."
...never gonna be a writer!"
The computer screen had just blacked out. Jerking the laptop toward herself, its hard drive responded by powering down with a deathly sigh.
"C**p! I didn't mean it! C**p! I didn't save! C**p! three chapters I gotta reinvent! C**p! C**p! C**p!"
Angrily hyperventilating, Lisa snapped the lid shut. Violently pushing away from the desk, she tipped the chair, crashing onto the floor.
Disentangling herself, taking a deep breath, she set the chair back up. Tracing the computer's power cord to discover the problem, Lisa sheepishly reinserted the plug into the outlet.
Open once more to its upright position, Lisa's trusty PowerBook hummed back to life. Its bright screen full of text smiled at her.
Knowing it would be silly to hug a laptop she whispered, "You're right. Lesson learned."
Relieved, Lisa continued writing. Right after she hit SAVE.
source: http://www.scribesvalley.com/uwriteitweek274.html
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