Sunday, September 18, 2005

Homework

We talked about congruent angles and counter examples and converse statements. He showed me his homework, and we found a few mistakes, and we scribbled the solutions on a piece of paper with a green gel pen.

Then he went to fix his work. He went back into his room and sat down on his futon where (to my chagrin) he often does his homework. He sat back down and erased his mistakes and rewrote the solutions...

...while the dog lay curled up in a ball next to him.


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Forgotten Smiles

The people here had forgotten how to smile. At first you might not have known it, but after spending a little time there you couldn't miss it.

The sun beat down on them mercilessly. And when the clouds came, the rain fell in torrents, washing the hillsides away and choking the rivers with mud. But mostly the rain never came.

Their bent bodies labored all day in the fields or in the streets of decaying cities and villages. They had no time to speak. They had no time to look around. In the daily struggle, a casual smile had long since become an unaffordable luxury.

Of course, there were the children. In the cities, they played in back alleys and in abandoned lots among piles of refuse. In the country, they found shady places and ran in circles chasing each other singing songs and laughing loudly.

But the parents didn't smile.

It was into this land that I was sent -- into this land of despair, where the only flower I found was the blossom of a weed spouting from a crack in the road leading to the capital city.

---
fiction


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