Stephanie+B's+Page



Hello, Great Bear Writing Group! I am ecstatic be a part of this group, and so excited to see what the next three weeks hold in store for us.

I graduated with my Bachelor's in Middle Level Education with an emphasis in Language Arts and Social Studies in May of 2010. I just completed my first year of teaching at Cabot Middle School North as a Writing and Social Studies teacher of 6th graders. My first year was successfully, probably largely because I got an 8 week maternity leave (yay!)

My husband and I are high school sweethearts and got married in August of 2008. We welcomed our precious baby girl, Sophie, in October of 2010, and she has simply completed our little world. We also have a precious Australian Shepherd/Border Collie, Sky, who is best buds with our baby girl, as seen in the video below.

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Some random facts about me are:
 * I was a member of the Honors College at UCA
 * I interned in Washington, D.C., for a Congressman for 2 months
 * I baby blog like a crazy person at my [| Twenty Years From Now blog]
 * I was raised an Air Force brat
 * I just bought a house in Vilonia (be prepared for moving horror stories, I'm sure)

=Thanks for helping me!!!=

The Plunge

It was my best friend Alisha's 10th birthday party, and a sleepover party at that. At 10 I was no stranger to sleepover parties, complete with Disney character sleeping bags thrown all over the living room, creating a sea of nylon and zippers. We would stay up all night, determined not to awake with slimy, white shaving cream stuck up our nose from being the first to fall victim to sleep.

This sleepover was going to be particularly fun because Alisha's family had a camper trailer and a pool. It was assumed amongst us girls that Alisha's family had money. We weren't at the age yet where that somehow separated us as friends, creating cliques of families of money versus those of lower middle class, seeing as no one was really poor it seemed in our town, but we were old enough to identify from her two-story home, with gorgeous bay windows on the second floor, that her dad must have done something fascinating.

Alisha had no mother, she had died when Alisha was young. I truly don't know how. It wasn't something we ever discussed, and honestly her dad was so much fun and full of so much life that it didn't really feel like something was missing from their household. I once read an article about how acute the hearing of those who were blind at infancy versus those who became blind later in life, and I see Alisha's family like that. It's like because they lost her mother so early into marriage and family, it only made the other parts stronger. Perhaps if it had happened later in life it would have been different.

What I did know, however, because who can avoid asking at ten, was why her dad only had one leg. Alisha's dad was some kind of contractor or architect, which one I'm not sure, but apparently when observing some building project, an elevator had descended on his leg. Thinking about this now as an adult, I begin to wonder if this story is true, if it's one Alisha made up and told us to cover up something boring like diabetes or foot cancer (is there such a thing as foot cancer?), or one I made up in my head as an explanation and eventually believed it to be true. I am convinced there are several stories I “remember” from my childhood that have taken the form of the latter explanation. Anyway, as a result of this presumed shaky story, Alisha's dad had a metal pole for a leg and walked everywhere with a a cane that helped him drag the prosthetic leg around.

Her father looked a lot like that guy from Back to the Future, who has Parkinson's disease. God, I can't remember his name now. O, wait, Michael J. Fox. Yes, he looked like him, but with a thick 1970s style mustache that looked like it could be perfectly drawn by a 5 year old because of its simplicity. I remember thinking even as a ten-year-old that he was such a handsome man, bum leg and all.

After entertaining us with strawberry icing on vanilla cupcakes and facilitating a round of water balloon toss, I remember Alisha's father's last words to us before ascending inside to retire to bed, “I'll be right inside if any of you need anything,” he remarked with seriousness. “You may sleep in the camper, but don't get in the pool. Is that understood?” We all nodded in agreement, ecstatic to pile into the large camper, where we knew all our secrets and laughter would be out of ear reach of any adult.

Inside we sprawled across a large, cardboard box-spring bed covered in camouflage sheets and comforter or sat cross-legged on the sticky linoleum floor. As the night wore on in the camper, no other than a game of truth or dare became the object of our entertainment. We started simple, divulging secret crushes on the boy with braces down the street who we had never spoken to, sucking our big toe for 1 minute, scrunching our noses as we ate pickle and ice cream combinations, and singing the ABC's at the top of our lungs outside the camper at 2 in the morning. Then came something with a little more risk. Alisha smiled slightly as she looked at Melissa, who had just chosen dare, a decision she would come to regret, as Alisha whispered, “I dare you to skinny dip in the pool.”

“What?” Melissa shrieked. She was the goody-goody of the group, undoubtedly why she had chosen dare because she needed an excuse to do something other than everything perfectly. “But your dad said we //couldn't// get in the pool,” she resolved, thinking Alisha would agree this was an unreasonable request. “What's a dare without breaking a few rules,” Alisha replied. She was the epitome of cool. The kind of girl whose rebellious attitude everyone wanted more than anything in the entire world.

Before I had even thought about it, mesmerized by Alisha's spectacular baiting face and my desperate need for her approval, I suddenly blurted, “I'll go with you, Melissa.” I wanted to take it back as soon as I said it.

Melissa looked at me like I had just signed her death certificate. The other girls began to chant, “Do it. Do it. Do it.”

“Alright, Alright. I'll do it if Stephanie goes with me,” Melissa finally conceded, shooting me a look with the amount of intensity Superman uses to see through iron walls. Next thing I know all 10 girls are piling out of the camper, circling the pool, waiting for Melissa and I as we hesitantly undress, shimming off our denim shorts first and our tank tops next before we are standing at the edge of the pool in nothing more than our underwear and training bras. I looked at Melissa and chuckled, half out of nervousness, half out of extreme delight before reaching for the clasp on my bra.

Moments later, staunchly naked, I'm holding my nose with one hand and Melissa's trembling fingers with the other and plunging into the cool waters. I bobble back to the surface to hear cheers from the other girls lined around the pool who have begun shedding their clothes and are jumping in, too. I felt a little bit like a hero, for the first time inspiring others to follow me. I caught a glimpse of Alisha, laughing and smiling in approval as she pushed a wave of chlorine water up my nose. Although days later my mother would lecture me about modesty and the gates of hell upon hearing of my glorious moment of rebellion, that moment with playful splashing and total defiance burns in my mind as one of blissful innocence.

Warm-Up 6/21

Utopias are generally seen to be ideal societies or communities, and yet what a Utopia is varies from person to person.

Toni Morrison said that “All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.”

George Orwell said that “Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has a toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists simply in not having toothache.”

Albert Camus stated that “Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.”

Helen Keller explained “Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”

Your warm-up is to write about what you believe to be a utopia, whether it is a place on earth or in some other world.

Book ad:

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Digital Story:

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