Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XLVIX)

The Harvey Milk School was originally set up as a program of Offsite Educational Services. The school hoped to keep a low profile because of the controversies it engendered in the press. A Waterways publication by students at the site, Lifestyles, came out in November ’86. The publication gave the students a platform from which they could address issues on their mind. Some of the students had been forced out of their own home. In sympathy, Ramon wrote:

Homeless

Street life where people cry for help:
Where is the help?
Why is street life so hard for those people
who don’t have a place to live?
People, people, people! Why don’t you care?
They sleep on your doorways.
They look at you when they are cold.
They ask for help when they are sick.
And, they cry for food when they don’t have anything to eat.
Street, the place where people die.
Because people like you and I don’t really care about their lives.

Finnegan’s contributions to the publication demonstrated a talent and mastery of writing skills. In the story Jack in the Box, he used dialogue, characterization, and multiple point of views. In this excerpt the voice of a child describes the attack of a TV set:

I thought that the TV had glass on it to keep out people’s fingers. Mine went right in. I pulled it out after a few seconds. I was kinda scared.

I picked up one of my dolly-wollies and put in her head.

Something grabbed it! It tried to snatch it in!

“Gimme back my dollie!” I screamed angrily.

I pulled but it got her head off.

I dropped the headless doll on the floor. I was mad. Mad as hell (like mommy says).

I searched the room for what I was looking for. When I found it I went back to the TV set.

“Eat this!” I shouted shoving in a canoe or my daddy and I used to go canoeing up in Canada.

It must’ve got stuck because it didn’t go in more than three feet before it stopped and didn’t go any further (the oar was about five and half feet long).

Something from inside the TV screamed and suddenly I was jerked like I was playing tug of war.

I knew I wouldn’t win. I could tell whatever it was, it was a lot stronger than me. It got the wheels turning in my head. I remember my favorite cartoon character, Woody Woodpecker, being in the same mess. All he did when someone bigger than him like mean old Buzz Buzzard pulled on something was let go of it and send the bad guy flying.

I tried it.

It worked.

Whatever it was was sent flying. There was a brief loud crash. Sounded like it had fallen into a wall of glass and buckets or something.

I laughed at it from outside the TV.

It screamed at me from inside it.

The smoke was sucked up from the floor and back into the television.

So was my dolly body. The one without the head.

And my blanket, right off my bed.

As a matter of fact, it started sucking things up right off the floor. Clouds of dust, toys, books (oh well I had a good excuse for not giving Ms. Santos my homework assignment. The TV ate that up too) and lots of other stuff.”