Case in Point:
I come from a single-parent poor family where all my mother had to give me were her God, her morals, and her ideals and I must say, “That was enough.” She always taught me to pray and "reach for the stars" as she told me time and time again that I was "bound to land among the treetops."
- I had been wanting to be a teacher or a nurse since I was nine years old, but we had no money and could see no way for me to go to college, but I kept praying and believing and “Voila!”I went!
- I wanted to be a writer and “Voila!” I am!
I have not told you the entire path that my life took, but I have told you enough so that you can understand the determined mindset of the little girl in the following excerpt from my book,W.O.W. created w.o.w.:
“Nicely done, Ms. Brown, but try to keep up with the class. You might not get lucky next time.”
“Yes Ma’am” Alicia meekly murmured. She stole a look at Hank Gould and stuck her tongue out at him. He looked at Alicia with a “mess with me look” and blurted out, “Ms. Felicity, smells like something is burning and it’s hurting my nose.” Hank gave Alicia his best, “Now top that one, Girlie” glares.
The other kids chimed in, “Yeah, it does. I smelled it when I was passing out papers.” “Yeah, it’s been smelling like that all week.”
Alicia dropped her head as her eyes slowly welled up with tears.
“That’s enough class,” said Ms. Felicity sternly. “It is probably a balance in the lights going bad.”
Alicia glanced at Ms. Felicity and gave her a tremulous smile of thanks.
When the bell rang for class to be over, Hank walked by Alicia and whispered, “Cry baby!” as he (snickering) left the room.
It's So Cold
‘Sniff! Sniff!” Alicia trudged slowly home as tears rolled from her eyes. She could not walk slow long though, because the wind was cutting her in two!
She put her arm load of books down on the sidewalk and buttoned her coat and put her head scarf on.
Then Alicia picked up her books, wiped her eyes and running nose on her sleeve and kept pushing against the wind on her way home.
As she walked, she thought about what had happened in the last period class. “Maybe they will have forgotten about it by tomorrow,” she thought. But with Hank Gould around, she knew not to count on it.
“One day,” Alicia thought, “I'm going to be somebody; see if I don't,” she muttered to herself. Alicia was so cold that she wished that some of the cars passing by would stop and offer her a ride. She did not mind the three mile walk on most days, but during the winter, it was rough.
She settled into her walking routine being sure not to step on the loose pebbles on the sidewalk because she had learned early on that loose pebbles hurt quite a bit when your feet are nearly numb with cold. Alicia quickened her step. She was thinking that she would be glad to get home so that she would be out of the wind. Whew, it was cold!
Oh, Goody, Cardboard Boxes!
She had to pass a local consumer store every day on her way home and she passed it today, she saw a mound of shoe boxes piled up next to the dumpster. Alicia crossed the street and started going through the mound of shoebox trash. Lucky day! She even found a shopping bag with two handles almost intact. She left that dumpster with a hefty shopping bag full of smashed shoeboxes, their tops and the accompanying tissue paper inserts. She wished that her brothers had been with her; then they could have brought all of the boxes home. Alicia sighed and was thankful to have been able to get the ones that she had gotten.
(Rip-p-p!) The loose handle on the shopping bag ripped just as Alicia has started across her front yard. She tried to juggle books, boxes and her pocketbook. She lost the battle with all three. Alicia was only a little bit embarrassed to have dropped her boxes. “So what; they see the empty boxes,” she thought. “They could be for a school project couldn’t they?”
But Alicia knew that she was not fooling anyone. She knew that everybody knew that their lights were turned off, in fact, probably had been peeping out of the window when the MLGW truck pulled the electric meters and turned the water off at the curb. They always made so much noise when they turned off the water. It was almost like they enjoyed clanking that long metal thing against the water cover like it was a gong. “Boy, they must really enjoy their job,” was what Alicia had thought on more than one occasion.
Cooking Dinner
She was glad to get into the house out of the wind. She was also glad to rid her aching arms of her cumbersome burden. She looked at the little gas stove in the living room and wished she could will it to come on. “Your daydreams are not going to get this charcoal bucket going,” she thought.
Now that she had the charcoal bucket lit, Alicia reached over to put the rice in the small sauce pan that Momma had named “the rice pot.” Well, wouldn’t you know it; the water canister was empty.” Leave it to her brothers, drat them! Well nothing to do but get the canisters and get down to Auntie Bessie’s house before it got dark and get some water,” she thought. Back out into the wind she went. The walk to her aunt's house was about a block long on one street and about a half a block long on the other street. “I'm going to be somebody one day; see if I don't,” she thought. “See if I don't!”
This case in point will be concluded tomorrow if the Lord wills.
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