Lizzy

Friendships are so important. I'm glad you and Lizzy are still friends. A good start! To revise label brushstrokes and try to eliminate the majority of your being verbs. This will make it more active. You have some great images like stepping on Lizzy's shoes. -Kristinaturner 9/14/07 9:16 AM

I loved this Cauley...you def. didn't hold back any of your personality when telling this story. It has Cauley written all over it! lol -Stephmoorhead11 10/18/07 10:27 AM

Lizzy

Sixth grade was a pretty hard year for me. When I had just begun the sixth grade, I was desperately trying to make some new friends. All of my friends from Calhoun, my elementary school, were put into different classes than I was, and they all had different teams of teachers, so I would hardly ever get to see them in the hallways when I was at school. Since I was starting a brand new school, I decided that I had to find some new friends that were in some of my classes.
There was one girl named Lizzy that was in Mrs. Fischer's 3rd period math class with me. She had gone to my elementary school with me, but I had never been in a class with her in the many years at school leading up to this one. I decided that I wanted to become friends with her because I thought she was cool, but I had a strange feeling that she didn't like me very much, or at all. One day in math class, Mrs. Fischer told us that we could pick partners to work on a project with. I was going to be partners with a very nice girl named Summer that I had just met. Before I could, Lizzy came up to me and said, "I'm going to be your partner." I was pretty happy because I thought that she wanted to be friends with me, but that was before she said what she told me next. "Mrs. Fischer said we can't have a group of three, but I want to work with Cat and Mariana." It was well-known in our class that Cat, Mariana, and Lizzy were like a terrific trio, and they were all absolute best friends. I was a little confused at that point why she was telling me what I pretty much already knew, but then she said, "I am going to tell Mrs. Fischer that you are my partner, but I am really going to go over and work with Cat and Mariana, so you just work alone." Now I completely understood what Lizzy was trying to tell me. She didn't want to be my friend, she just wanted to use me so that she could work with her real friends. Even so, I thought that maybe she would be my friend if I agreed to do it. "Alright," I said, "that's fine." Even after I gave up having a real partner in hopes that she would be my friend, she wasn't.
About a month later, I was at the school dance in our cafeteria. I was standing near Lizzy, when some very uncoordinated kid tripped, causing a domino reaction of people falling and bumping into each other. Some random person beside me pushed me, which made me accidentally step on the tip of Lizzy's shoe. She turned around with an incredibly evil look in her eye and yelled at me, "These shoes cost A HUNDRED DOLLARS!!". "Sorry Lizzy." I said. I barely said a word for the rest of the night because I was so upset. After that terrible night, I just knew that Lizzy and I would absolutely never be able to be friends. If we were, I knew that she would just use me and pick on me and not even really like me.
About two years later, the summer before I was in the eighth grade, I switched churches and became close friends with Meredith, Jordan, Caty, and Cat, who were all close friends with Lizzy. Gradually Lizzy and I became friends by going over to someone's house to spend the night, or hanging out somewhere together. Then, we started becoming really good friends. By the time eighth grade started we were absolute best friends. We were partners on the annual eighth grade field trip to New York (When our supposed "best friends" left us for other roommates.), and on a field trip that our science class took to Georgia. During eighth grade, I learned that Lizzy was moving to Ohio that summer. I was absolutely devastated. I was extremely upset when she left. We are still best friends though, and we talk to each other all the time.
Lizzy denies to this day being so mean to me in the sixth grade, and she claims that she doesn't remember any of it at all. I know she really does, but she doesn't want to admit it. It took about two years, but I finally managed to make friends with Lizzy.

Nature Essay

Cauley, this is so cute! I want you to incorporate at least one quote from Emerson and one from Thoreau that suppports what you are saying. -Kristinaturner 10/17/07 6:15 PM
Nature Essay
By: Cauley Simmons

Today in English class, we went outside, then walked around to these woods that I never even knew existed. I heard on the Weather Channel earlier this morning that it was supposed to be pretty hot, but I never imagined that it would be this beastly hot in the middle of October. Immediately as you stepped outside the door, sweat began to condense into little beadlets on your forehead. gross -Dylan Jarrett 10/12/07 11:34 AM . Beating off the heat was like being a ninja and trying to beat off the evil samurai. I LOVE this part!It's a really good simile, it's funny too. Kirsten McGehee 10/12/07 10:59 AM When we walked outside of the school, we had to walk down to the softball field, then through this gate in a fence, then up a hill to get to the woods. When we went in, we were supposed to walk around by ourselves and become "transparent eyeballs" so that we could really connect with the story Walden. At first, I tried to go alone in the woods, but the some factors deprived me from seeing such "romance" and "joy" in these woods. For one thing, there were candy wrappers and broken beer bottles in every which way. Also, we were right next to what I would consider one of the top five five write out numbers 1-99 busiest roads in the whole town of Anderson. I was pretty bored and extremely sticky, and so blazing hot, I felt as though someone had cruelly lured me into an oven, shut the door, then turned the heat to, I don't know, maybe about five thousand and one degrees. Then, to my relief, I heard someone say "Woah look at this!", and of course, being the curious cat metaphor and alliteration, intense-Dylan Jarrett 10/12/07 11:35 AM that I am, I scampered friskily off yes Cauley you are a curious cat. my other favorite part is how you scampered friskily -CHELSEACHARPIA. toward the initial direction of the scream.Haha this is my favorite part it kills me! :Meredith Looney: The scream turned out to be from a girl in my class that I like to refer to as "Allie Elrod". This is my favorite part. and also i'm in love with the part of the ninjas. oh how i love the large wooden plank. -Allieelrod 10/11/07 11:33 AM I ran over to see what all of the commotion was about, and as it turned out, Allie and friends had found a large carpeted wooden plank leaning against a tree. You had to hold onto a rope to be able to walk up that tree. Once you reached the top, you got the reward. You got to jump from the top of the plank into a rope net below. It was part of a ropes course that I later learned was for the ROTC members. Of course, I scurried up the plank like a chipmunk being chased by a rabid squirrel. I LOVE THIS PART! I love the simile!-JordanThrasher As soon as I reached the top, I courageously lept into the simple, yet great weave of ropes that caused oh so much joy and delight. The effect on my jumping were rope burns and rolling and almost taking out Allie, but clearly I simply felt as though I had to do it again. That caused even more flaming rope burns on my back. I can't say I had an experience quite as bad as Hank's though, where he got his head stuck in the ropes and the force of a little thing i like to call "gravity" flipped him over. i like this part because i like the way you talk about that little thing called "gravity" -CHELSEACHARPIA I have to say, it was basically a great side-splitting experience for all of us watching below. After the hilariousness reached its amplitude, Mrs. Turner decided that it was time for us to recede into the classroom to reflect on our experiences. While walking, Drew geniusly decided to climb a tree, which had some limbs not quite strong enough to hold him. This kept us stunned and we stayed in the woods, eyes peeled, for a few more minutes. Once we decided for the final time that we had had enough of the excruciating heat, we decided to drag our feet back to the classroom. As all of us were standing in the hallway waiting for Mrs. Turner to come with the key, we all noticed something. When we all looked up above our heads, something was missing. That something was Luke. After further investigation, we noticed that two more vital members of our class were missing. These two would be ShyNiqua and India. We all began to freak out. Questions were whizzing in and out of our heads. "Where were the three poor little lost souls?" "Did they get kidnapped and taken to a truckstop in Taladega?" "Did they feel as though they connected with Walden so well that they ran away forevermore to be free and one with nature?" We soon calmed down as Mrs. Turner told us that this was a normal occurance and that if they did not come back she would look for them during her lunch break. We could not wait that long. She soon send David and Hank out into the woods to heroically search for the strayed individuals. They returned minutes later with the three wanderers. We all breathed a heavy breath of relief. So, all in all, this was a pretty awesome trip, even though I didn't get much "romance" out of it. I think that if Emerson or Thoreau went into the woods where we were now, I'm pretty positive they would have gotten distracted by the rope course. I mean, how could you not, really?

It was the truckstop - So Says the beast that is luke.