[stylist] my Christmas story

[Brad Dunsé]

vejas,

Lord, a nasty math teacher for a potential uncle. 
Your depiction of him was pretty much like the 
one I had for 9th grade algebra. I still see him 
with his beady piercing eyes staring out of 
1970's style, black-rimmed glasses; licking his 
finger as he cockily paged through the test 
papers he was holding standing at the front of 
the room saying, "Ok people, here comes your 
little jewels," in a nasty, snotty, wickedly 
authoritive way; sporting a smirk I'd have given 
my A+ in my Government class away if but one 
chance to wipe that thing off his face. lol. I'm 
not bitter am I? To be quite honest, I only past 
that class because of good eyeballs at the time 
to abscond answers from my buddy sitting to my 
right. Importance of a good teacher? After I 
graduated high school I attended a Tech College 
and finished my Technical Math course containing 
Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry, not only 
with an A+ but a month early as well. So thumbs 
down to the Mr. Firgalli's of the world haha.

A quick few evaluation comments on your piece, 
and as I always disclaim in anything I evaluate, 
"it's just my opinion so either tuck it or chuck it" :).

If I missed this sorry, but can you let me know 
your age? That might help in comments given in the future.

I liked the idea of bad Christmas-good Christmas. 
An overcoming the past kind of deal there. I'm 
not sure what of this story is based on truth but 
obviously some things were fictionalized. At 
least I'd expect you'd have known in real life 
that your aunt was dating your math teacher, but 
I did like the irony of that. I liked the detail 
of the septuplets with one being as you said 
"plain popular-snotty," I like that description. 
I liked the use of various characters in the 
story, though there was little time to get to 
know them all in such a short piece, but it shows a nice creative mind :).

You might want to watch some of your phrasings 
such as: "My sisters' room is across the hall, so 
I couldn't use any of them to get me to come up." 
That would not be the way one would say it in 
actual conversation. I understand too this was a 
free-for-all quick blurb, but punctuation and 
structure is a good thing to be mindful of when 
possible. That is something I tend to struggle 
with myself which is why I probably noticed :). 
When I look at a piece's title such as your's, as 
mentioned I like the overcomer part, bad into 
good, but the bad, humorous as it was, did out 
weigh the good. One method of shortening up the 
good while getting the humor and irony from the 
bad stuff previous, and still leave one with a 
good feeling in the end, is to slam them with 
emotion in the end; pull on those heart strings a 
little bit. What one misses in equal keyboard 
time, can I think, be compensated for by 
intensity of emotion. Not that one can just toss 
in a quick few bits containing an emotional topic 
too quickly, but give it the needed emotional 
primer prior. Kind of like a stew. You can toss 
all the fixins in the pot, turn up the heat for a 
few minutes and eat it, but it'll taste a bit 
raw. Whereas if you give it the needed time to 
stew up a bit, the flavors blend in and it is 
much different of a taste, delicious even :). 
Similar with the point I'm so tragically trying 
to make lol, just like a good cook, one knows 
when it is done just right by experience and the 
intimate feel of the piece as a writer.

OK so that was way too long a way to explain 
things lol. But I enjoyed your taking me on your 
two day trip through your world. Keep writing.

Brad



Brad Dunsé

"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the 
bone shared with the dog, when you are just as 
hungry as the dog." --Jack London

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