[stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

[Chris Kuell]

Barbara,

Yes, you captured the basic idea, although I'd like to see this expanded a 
bit. And, perhaps it wasn't your blindness that held the Chinese people's 
interest, maybe you look like a movie star?

Your piece made me remember a field trip we took in second or third grade. I 
was sighted then, and for reasons I can't recall, we went to the Saint 
Rita's School for the Blind outside of Cincinnati. This would have been the 
late 60s, and I suppose they wanted us to see how blind kids went to school, 
wrote and read braille, or perhaps, and this is probably mor likely, the 
goal of the trip was to make us feel grateful for what we had, and always 
remember 'those poor blind kids'. What sticks in my brain from all those 
years ago was that none of the students used white canes. In my memory, I 
see them walking, smiling, knowing that we were observing them, while they 
tapped or dragged a finger on the wall to keep track of where they were.

Anyway, I suppose I was the gawking tourist and you were the monkey back 
then. For your essay, you might to want to consider going deeper. Where else 
have you felt the eyes upon you? (we all have) Why are people curious?

chris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barbara Hammel" <poetlori8 at msn.com>
To: <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 11:00 PM
Subject: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt


> Okay, I know this is short, but is this sort of what this is supposed to 
> look like?
>
>  THE MONKEY IN THE ZOO
>
>  by Barbara Hammel
>
>
>
> I knew that visiting another country would be interesting, but I never 
> imagined the people would find me so fascinating. Or was it the twin boys? 
> Or the sighted man with a blind woman and a sighted woman and the blind 
> twin boys?
>
>
>
> By this time we'd acquired one stroller and my husband was pushing that 
> but I wanted a break from carrying the other in a backpack.
>
>
>
> We got into the cage--I mean stopped at a bench--to take a rest. Before we 
> knew it, we were surrounded by silent onlookers who, along with everyone 
> else we met on that trip, kept giving my husband the thumbs-up.  (Was it 
> the two blind boys are the two women or all of us and our purpose that 
> made them do this.)
>
>
>
> It took me back to my days at the Braille School when schoolchildren would 
> take tours. (It is the school Mary Ingalls attended, after all.) We would 
> always have to demonstrate how to write their names in Braille so a 
> hundred--or maybe just seven or eight--would gather around the desk and 
> not just stand there, but lean over me and the desk and the Braillewriter.
>
>
>
> Now this happened to us everywhere we went in China. (I often wonder if 
> that article the journalist was doing ever got published?)
>
> I guess we were a human interest story since we were adopting boys, a 
> rarity in that country, and I'm blind. I just wonder what they thought 
> about us, and I wonder how they thought each of us fit in the picture.
>
>
>
> Never mind, after all. We were just monkeys in the zoo, odd sorts of 
> beings because our eyes don't see and those two sighted people were just 
> our
>
> handlers.
>
>
>
> Barbara
>
>
>
> Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. -- Carl Sandburg
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