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

[justin williams]

I guess we could be likened to monkeys in a zoo.

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Donna Hill
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 4:16 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] The Monkey in the Zoo: creative writing prompt

Barbara,
Interesting story, and I can relate to feeling like a monkey in a cage. I'll
bet you have other stories from that trip as well. Thanks for posting.
Donna 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Barbara
Hammel
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 11:00 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
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
_______________________________________________
Writers Division web site
http://www.writers-division.net/
stylist mailing list
stylist at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
stylist:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/penatwork%40epix.net


_______________________________________________
Writers Division web site
http://www.writers-division.net/
stylist mailing list
stylist at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
stylist:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/justin.williams2%40gmai
l.com