Today I am going to talk about a Childhood event. I know I had a lot of childhood memories that in some way change my life but the one i want to share with you is:
When I was in third grade, I did very well in my classes, especially in Math. I did all my homework and had good studying habits. However, when I had to express myself in front of my classmates, I froze because I was very shy. Miss Gladys was my Language teacher. She was a demanding teacher and she wanted to prepare good narrators. In my first and second presentation, I got a C. She explained to me that I spoke too low, always used the same tone of voice, and my face did not express emotions. I knew things had to change if I wanted to improve from C’s to A’s.
The second bimester I was ready to face the challenges of Language Class. Miss Gladys thought that we needed to continue with our narrations. She asked us to investigate the meaning of a legend and choose one to share with our classmates, using our imagination to involve the audience in the story. I am a mystery and ghost story fan, so legends were a very interesting topic and I wanted to learn more about them. Eight years ago, we didn’t have internet service at home like we do now, so I had to consult books. Thank God my grandfather was a man who loved to read and therefore he had many great collections of books. One of them had six volumes and the title was “The Street Where You Live”. It was about Guatemalan legends. These short stories were about supernatural situations that happened in certain places. I chose some titles that I liked and my favorite was “The Man without a Head at the General Cemetery”. The story was about a poor man who worked at the Cemetery as a bricklayer. He closed the holes of tombs. He was a hard worker, but was liked to drink liquor, and every afternoon he drank with his Godfather. One day, they drank more than usual. It was raining really hard and he fell on the floor and landed close to his Godfather’s truck. When his Godfather turned on the engine and drove, the tire cut off his head and died. His head rolled down and fell in a drainage. The next day, they found his body, but never found the head, so they buried the body without his head. Since then, people who visit the General Cemetery say that they have seen his body walking between the tombs looking for his head. So now I had the opportunity to prove that I could be a good narrator. Suddenly I remembered how I froze before. I needed to accept that I had a problem expressing myself when people stared at me. I gave it some thought and then decided to solve the problem. I would use distracters to use while I was narrating the story. One of the solutions was to wear a mask. Just like a little 8 year old girl, I thought that way no one would recognize me, that I would be invisible… Yeah, right! I was happy and started writing the story just as I would tell it to my classmates. I decided to buy a scary sound CD and recorded a tape with a sequence of sounds of terror to play while I was telling the story, such as steps, doors opening and closing, heartbeats, meows, wind, rain, thunder, etc. The day of my presentation, my mom came along and helped me cover the windows with black pasteboard. She put on a witch costume and put white make up on her face and black make up around her eyes… she looked terrifying! My classmates came in the classroom and sat on their chairs. The room was dark and my classmates looked at my mom and me with surprise.
My mom turned on the tape recorder and we heard a loud and scary laughter and I began telling the story very confidently. I walked around the classroom, moved my hands when I knew a scary sound was about to be heard, and spoke with a strong tone of voice. When I ended the story, I was very proud of myself. Miss Gladys and my classmates clapped, and when everyone thought the story was over, my father came in the classroom wearing a white sheet and a straw hat. He said in a frightful tone of voice: “Where is my head??!!” and took his hat off and threw it. My classmates started screaming and laughing at the same time. When Miss Gladys gave me back my essay, I saw a big red A+! I was so excited about getting my first A in Language Class.
So this is my story and I hope you enjoy it and I write more the next week.