Snapshots
Example One
From The View from Saturday (pgs 65-66)
The kid was holding a leather book bag. Ever since backpacks were invented, no one—ever—in the entire school system, grades K through twelve, carried a book bag, especially a leather one.
The kid boarded the bus, the dark man wearing the long apron waved, and the kid stopped at the top of the steps and waved back. Even the first graders on the first day of school don’t do that.
The kid started making his way to the back of the bus. Before I could resume my seat-occupied sprawl, the kid was standing in the aisle next to my seat.
“Is this seat occupied?” he asked.
No one ever asks. They just stand in the aisle until you move and make room for them. Even if he had asked if the seat was taken instead of asking if it was occupied, I could have told that he had a British accent. He didn’t look British. His skin was the color of strong coffee with skim milk—not cream—added; the undertones were decidedly gray. His lips were the color of a day-old bruise. He had more hair than you would think a single skull could hold. His hair—blue black, thick and straight—did not have the hard sheen of the hair of a Chinese or Japanese but had the soft look of fabric.
Example 2
From The Adoration of Jenna Fox (60-62)
Jenna is at the shore. A pitchfork is in her hands. Cords of hair whip from her ponytail across her face. She smiles at the camera and says, “Come on, Mom, put it down and help me!” At twelve years old, I still called her Mom. When did I begin calling her Claire? I can’t recall, but I feel hardness of the world on my lips. The camera wobbles, and Claire’s voice is loud. “In a minute. Let me get a little more first.”
Was this a family getaway? A day at the beach? Every aspect of Jenna’s life is recorded. Father comes into view with a silver pail in hand, and he waves it in front of my face. “All mine,” he teases. “I won’t go hungry! Can’t say the same for you two.”
Jenna laughs, this person that is me, and calls “He has a hundred quahogs, Mom! Put that down, or we’ll starve!” Jenna thrusts her pitchfork into the sand and the camera zooms in on her sandy feet, then glides up the length of her body, like every inch is being adored. It finally stops on my face. It rests there. Caressing. Watching. Watching what? The enthusiasm? The ruddy cheeks? The anticipation? Watching all the breaths, heartbeats, and hopes of Matthew and Claire Fox? For a moment, I can see the weight of it in Jenna’s face. My face. “Mom!” Jenna pleads. The camera wobbles, is turned off, and a new scene appears, focusing on a campfire—
“Stop!” The disc obeys. A blanket. A blue one. A canteen.
I think I know what comes next.
A flutter runs though me. I know. I picture the scene, fully formed. Jenna, crossed-legged on a blue plaid blanket on the sand. A mug of steaming hot chocolate in my hands. Hot chocolate with three fat marshmallows. I loved hot chocolate. Taste! I am shocked at my first memory of taste. How could I forget taste? Chunk after chunk pieces together. It is like a window has been opened and memories are breezing through it. Days. Weeks. Three weeks of details collect and run through my mind, every one remembered and sharp.
Thought Shots
Example 1
From Speak (70)
School is out and there are two days until Christmas. Mom left a note saying I can put up the tree if I want. I drag the tree out of the basement and stand it in the driveway so I can sweep the dust and cobwebs off it with a broom. We leave the lights on it from year to year. All I have to do is hang the ornaments.
There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if we could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would buy a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up [.]
I bet they’d be divorced right now if I hadn’t been born. I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them—an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can’t believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It’s a shame we can’t just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.
Merry Christmas.
Example 2
From Huckleberry Finn (Chapter 4, pg 18)
Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter, now. I had been to school most all the time, and couple spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication tables up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathematics, anyway.
At first I hated school, but by-and-by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hooked, and the hiding I got the next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow’s ways, too, and they warn’t so raspy on me. Living in a house, and sleeping on a bed, pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods, sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn’t ashamed of me.