Every Rose

  Chapter 1: In the Great Green Room (or in bed beside my mother)           

It was tradition in my family growing up to read before going to bed.  Each night I would take a hot bubble bath, bundle up in my Disney princess Pj’s, call my mom, and anxiously wait until she crept up the stairs to read to me.  I would shout “goodnight moon!” before she could even ask what story I wanted to hear.  I was infatuated with the book.  Though it’s a very simple story about the cat and the dog, and the picture of the cow jumping over the moon, I couldn’t get enough.  I made my mom read it aloud every night until I was probably three.  One night I was so excited I called down the stairs, “Mom! I can read goodnight moon!”  Now let’s be honest: I couldn’t read at three, I had just heard the book so many times I had it memorized.  But according to myself, I could read, and I was good at it.  From then on I continued to have my mom recite stories to me until I memorized them and in a way began to trick myself into reading. 

Chapter 2: De Tar Baby (Or reading made fun)           

Brer Rabbit was a spunky Disney character that went on adventures and got into plenty of trouble sporting a pink shirt and jeans everywhere he went.  We had an old picture book from the 70’s, filled with every Disney tale imaginable.  My personal favorite, of course, was Brer Rabbit.  My mom had the best Brer Rabbit talkin’ accent I’d ever heard.  She could say her “Den’s, dat’s, dere’s, de’s, whrrps, whoosh’s, lo and beholds, mustarches, lippity clips, kerplunks, blips, yassirs, and howdy-do’s” better than anyone else.    I’d never heard anything like it.  From then on I would try to imitate her voice, and without noticing she was making me bring my stories to life. To this day my mom and I still put on the accent occasionally for kicks and giggles.               

Along with putting on a southern accent, I have been told that I tell the best stories because I do all kind of voices.  I owe this skill to one person, Ms. Isabelle.  I remember the summer before fifth grade I was terrified to find out who my teacher would be for the upcoming year.  It was either Mr. O’Neil, the oversized science teacher “with a little Irish nose,” or Ms. Isabelle, the aged Veteran of 40 years.  I had heard stories about how strict she was and I was not ready for her.  Well, when I went to our annual back to school sale I put off checking the class lists as long as I could.  When I was forced to check it out before we left I read “Caroline Huber, 5I”.  I had the old lady.  I went home crying that night dreading the first day of school, but it came far too quickly. As I walked into the orange carpeted classroom I couldn’t help noticing the familiar scent of “Grand mom.”   Mothballs, mouthwash, hair products, and laundry detergent filled the room- she really was old.   Half way through introducing herself she held up a thick, worn out, brown, once-hard-back book and stated we would be reading this novel this year.  Everyone around me let out a groan.  Ms. Isabelle just chortled back, “HaHa, no loves, I will be reading it aloud to all of you.”  From then on we all raced in ten minutes early from recess to make sure we would get in our promised chapter of the day.   She was amazing.  Even without speech tags we all knew exactly what character was speaking.  She played all the parts at once.  It was in her fifth grade class that I learned how to bring the stories to life. 

Chapter 3: Helping a Fellow Student (Or Expanding my Vocabulary)            

In eighth grade I came on my first visiting day at Penn Charter.  I remember I was wearing a gray pleated skirt, a blue sweater, and for some reason I thought that white knee socks were very in that year.  I showed up looking just the part of a Catholic school girl.  I shadowed Sara Henley for the day, and the one event that the both of us remember was the time we spent during her flex period.   She reached into her backpack and pulled out vocabulary workshop level D, the same level I was working on at my school.  I remember leaning over to check the unit and casually mentioning, “O yea, I did that one.”  Well before I knew it I had a group of students surrounding me asking, “What’s the answer to this one?”  Well not only did I fell extremely smart at this point, but I also felt very popular.  I’d never seen half of these kids before, but they were all dying to talk to me.  Today I realize that I wasn’t that cool, but it taught me that I had a very good word memory.  My mom always says, “You have a mind like a steel trap” because I can remember lines from movies, books, songs, etc.  I didn’t realize until that day that my talent also applied to my vocabulary.  And I owe this entire discovery to Henley not having her homework done.  Thanks, Henley!

Chapter 4: The gift of Troy (or of reading)           

Toward the end of my eighth grade year I began to spend less and less time in my school library.  I didn’t like it in there at all.  The awful orange carpet, the uncomfortable burlap seats that made the bag of your legs itch like crazy, the shhhhhh of the librarian peeking over her desk, and the smell of the old books.  One day I walked into my homeroom and found a thick, black and gold, hardback book lying on my desk.  On top of the book lay a neon pink post-it note that read, “Dear Caroline, I’ve noticed that you haven’t been in the library lately, and we just got this book in new.  I hope you enjoy it. –Mrs. Zajko,” or Mrs. Psycho as we called her.  Of course I seriously considered returning it to the library and telling her I just didn’t have time to read it, but I didn’t really have that many things to do.  I opened the book and glanced over the first italicized letters.  Before I knew it I had read the first fifty pages and hadn’t broken a sweat.  I actually loved it.  It told the legend of Troy and the theories of the immortal presence during that time.  I completely fell in love with the characters and romanticized about what I would do in the situations.  The reading of this novel sparked my interest in historical fiction novels.  Since then I have moved on to other topics under the same genre.  My most recent love has been the historical fiction novels about the ancient European rulers such as Henry VIII, his wives-especially Anne Boleyn, and Marie Antoinette.  Surprisingly this hobby has proven to help me a lot in my history classes as well as my English.