the goldfish

my dad called a little while ago, saying he found a bedtime book i used to love reading with him at his house.  "i'll mail it out for pace's birthday!"  he said.  i could not recall the book he was referring to!  i remember a greek mythology book i loved him reading to me; i remember reading the comics on his lap on sundays.  but a bedtime story book?  hmmmm..."you'll remember it as soon as you see it.  it's yours; you wrote your name in it." 

this book arrived in the mail the other day, and just as he'd promised, i remembered the book the instant i saw it.  as i thumbed through the pages, i was flooded with nostalgia--i loved reading this book when i was little!  i remembered the illustrations, the stories, everything!  the characters were still all there!--poor little charlie centipede with his 100 cold feet; teddy koala bear who traveled from england to australia every night while his owner was sleeping; that tricky mickey monkey and his farmyard mix-ups!  they were all still there, waving right back at me.

and then, as i was thumbing through it all, another little poem came right through the cloud of nostalgia and hit me over the head, and i instantly starting laughing.  this was it!  this was the book with the goldfish poem!  

when i was in 2nd grade, the elementary school i was attending made a school-wide call for poems to publish in a school poetry book.  now, my mom taught me to read well before i entered kindergarten, and i loved reading.  i was the wormiest little bookworm alive.  and i knew just the poem i could submit--the goldfish poem from my book!  

my mom was in school and had an early class, so my older brother and i went over to our neighbor's house before school, and ms. irene took us and her daughters to school (my mom dropped my younger brother off at preschool).  i had packed my book in my backpack, knowing i wanted to use this before-school time to "write" my poem.  i remember making sure christian and susan were occupied with a cartoon before i pulled out my book and a blank sheet of paper.

my heart immediately started racing, and my palms got cold and clammy.  i didn't know the word plagiarism, but i knew copying someone else's work and submitting it as my own was wrong.  and i didn't want to get caught.  i copied as quickly as i could while still trying to keep my penmanship neat and tidy, all while keeping a sleuthy eye on christian and susan.  i finished copying the poem, and then even added my own goldfish in a bowl illustration.  back in the backpack, and phew!  done!

my heart started racing again getting out of the car when ms. irene dropped us off at school.

i don't remember turning it in, and i don't know if my teacher called me up to her desk that same day, or a different one, but ms. payne asked me about a line in the poem.  she said, "how did you decide to write "swims and swims" here?"  if you'll notice, the words should be "swim and swim" to be grammatically correct...i think.  now that i'm looking at it as an adult, i think the grammar was fine, maybe my teacher was just asking me how i thought to put it all together...as a 7 year old...anyway, when my teacher posed this question to me, i couldn't very well explain i had plagiarized the poem, and that was what the author had written, so that's why i wrote it that way...so i pulled my shy face and said, "i don't know".  

well...no one else in the world must have had this book, teacher or student, because "my" poem got published.  my mom said she remembers ms. payne asking if she had helped me write the poem, and she said she had not.  so when it was discovered i had creative-genius tendencies, ms. payne suggested i join the gifted and talented reading/writing student group.  i remember going to these little groups--we got pulled out of normal class for our special group.  we wrote a group story together about rabbits.  

i called clearview elementary and talked with mary, a very nice secretary, who said she would be glad to check their file drawers for a school poetry book from 1986 or 1987...maybe i'll be able to include a photo of that bit of nostalgia, too!