Monday, October 18, 2010

The Superman

by Ji Eun
My second monthly fun paper is about a superhero. Some might have already heard this story but I’ll still tell it to you. It is about how I started to hate the so called hero, Superman. It all started when I was about six or seven years old. It is the age when kids usually want to be a superhero. In my case, it was Superman. I actually thought that Superman really existed and that he could actually fly. I also thought that if I learned to fly, I could be a hero like Superman. I thought Superman was the best hero ever. I really liked him a lot. When I saw him in the cartoon, I thought that he was really awesome and that I could be a hero and help people like he did.
One day, I saw an old lady who was carrying a bag full of vegetables and other ingredients to cook. I thought that it was my chance to be a hero and to become Superman Jr. At least that’s what I thought. I guessed that Superman was too busy fighting with other guys, so I walked to the lady to help her carry the bags. To show her gratitude, she gave me some money to buy cookies and have fun but I didn’t take the money. I smiled and with a loud voice I said, “Superheroes don’t take money after helping! It’s natural!” She smiled back and I went back home. I was so proud of myself but I did not think that I was ready to be a hero. Not yet, but soon.
The next day I woke up in the morning and happily marched out from the house. “Today I’ll help a lot of people and become a super hero” I thought. I helped others from morning until night! I was super super proud of myself. I thought that the time had come. The time for me to become a superhero, but then I remembered that superheroes fly. I had a mission to accomplish and it was to do a test to become a superhero. The test was to be able to fly. I ran home, unlocked the house, and walked in.
There was only my sister, my brother, and my aunt watching the television. I told my sister that I was going to try to fly. She just laughed and nodded. I was really nervous because it was the last mission I had to do to become a superhero. I calmed myself down and made a position to get ready to fly. Suddenly, my sister pulled me as I rapidly stretched out my arm like superman. Then I screamed, “Superman!” Then I jumped and directly fell on top of a pair of sharp scissors. I started to bleed but I was still happy that I found out the truth about superheroes. They didn’t exist and people can’t fly. Bye-bye superman. My mom and dad received a call from my aunt who told them what had happened. My dad took me to the hospital where I had surgery and stayed for a month.
Superheroes don’t exist and people can never fly unless they have a machine. No more Superman, no more stupidness, no more memories of Superman. Bye-bye.

9 comments:

  1. Wow! You know how people say you shouldn't run with scissors? They should probably add that you shouldn't fly with scissors either...

    I really like the idea of this piece. It's always funny to think about the kind of misconceptions we had when we were kids. I used to think that I could change the outcome of baseball games with my mind. Actually, I still think that.

    I also like the organization. The story about helping the little old lady is important for showing what kind of person you are and also for building the dramatic tension. By the middle of this paper, I was very interested in finding out why you hated Superman so much since it seemed like you were doing a great job of being a superhero yourself.

    One area that I think could be improved is sentence fluency. Some of your sentences are a bit choppy, for instance: "Then I screamed, “Superman!” Then I jumped and directly fell on top of a pair of sharp scissors." I would rewrite this as:

    Then I screamed "Superman!," jumped, and fell directly on top of a pair of sharp scissors."

    Or "It all started when I was about six or seven years old. It is the age when kids usually want to be a superhero."

    I would rewrite this as:

    It all started when I was about six or seven, which is the age when kids usually want to be a superhero.

    Over all, I really liked this essay. It left me wanting to know more about what happened after you jumped on the scissors. A whole month in the hospital? Wow! Do you still have a scar? Thanks for being a blogging superhero by being the first of our students to post a monthly fun paper!

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  2. Like what Mr. P just said, I do also like the idea of this piece. You also organized the paper pretty well. I really liked this paper.
    A couple pointers:
    1) Some of your Syntax is in a style which I don't necessarily think is quite appropriate for this piece. Specifically, I'm a little unsure that writing short, simple sentences conveys the voice you were trying for. For example:
    "I thought superman was the best hero ever. I really liked him a lot."
    I'd rewrite that as "I loved superman because he was the best hero ever."
    Some of your syntax is relatively inconsistent- later you start to use longer, more irregular sentences. It doesn't necessarily sound as good that way. Although punctuation doesn't necessarily matter when reading monthly fun papers, it looks better when someone else is reading it. I'd suggest proofreading your papers for grammatical errors before hand.
    2) Some of your vocabulary is a bit repetitive and unspecific. I would drop some of the words you've put in and replace them with something else or just cut them entirely. For example, you use the word "really" a lot in your essay. You could cut out the word really from some parts to make it easier to read, for example, you could change "I thought he was really awesome" to "I thought he was incredibly awesome." or just "I thought he was awesome."
    Spicing up the vocabulary can do a lot for a paper.

    Other than that, I absolutely LOVE your paper. It was fun to read. I think I'll post one of mine soon.

    -Lydia

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  3. This is a cute paper!

    While I agree that the syntax is very choppy and a tad awkward, I think it adds to the innocence of this piece. Though it is from a highschooler's perspective, the short, nondescript sentences made the narrator appear to be much younger, and I think it added a child-like simplicity. After all, isn't that what this is about? Wanting something impossible, but seeing as you're a kid, the world seems very black and white and attainable.

    Other than that, staying in the hospital for a month is absolutely horrifying, and I hope the author has a cool scar to show for it.

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  4. WOW!!! This non-fiction story is really interesting and I believe it is rich in quality. The idea of becoming a superhero like Superman, was great for a lot of people, but when you are still a little kid. I think that when Ji Eun helped the old lady it was definitely a good deed on her part and she was already being some kind of hero. Anyways, due to this, I think the superhero experience for her was certainly successful, except for the flying part, and she became a hero just by doing a small act. And the best of all is that small acts are the ones that reflect most on how good our civilization can be; with courtesy, peace and no violence.

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  5. This is a really great paper! Way to go Ji Eun! It totally reminds me of when I was little. Everyone has believed in something impossible at least once in
    their life, right? Great job!

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  6. Ji Eun, I absolutely love this piece of writing! i think it is really funny and enjoy reading and listening to all of your monthly fun papers!! I can't wait for your next one! Awesome Job! :)

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  7. Nice work Ji Eun. This does remind me of when I was a kid!

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  8. Wow to be a kid again would be awesome. I could do all the stuff that I can't get away with anymore!

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  9. Ji Eun, I think your right about how the only way people can fly is through machines and also about there not being superheroes. The only thing that I would say is that even if there is no heroes with super human powers there is still heroes in this world like the firefighter and the police mans. Even if they don't wear weird customs and through fireballs out of their hand, they are still every day heroes because they rescue people and help people all the time in the way they can. But apart form this your right about there being no superman, and I also agree how little kids tend to pretend like they are a superheroe. I remember when I was little I used to pretend to be the Invisible Women or the Starfire, from the Teen Titan show.

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