Rage & Happinese

As a special treat to celebrate my last week of standardized test scoring for the 2011 season (only 3.5 months, but felt like about 2,000 years) I give you an excerpt from an essay I read this very day and transcribed word for word, errors and all. It features an 8th grader talking about how he answered a want add for a theater company, thinking he'd be making costumes, but actually ended up playing the part of Elmo in some kind of interactive show for tiny tots. Think Bukowski meets Camus .

"I was angry, but I took the job anway. The costume was huge, red, and furry.As I laid it out the character was elmo.However, I put the costume on and it was horrible. It had big chewed gum balls inside of it in it was very stinky..."

(The kids are unleashed on the costumed characters for fun time.)

"Children, I thought. The children ran to me with rage and happinese. I was scared for my life. The children was huge, agressive, loud, and bad.My job was to calm them down, but I seemed to fail. I hated those children, they gave me the creeps."

I could only smuggle so much out on sticky notes, but our intrepid narrator then describes "getting angry" and quitting before the end of his first day. I've been there, bud. I've been there.