"Hey, Joe, stop! The red light on the crosswalk just turned on!"
The man that was yelled at turned towards the running stranger, who was panting like a hot dog. The man called "Joe" had a dog at his side with a special harness on it, and he was holding the handle. The stranger realized that the man was blind. "I must say that my name isn't Joe, but Mark; I would appreciate it if you didn't yell so loud, because I could barely hear the shift of traffic in time and as you can see, I cannot see the red light you mentioned."
The yeller looked like a dog that had been reprimanded as he quietly said, "I am sorry, I didn't see. I saw you in the street with your head cocked like a bat waiting for its sonics to return, and I felt I had to yell about the lights."
"All right, I have heard of red all of my life, and I have asked many this question; Can you describe the colour red in a way I could understand it, without using sight?" the blind Mark asked, "If you can, you would be the first, and I would find a way to reward you."
This question caught the stranger by surprise; after all, he had seen red for most of his life, and he opened his mouth without thinking and said, "Well, red is the colour of blood, it..."
He was interrupted by Mark, who quietly interjected, "I asked you to describe it without using sight, but I do have all the other senses."
This made the other man pause and rethink things for a few minutes. Then he said, "Well, I guess that means I rely on figurative language. Okay, here goes. Hmmm, well, red is most often referred to for danger and injury, mainly because blood is involved, I would guess. Another thing red is associated with is heat; a thing gets hot enough it turns red, or maybe because in space some stars are red. It is also associated with anger, because when really angry a person sees red cloud their vision, and lastly it is put with stopping as a stop light would show. That's it, that's the best I can do at the moment, whether or not it is good enough, you must decide." After he said all this, the man exclaimed, "Oh, I am sorry, I just remembered to introduce myself. My name is Jake."
"Nice to meet you, Jake. Oh, I would say your description is pretty good, at least as far as I am concerned. As to your reward, let's go to my place and talk it over," as he said this Mark had a big smile on his face.
The two turned and Mark led the way down the street to the intersection. The meeting between these two men was later to take on a huge significance to both men, because it was the beginning of a lasting friendship.
*Wincing* Good grief this is another piece that I can spot many kinds of mistakes on. Like the overuse of "well", or semi-colons. I did make a couple changes that he marked in for fixes but the rest is the same. I think the assignment is fairly obvious, but I was to write a paragraph describing either the colour red to a blind person, or a sound to a deaf person. I wasn't sure how to start, and so this is the result. Now for the teacher's comments:
"Jonathan,
Sorry I am using your margin to comment; I did not want to clutter up your notes."
"I suppose the question is whether the description that was good enough for Mark is good enough for me. No doubt, it is. You touched on four important significances of red and used sensory appeal very well."
"Your strength, though, is in your story-telling ability. To create a believable story to go around your description is a marvellous idea. This fact adds to the "read ability" of your piece. Please watch microfeatures."
"Excellent work, gentle bard." 4.5/5 TRS
Kinda obvious why I liked the guy, isn't it? *Grins.* Highschool didn't suck all my creativity out, just a fair bit of it until I started into Magic: The Gathering, Starfleet Battles, and a couple other things. Writing went by the wayside for the most part though the imagination was still strong.
Being called a bard by him is still one of the highest compliments I've gotten as it came at a time when I was still seriously withdrawn from almost everyone around me other than family. Even there it was only immediate family that I was close to. Compliments were rare as I didn't especially think the most of myself then, either. I was just floating through life trying to make it through without being especially noticed except for these works with creative writing and in French class for the most part. There were exceptions, but they were few and far between.
I sometimes wonder what he'd think of my writing now - the RP chat, fanfic group with Garion, etc. Too bad he was only there a few short weeks. They were the best I had in English in many years of schooling.
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