Part III

Here is the final part of my in-class assignment:

My first sting not only gave me a crippling fear of insects, buzzing, and things on my neck, but it ruined several balmy English summers for me. Bumblebees in England are cute idiots. Wasps are pure evil in a yellow and black striped jumper. Like many adolescents, they seem to be filled with an unjustified rage at the world. Not only will they attack if you come near them, if you have the misfortune to have one come near you, it’s still your fault. British children are taught that soda can never be drunk straight from the can in summer. Horror stories of wasps in throats and children gasping for breath ensure that you’ll never drink without a straw. If a wasp comes near, the braver ones may swat it away. The idiots – like myself – will run, with the enraged wasp giving chase. You are supposed to sit tight, and wait until it gets bored. It was one of the times I had tried the sit tight method. The wasp crawled down my neck, and stung me twice before taking its leave. I screamed so much, our meal was free because the owners just wanted me gone.

An internal debate on not coming to class today. My bed was comfortable. There were bees and spiders outside to consider. Season 5 of How I Met Your Mother had finally been downloaded. Class seemed like a total inconvenience. My options danced around in my head – I may already have too many absences. What if I get deathly ill next week? I’m graduating in December, shouldn’t I be more responsible now? The answer was a resounding NO. But I got grudgingly got dressed, and pretended to be responsible for a day.

 Lunch was a vegetarian roll, with grilled fish and penang sauce,  a coke. It wasn’t cold enough, which annoyed me. I hate hot drinks, I really hate warm drinks. It’s ice cold or bust in my books. The coke remained unfinished. I debated upon a magnum ice-cream, but then realised I was still in my pyjamas, and had a class to attend. The magnum will have to wait, and probably melt in my temperamental bar fridge. 

I still think I  used sentences beginning with 'I' far too much. But it's hard - I think that if I had written the piece knowing I couldn't start with 'I', it would have been much easier. But once I had formed the sentence structure and flow of my writing, it wasn't just changing the beginning word, it was often changing the whole sentence and those that followed.

I never realised just how much I used 'I' in sentence beginnings. If you look at the last two paragraphs here, they've both started with 'I'. It was a good exercise, especially for my literary feature and I need to be careful not to put my presence in my writing too much, or it will be overwhelming and take away from the true story.