Essay Prompt:
How did you get caught? (Or not caught, as the case may be.)
The whole neighborhood knew Joanne-she was the "turtle lady", the small, rather skeletal woman whose red-ear slider turtle permanently touted about her feet, inspiring her to traverse the streets with her bantam baby tethered in said fashion. Joanne was the turtle lady, but she was also several things more. She was the person whom my dad hired to clean our house, my friend, and my mentor- the one who unabashedly shoved reality in my face and taught me how to swallow it.
Joanne was poor, but at fifty-nine, also proud.
She wouldn't take our alms, so instead I would beg her to eat, but she'd refuse on the basis that the food I offered wouldn't sit well in her stomach, or that she already had something in her stomach that wasn't sitting well, or that her back hurt, or that she simply didn't like it. I knew her real reason was none of these. Her real reason was dignity. Her last shreds of dignity-she wouldn't be giving them up to a sixteen-year-old. But she'd always accept one thing-pie. So we'd sit with pie, various kinds, sometimes peach, sometimes apple, other times triple-berry (our favorite), cherry but once and never again (she dismissed its thick, sweet syrup as "industrial goop") and we would sit on my patio, discussing the perks and quirks of life.
She told me of her past-how she had lost her husband, how her son was always so strung up on drugs that he had tossed away any joys of motherhood she might have experienced, how he was now wandering from couch to couch, asking her often for money, of which she had none. She told me she came from Pittsburg, where her mother was struggling with cancer, but where she could no longer afford to live, because she herself had been terrifyingly sick there (something in the air-she spent days at a time in the hospital, and had nearly gone blind). I realized that I had no such things to worry about. I became conscious of the fact that my "problems" were not problems, at all, but petty complaints.
I soon saw that Joanne was a classic pessimist, a lovable Eeyore. Somewhere along the line, she had simply given up-she stopped struggling.
"How are things, Joanne?" I'd ask her.
"Eh." she'd respond, but then she'd bark out a laugh-the edge of her lips would pull playfully to her ears and her eyes would crinkle into telling crescents, telling me that yes, life was bad, but hell, wasn't it always?
Joanne and I, from two different worlds, quickly bonded, made friends.
She was a little woman, and had curious habits-I remember how she would cut the kitchen sponges in half, claiming that at their regular size they were too big for her small hands. Somehow, Joanne was silly, logical, blunt and subtle all at once.
She wouldn't say anything, for example, when I begged my father for a new phone, but I always saw her staring, shaking her head. She herself couldn't meet the expense of even a landline. I soon dropped my phone nagging.
Week to week, she would see me strut about, demanding my allowance so I could go shopping. "What are you doing," she'd reprimand me, "prancing around at stores, all the time?Get off your butt!" Then she'd have me clean my room while she winked at me over her peach Fresca.
One Tuesday while studying, or rather, while chatting to my friends over Facebook and complaining about studying, I looked out the window and saw her trudging figure hovering around the neighborhood garbage cans. She was searching for bottles and cans to collect; was looking to gross a few cents-what she hoped would be the next day's breakfast.
My heart broke. It broke again when she announced to me that she would be leaving to Pittsburg-her fixed low-rent had expired, and life on the West Coast was too expensive.
I miss her. She was like an oddball mentor whose quirkiness is timeless and nostalgic; whose persona permanently etches a memory to your heart for curious reasons beyond your capabilities of description. Because, although it was she herself who was plummeting, slowly sinking down into the crevices of society; into the cold hands of poverty, she caught me-before I even knew I fell.
General thoughts? Anything I can improve on?
Thanks for your time!
The prompt as you have phrased it makes little sense, so I don't know what you are supposed to be writing on, but overall the essay is well-written. I have two main main concerns, though.
First is that you don't really go into that much detail about how she "caught" you. You may have been a better person for knowing her, but wanting a cell phone and a higher allowance are not, in and of themselves, warning signs that a teenager is on the path to dire poverty. On the contrary, coming from a house that can provide such things is one of the best guards against such a fate.
Second is that you describe this person very sympathetically and term her a friend, yet you also compare her to a fictional donkey and say you will make no effort to keep in touch with her or to find out if she has ended up on the street, much less to try to convince your family to save her from that fate. As a result, at points I felt you were . . . condescending? contemptuous? insincere? I'm not really sure how to describe it . . . as if you were writing about this person because you knew that praising the underprivileged is Good, and Something the Admissions Officers Will Like, without really meaning it. I'm not saying that is actually the case, only that at points your writing gave me that impression.
Well, my goal was actually to describe how Joanne functioned more as a dose of reality. I didn't mean for it to come out as though she reminded me that I don't want to be poor.
Hm, I'll have to work on it and add some more to it to make that more clear, and also to make myself sound less pompous (because I definitely am NOT).
Thanks for the feedback!
:)
Oh, and about the essay prompt, I agree, it IS a little weird. However, that is the question as taken directly from the University of Chicago's website.
They're rather infamous for their somewhat curious prompts, I hear.
