Switching styles!

I enjoyed the opportunity to go outside for class again!  Even though some of nature poems by Mary Oliver that were read were of different settings, it was a neat experience to “do” literature in this way.  Being out in nature and examining it really made the poems come to life.  It puts you in the writer’s shoes and allows you to feel what she felt and see what she saw while writing these poems.

Poems aren’t really my thing, so even though I enjoyed them, I am glad we are switching gears on the types of reading.  I really like reading the boys next door.  I also like the fact that it is written in play-form.  This makes it easier to read and a lot easier to picture.  I like how this is just a look into the daily lives of these men, so far there is no real big happening, it’s just how they are on an everyday basis.  I actually find this story to be comical.  Yes, it is sad for them to have a mental handicap, but they are just enjoying life like the rest of us.  It really makes you see that they are people too, their lives just have a little more spice to them. 

I don’t know if I could ever have the patience to work with people who are mentally handicapped, especially on a long term basis.  Some people are cut out for it, and called to it, but that just means you yourself have to have all the more of a stable temperament.  I think I, and most of us would be like Jack.  He obviously has been working this job for some time now, and so he has grown accustom to their ways, but also a little weary.  I think there would be times when I would blow up to, but then like Jack said “Every time I lose my temper with these guys, I hate myself for about a week.”  Of course you would feel bad, they can’t help the way they act, but we are all human and can only take so much craziness.  Overall, I still find this story to be humorous, not that I’m laughing at them, but with them and what they say especially (Arnold threatening to move to Russia and Norman saying “she’s not no skinny minnie herself” and Lucien always repeating himself, as if everything is a song…  I really like these characters.