https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1316&p=19480#p19480 ----------------------------------- Visitor Tuesday, 15 March 2005, 03:21 AM ----------------------------------- Perhaps I should provide a little background to what lead to my writing this story. I had read a library book about prehistoic America, there was a chapter that spoke about the La Brae tar pit and how valuable it was for understanding the kinds of animals had once inhabited the areas of the tar pit. No mention was made of the terror and suffering that was experienced to build up that huge cache of remains that were so valuable to those studying the pit and its contents. Latter I viewed a film strip in which the place was shown, and of the childern having fun visiting there. Latter again we were shown an educational movie that detailed some of the same information again, this time it was clear that sport was being made of the plight of those we where burried there. Many of the students in our class also started making jokes on the subject. I understand how important the find in the pit are, but, at the time it seemed that I was the only one who felt bad for the suffering and death that once took place there. Then in english class we were given a writing assignment for which we were to write a short story on a subject of our choice based on a theme assigned to us by the teacher. The original version of this story was the result. The day after the final day to submit that project, the teacher had already graded it chose to read it to the class. Soon after he started reading it, the students became bored one of the students grabbed it out of the teacher's hand. That student and a few others started to play "keep away" so the teacher did not recover the paper. In the process, the paper was torn into many pieces. After the class was over there were fragments all over the floor, I was able to recover only a small portion of the original paper. Most important was the fragment that contined the grade that he assigned to it, but that part I did not find. The teacher informed me that without the written grade in hand, the rules did not permit him to record it in his grade book and without the complete paper in hand he could not reassign it a grade. That night, I reassembled the fragments like jib saw puzzle with most of the parts missing. So I rewrote the story, copying that parts that were original and filling the rest in from memory or recreating it when my memory failed. The next day I tried to turn it in, but I was told that I needed to indentify the original parts of the story and which parts were written anew or from memory. He kept the copy that I had just offered him and would not return it. That meant that I had to rewrite it again that night the same as I did the previous night, this time using two different colors of ink to identify which text was which. The next day I turned in the rewritten copy, he accepted it. Latter that day, I had another class in the same classroom. When entering the classroom, I noticed my multicolored ink paper in the trash can next that was next to the door. I tried to recover it, but found only the top quarter of the sheet of paper. I assumed that it was somehow been lost by the teacher, I wrote it again and turned it in again on the next school day. That is when I discovered as a fact what I had suspected. The teacher informed me that he had discarded the paper and was never planning to permit me to resubmit the paper. The reason he had me rewrite it so many times was that wanted to punish me because by his reasoning, the fracus on the day he read the story was my fault. Why was it my fault? Because I wrote a story that he felt was worty of being read to the class. Rather than the "A" that informed me that I had earned, I was given the final score of "F" for failing to turn in the assignment. The other day, I was going through some old papers and was suprised to find in an envelope the fragments of that paper. So, I thought that I would rewrite it just one more time. Pangor