The Girl Wearing The Raincoat Is Running To Catch Her Mom

[koganbot]

The girl wearing the raincoat is running to catch up with her mom who is already in the house. The girl is going to the store to get candy, then she is going home. The girl is screaming in the park for her mom because she wants her mom to take her home. She is yelling for Daddy and Grandpa. She is screaming and looking for her whole family. Mom said she could play outside all day. Even in the dark?

She is screaming because she is happy. It's her birthday. She was surprised she got an X-box. She is screaming because there was a fire. The box has something she likes. There is a fire on the bed. They gave her a prize.

The coyote misses his mom. He is looking for food. He is looking out for his family. He is really hungry, hasn't eaten for days. He ate food off the floor. There is chicken. He's taking a bath.

My pokey slipped off the rock and fell on his tail and broke his leg.

This is a street. This is where the cars went and there is a hole. It is not a good thing. You can fall in it. You can get stuck and stay down there and be scared. Cars fall in it. People are running and have to take the bus. They went in another car that is not stuck.

The square in the center is where the street broke. When the green lights up, the cars can go. The car gets broken when it hits the hole.

The boy and girl are whispering. They are saying, "I'm not your friend. I'm going somewhere else. She's ugly. She's bullying somebody." They're being rude. They're being happy. They're blaming people.

They are telling a secret. She is telling him not to be this other person's friend. The boy is telling the girl, "I'm still your friend." They are telling secrets about their other friends. He is telling a secret about his grandma. She is telling a secret about your cousin.

The cheetahs are touching each other. Cheetahs have to eat people. They are looking for people. They are trying to hide so they can eat people. The cheetah's hand is on the other cheetah. She says to chase someone and eat him. Maybe this cheetah is the girl and this cheetah is the boy.

The zebra is hugging the other zebra. The cheetah is hugging her baby. The zebras are looking for their friends. The cheetah cub is hugging the other cheetah to help him look for food. Oh! They're cousins. They play together. They're saying, "Roar, you're my friend." "Roar, you're my cousin." "I'm going to the animal shop." "Where are the zebras so I can eat them?" The animals are looking for their friends. They are waiting for play time.

The girl is walking to the tree to climb it. Big tree. The girl is trying to feel if it's soft or not soft. Does the tree have limbs that will help you climb it? In a forest, she is grown up. The tree is like a giant's leg.

That tree is too big to climb. But she can climb by the ridges. She is going to bang her head and get sent to jail. The girl is trying to climb the tree because she got something stuck up there. She was playing soccer with her friend. It's time for her to learn how to climb. She is almost a teenager and then she can be happy.

--by Frank Kogan (sorta). 2015.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Transcribed from kids' stories? Just did a filmmaking exercise with 2nd and 3rd graders where they recorded themselves alternating improvised lines for a story (classic improv game: take turns adding sentences to the story without contradicting the last sentence) and they came up with the classic "The Mystery of the Missing Puppies," then added illustrative photos in iMovie.

Translating stuff like this for non-classroom audiences, i.e. people outside the classroom in which the story is being told to begin with, always strikes me as tricky. You want to honor the ingenuity of the kids' voices without "laughing at" (even good-heartedly but not on the kids' terms of humor, e.g. "Bad Kids Jokes" http://badkidsjokes.tumblr.com/) or making overly winky and "adult" (e.g. "Axe Cop" http://axecop.com/). (Caveat: I love both "Bad Kids Jokes" and "Axe Cop," but my feelings about them are complicated!)

My first thought, in fact, was that these would make great animated short films, a few seconds each, but then imagined that a professional animator would form a bubble around the student voice -- like that mosquito in the amber in *Jurassic Park* -- while students' own animations would have their own learning curve, where their storytelling (though on a learning curve) has an undeniable spark to it on its own. Hashtag PBS?

[koganbot]

That's why I didn't say where the words were from. I felt the piece should stand on its own. The repetition has a hallucinatory quality that the words when spoken obviously didn't have, which was just kids being shown pictures and creating sentences out of what they were seeing.

But this piece isn't about kids showing ingenuity or being funny. It's writing. It's art. It hammers away with visions of life that the reader might not have herself: "She is telling him not to be this other person's friend." A cute picture from behind of an animal cub putting a paw on another cub's shoulder turns into, "Cheetahs have to eat people. They are looking for people. They are trying to hide so they can eat people." A boy and girl whispering is "I'm not your friend. I'm going somewhere else. She's ugly. She's bullying somebody." A girl looking at a tree is "She is almost a teenager and then she can be happy."

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Haha, I guess I should have said something like "possible spoiler alert?"

Yes, I like this presentation very much. I was just reminded, in reading it and guessing at context, how often children's authorship, when implied or directly credited, can screw up the raw power of what's actually there on the page or on the screen or in the air. I think this is a huge issue in what's called the "youth media" community -- all kinds of assumptions about authorship, both benevolent and, er, less-benevolent, robs the stuff of what's *there* in it. (And that the problem isn't limited to creative work by young people, of course, but seems especially obvious there.) (To be clear, I like that the piece above DOESN'T do that. But removing that context of authorship makes the whole thing more uncomfortable somehow, but stronger as creative expression.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(Uncomfortable as in "disorienting" is what I mean -- I don't know where this stuff is coming from or where it's going. Hence, perhaps, the strength as creative expression, at least in this instance. Unclear context doesn't *necessarily* help creative expression if the power isn't there to begin with, and sometimes outside context helps, but sometimes that same context fucks everything up, too.)

[koganbot]

Honestly, your first comment really annoyed me — not 'cause you identified the voices as kids' (I assume some other readers might do the same, and ask the same question, which is entirely legitimate), but because you potentially contextualized the piece for other readers as "kids being funny" and "kids demonstrating ingenuity." I know you pretty well and I understand that this wasn't your intent, and you weren't saying that "kids being funny" and "kids demonstrating ingenuity" was what the piece was going for. You'd just blundered your way by unclear free association into those topics. It still annoyed me. I doubt it'll matter, though, since most readers (all three of them), will absorb the piece before clicking on the comments.

Btw, I do see a potential ethical issue with my posting this: the question I'm asking myself is, "If one of the kids saw this, would it make her feel vulnerable, would it make her feel exposed?" And if the answer is "yes" then basically I don't post it, even if none of the kids are going to see it. (Even though they won't see it, and even though their voices are anonymous, I'm still exposing them to you.) Actually, that ethical question applies to adults' voices as well, not just kids', not just students'. (The rule isn't 100% strict, since I might overrule it if there's some valuable truth or art to be gained by revealing.* And some things do need to be exposed. But it's a good rule of thumb, especially with kids, and even more especially with students.) Anyway, my answer in this case to "Will the kids feel vulnerable?" is "Not at all," and even "Not in a million years," though I suppose I don't know this with a hundred percent certainty. If I change my mind I'll take it down.

(There's also the chance that posting something like this would mean that future students would sometimes say something in the hope I'd post it. This worry isn't in play, though, if I don't think they'll see it.)

*I did quote an ex-girlfriend's kids in Real Punks, and I'd do it again, though I don't know if they'd have been comfortable then in the way they were portrayed, had they known; I do think they come off great, and that they now, as adults, would probably think so too.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Don't think there's (much of) an ethical conflict, given the piece. And yes, I should have thought twice or three times before posting my first comment, since even though my *thoughts* were pretty much the opposite ("DON'T bring these assumptions to the table") the impact was kind of like saying "don't think of an elephant." Doubt anyone will read my comment before they read the piece (if at all).