This is a super short piece I wrote with the students at 916 Ink. The prompt was to write the same story from five different points of view.
"When Anastacia was six, a first grader at Ulloa Elementary, she watched a movie that forever shifted her worldview."
Five Points of View
Anastacia
When Anastacia was six, a first grader at Ulloa Elementary, she watched a movie that forever shifted her worldview. In Pollyanna, a young Haley Mills played an orphan with long, wavy blond hair. Sleek ribbons and bows adorned her hair and drop-waist dresses.
Anastacia longed to be that girl on the big screen. She determined to change her name to Pollyanna, believing that simple act would transform her. She beseeched Beatrice, her big sister, to write a note to her teacher, Miss Marie Rose, announcing the name change and requesting that she please inform the class that, “henceforth,” Anastacia was to be known as Pollyanna.
Beatrice
My ridiculous sister Anastacia routinely embarrassed me in front of my friends. When she had the goofy idea of changing her name to Pollyanna, it was golden, a chance to humiliate her in front of the entire class. I wrote the note for her, copying Mom’s signature, and I bet stupid Anastacia one whole dollar that she wouldn’t have the guts to give it to Miss Marie Rose.
Miss Marie Rose
When meek little Anastacia Turner slipped that crumpled note onto my desk, asking me to announce to the class that her new name was Pollyanna (just Pollyanna, no last name, like a pop star) I was torn. The poor girl was already the butt of many classroom jokes. Yet, she’d always been so timid. This bold move seemed a breakthrough, so I made the announcement with all the pomp and ceremony I could summon, forcing myself not to smile or laugh.
Anastacia’s Chair
I was not pleased to be Anastacia’s assigned chair. If I’d had the skills to file a complaint or teleport myself elsewhere, I would have. That squirmy girl had more “accidents” than any other in my twenty years of classroom servitude.
When Miss Marie Rose (a beautiful woman with auburn hair down to her slender waist and wide skirts that tickled my legs as she passed between the rows) announced the name change, I prepared to be warmly and thoroughly doused. I felt that pitiful child’s wriggly bottom tense. Yet the anticipated flood did not materialize and there was no discreet summoning of the janitor during morning recess.
The Note
I had longed for higher things. To be a page in a novel, a gripping mystery, or at least a love letter. Instead I was a lowly forged note, a bad forgery at that, clenched in a girl’s moist hand, then thrust at the teacher as if I were radioactive.
One nice thing did happen. After the final bell, the teacher smoothed me flat and inserted me beneath plastic, in a binder along with other bits of memorabilia she’d collected over the years. As her soft, capable hands unkinked my wrinkles, she smiled and chuckled at what was written on my skin and I thought that perhaps I hadn’t been so poorly-used after all.
Dorothy RiceDorothy Rice is the author of the memoirs GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK (Otis Books, June 2019) and THE RELUCTANT ARTIST (Shanti Arts, 2015). Her personal essays and fiction have been published in journals and magazines including The Rumpus, Brain Child Magazine and Hippocampus. After raising five children and retiring from a career managing statewide environmental protection programs, Rice earned an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside, Palm Desert, at 60. She also works for 916 Ink, a Sacramento youth literacy nonprofit. You can find Dorothy at dorothyriceauthor.com, and on twitter at @dorothyrowena.
Dorothy, I love this idea of writing the same story from five points of view. And I love the way you executed it. I wondered, as I read the girl’s, the sister’s, and the teacher’s, who would provide the last two points of view, and was delighted to find it was the chair and the note. Very clever. It also amused me that the little girl wanted to change her name FROM Anastacia. When I was young and read Russian history, I fantasized that I was Anastasia, the Romanov princess whose body was never found after the rest of the family was assassinated.
Thanks so much, Suzy. Yeah these are fun to do. It reminded me to use this prompt again in class this coming week. It’s always interesting to see what the kids come up with. As for Anastacia, yes, you’re right. I probably would have been happy with that name! The story was loosely based on my own desire to change my name from boring old-fashioned Dorothy to Pollyanna!
I love this exercise, Dorothy. In fact, I may try it out sometime. So clever to use the chair and the note, although after the chair’s revelation, I wanted to know more about Anastacia/Pollyanna. By the way, I loved your book.
Thanks so much Laurie! I’m thrilled you read my book! On the exercise, I’ll look for the story we use in class to demonstrate it. It’s super clever. A bee sting, I think, from the perspective of the person, the bee, etc.
Clever! And makes me want to try my hand at it. And of course I had to look up 916 Ink…what an outstanding organization! How exciting–and important–to be helping to give kids the means of expressing themselves thru words! And, there I read your bio. Wow! I’m impressed by so much of what I just read, but what really jumped out was that you got an MFA at 60. At 72, I keep thinking about going for it. Have also been thinking of moving from So Cal to Sacramento. I’d love to contact you directly…do you have a website or email address you’d care to share?
If you have the time and money, go for it! The MFA that is. I’d be happy to share my thoughts and perspective with you. My website is http://www.dorothyriceauthor.com – e-mail is dorothy.rice@yahoo.com
Happy Sunday!
Wonderful Dorothy!
I too had to google 916 Ink, what a wonderful organization!
I’m on the board of Literacy for Incarcerated Teens, a non-profit that brings books, and arts and literacy programing to juvenile detention centers throughout New York State.
http://www.LiteracyForIncarceratedTeens.org
That sounds amazing. One of the writing classes I’m facilitating this semester is with incarcerated teen girls. It’s challenging but they do have lots to say and write about!
Yep, the writers and artists who work with our kids sometimes get amazingly astute and heartbreaking responses from them!
so true! I find it heart-breaking that most of these young girls and boys are already parents, some with multiple children on the “outside”
Yes Dorothy, that was true as well in the Bronx high school where I worked for many years.
Thankfully my school had a nursery for students to bring their infants and toddlers while they were in class, and a
social worker and other support staff dedicated to working with students who were parents or expectant parents.
I retired a decade ago and I suspect the funding for that and other important programs has dried up.