Sweat pouring down his neck, Walter sprinted across his street to his house. He burst open the door and shut it with a loud thud. He bounded up the stairs to his room, the steps creaking under the weight of his feet. He got into his room and slammed the door. Only now did he take the time to catch his breath. Only then did he catch his breath. “The poetry assignment is due tomorrow so you better start working Walter,” he muttered under his breath. So he started thinking and thinking, about his next baseball game. Then, he suddenly exclaimed, “snap out of it Walter! You do not need another missed assignment, another bad grade, another bad report card, and disappointed parents.” he tried to start writing. “One day as I was walking down the street, my feet started to dance to the beat, no no this is terrible!” he exclaimed. Exhausted and frustrated, he scrawled something down on paper and knew the humiliation that was about to follow.

Walter walked to school that day very slowly, he trudged along, stopped at every stop sign, anything just to slow the inevitable. “Why must you be so lazy,” Walter muttered to himself. Unfortunately, he began to see the faint outlines of the school. He did not want to believe it, but there it was, coming clearer into focus with every step he took. He could hear the door creak as he opened it to english class. His fellow english classmates were all there seated in their normal seats. Walter stood there for a moment, paralyzed in the horror of realizing he was late. “You make take your seat Walter,” said Mrs. Cooper, Walter’s english teacher. He nervously did so. “Today you all will be reading your poetry to the class today,” Mrs. Cooper continued. “Any volunteers?” A girl in the class named Jane raised her hand, when Mrs. Cooper called on her, Walter instantly felt loathing forming inside his chest. Jane was a know it all, and she was very condescending to her fellow classmates, especially to the boys. She walked up to the front of the class and read her poem. I took a walk down by the sea when I saw all my friends waving at me….” Her speech continued for some time like this and when she finished there was some applause and the teacher remarked “very good.” As Mrs.Cooper wound her way around the classroom, Walter became increasingly nervous. Finally, everyone else had read their poems. “Walter, it seems like you are the only one left.” said Mrs. Cooper. Walter walked very nervously up to the front of the classroom. Hand shaking, he takes out a scrunched piece of paper, smooths the creases, and begins to read. “I walking to school one day, the sidewalk seemed to bend and show cracks as I walked.” When he finished, his fellow classmates showed the look of total embarrassment for Walter. Walter looked at his teacher expecting the worse. “That was,very deep Walter.” Mrs. Cooper said. “But Mrs. Cooper it did not rhyme,” Jane complained. “Poems do not have to rhyme,” Mrs. Cooper said. Walter didn’t think the poem made a whole lot of sense either but he decided to keep that thought to himself. “Walt, your poem was so good I’m going to take you to a coffee shop where all the people there can here your great poem.” “Fanstastic,” Walter thought to himself.

When he got home his parents asked him the typical questions at the dinner table. “How are your grades doing?” his mother asked. Walter looked at the ground nervously, desperately trying to change the subject, then looked up and said “I did such a good job on a poetry assignment Mrs. Cooper selected me to give my speech at a coffee house.” There was a moment of silence, then he heard his dad exclaim “You hear that Nancy, our boy has finally done something right!” “Can we hear it,” he asked. Walter was trying to find some excuse to get out of this humiliation, but then he remembered “I’ve got to go to the coffee house with Mrs. Cooper, bye!” and he rushed out of the door.

As he approached the coffee shop the smell of hazelnuts and chocolate wafted through the air. As he entered, he saw many people his mother would have called “hippies” He could see no other kids there, in the coffee shop he knew no one except Mrs. Cooper He saw many people get up in the coffee shop, strangely enough they had poems similar to his! One poem started off like this I saw a tree, I went over to pick some leaves off of its branches. While this increased his confidence some, he was still terribly nervous and when he finally went on stage his knees were ready to give out on him. He began reading, when he was done, the coffee shop gave their customary finger snaps and Walter walked down feeling satisfied. “Great News!” Mrs. Cooper said. “I entered your poem into a teen writing contest, and you won! You get to give your poem at a special awards banquet.”

Walter was frenetically pacing around in his room debating with himself whether he should just skip the banquet altogether. “No you shouldn’t go Walter, you’ll just get up there and embarrass yourself.” “Yes,” Walter acknowledged. “But if I were to tell Mrs. Cooper you were not to go up there because I was too embarrassed, Mrs. Cooper would fail me, and what my parents would think.” “It’s time to go Walter!” His mother called from downstairs. Reluctantly, he came down and got in the car to go to the banquet. When he got there he saw many other children entering a high school gym with a banner hanging up at the top of the gym. “5th annual award writing contest.” Walter walked into the room and found a table as far away from the stage as possible. He waited with enormous anxiety as one by one the winners from the different categories gave their speeches. Walter went up backstage as the person before him was giving their speech so he could get ready to go on. “Good luck, you’ll do great.” Mrs. Cooper said. When the person before him finished their story. The crowd applauded and she smiled as she walked off stage. Walter walked up, butterflies ready to burst out of chest and fly all over the place, approached the microphone and began to read. When he was finished, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Walter saw his parents rise, beaming with pride. Mrs. Cooper joined him on stage as well as the head of the contest. “Never again,.” Walter muttered under his breath. “Now Walter, you are the overall winner of the contest and you win a one-hundred dollar prize.” Walter suddenly became interested, he saw the big check addressed to him in big letters Addressed to Walter Whitman. “So what do you plan on doing now Walter?” Mrs. Cooper asked. “I’m going to go write some more poems,” Walter replied. A look of someone who has an idea was forming across his face.