From the Popcorn’s Point of View - a composition written in 1981

 This is the only composition I had scanned.  My first paragraph ends with the comment good.  My last paragraph ends with the comment disarming.  I received 22 points.  I don’t know what that is in relation to.  If there were 25 possible points I think I did rather well.  But the paper itself was an atrocious mess.  So maybe it’s 22 out of 100?  I don’t know. I think I went overboard on the contractions. 

My instructor may have docked me for at least one spelling error but as I type this I have found some others that he hadn’t underlined (or pointed out).  My typewriter did not have spell check but word does.  Thus my spelling errors have been corrected but I tried to leave paragraphs and commas as what I had turned in.  I have included two paragraphs from the original I had handed in.

 That particular English class was a rather easy grade as I recall.  So I’m thinking 22 was a decent grade.  But maybe not.  Typing this up for this blog post has been fun for me.  I laughed a lot – probably more than you (the reader) will.

 

You won’t believe how hard it is to be a popcorn kernel. Unlike humans, we don’t make our [own] decisions.  Humans determine how we grow, when we’re to be shipped and sold, and the end result – our career.

We start out as a hardy variety of Indian corn.  We are small kernels and we live in small ears.  We have a tough skin, and that’s how humans can genuinely tell us apart from regular corn, or corn seed. After we are harvested, we are bagged and shipped.

Some mortals will put us in this greasy substance called oil.   At first we think we are getting a bath or something.  The pool is greasy, but we start out feeling good because we think the steam may be tenderizing our skin.  Only the feeling doesn’t last for long.  Quickly, one by one (sometimes two of us will go at a time) will jump to the top and hit our heads on the ceiling.  Some mortal beings will think we are growing, but we’re actually turning into a “Hulk” formation.  You’d burst too if you were frying in a grease while melted butter drips all over your body.

Once we are popped, most people will scarf us down like it is their last time they will ever taste popcorn.  They buy or take us to the movies, and plop us in their mouths while their bugged eyes focus on the screen.  (Well, there are some cases in which we never get eaten, because the humans are too busy practicing mouth to mouth resuscitation.)

Sometimes we are bunched together.  Humans call us popcorn balls.  They stick us together with just about anything.  They use Jello, Karo syrup, honey, brown sugar, caramel, and things like that.

People don’t do it as much as they used to, but still we get some who will poke holes through us and string us around a pine tree.  We become part of the Christmas decoration, and we feel really special.  We are admired by people of all ages and sizes.  It is just really neat. 

Also Creative mortals have used us as part of a picture decoration.  I remember a few friends who were glued to a sheet of blue construction paper.  The paper was used to represent the sky, and my friends portrayed the snow.  We’ve been used in other pictures too. 

Some of us don’t even have to be blown up and go through the “steam-pot” humility.  Folks can still make pictures out of us even though we aren’t popped.

There was this human person who dressed 483 of us in paint.  Some were brown.  Some were black.  Some were many other colors.  The human used the brown kernels for the turkey’s body.  He used the red, green, yellow, and purple kernels for the feathers, the black kernels for the eye and the orange kernels for his feet.  I knew a lot of kernels that had fun having that as their career.

Also men have used us for markers when they play a game.  Sometimes they place a number of us in a jar, and other humans have to guess how many of us there are.

My conclusion is that sometimes it does seem very hard to be a popcorn but we do make people happy.  I guess it’s like a school education, carrying all those books around and writing stupid compositions may get hectic, but the outcome is rewarding.

Here are two paragraphs taken from the paper I had turned in.  How pathetic.