I figured since I refered to this essay in the previous post I'd go ahead and add it.
Hope you enjoy!

Cori
P.S. I'm headed off to Kill Devil Hill in NC for my first ever FAMILY REUNION in a thirteen room beach house today, so I may or may not post for a week. If you simply HAVE to have a Corijezmi fix just email me, I'll treat ya special corijezmi@yahoo.com
GRIN


Ice Is Nice


I looked up at the dusty green board, at the words inscribed there in pale yellow. I bit my lower lip, and tapped my pen nervously. Again I read over the hastily scrawled words before me. My pen pressed deep into the paper, with heavy black porcupines obliterating the flat, ugly or misspelled words. It was good—I was almost certain it was good—but it was different, too. Would it earn me a smile of appreciation, or just the truly excruciating silence that only a room full of adolescents could make? At that point, I didn’t—couldn’t know.
I was, I felt, a rather average high school senior. Average that is, if every student dropped out of school after receiving their first 4.0 GPA after the first term of their junior year because they felt like a failure. "Over-achiever" might have been a more fitting description of me back then. In school, as in other parts of my life, I pushed to achieve in order to compensate for a lack that I perceived in myself. I’d worked hard and made it back to school, determined to graduate.
Once more I looked up at that familiar board, like so many others, aware of the faint scent of chalk from my front row seat. My teacher had given the class what she called an “Energizer” assignment: a five minute exercise at the start of the class to encourage her erstwhile slothful English students to "energize" their minds. Today’s assignment was to create a poem based on one line: Ice is Nice. A seed of thought had been entrusted to me, a seed that I was expected to coax into bloom with the light of my mind; to bring to blossom a poem in a mere five minutes. Mrs. Romesburg strode to the front of the room. The early afternoon sunlight glinted off her glasses, giving her a merry twinkle as she grinned.
“So who wants to share with us?” Clearly she thought the line a challenge, and relished the chance to hear us recite our creations. I wanted to volunteer, I did, but I hesitated. While I waited, another student was chosen. The lithe and lovely girl stood gracefully. The liquid gold sun shone on her luminous, honey-blond hair, and she coyly lowered dark lashes over her sapphire eyes. This girl, otherwise known as "the academic goddess" coughed delicately and then said:
“Ice is nice…Ice is nice for lemonade in the shade…”
Another reading from a sweet, mousy haired girl immediately followed this poem. Hers sounded startlingly like the first. From the back of the room, Grady Robleski, the class clown, nonchalantly raised his hand. Mrs. Romesburg beamed, obviously anxious to hear what the near infamous Robleski had to say on the subject. Grady flashed a relaxed and cocky smirk from where he was slouched down low, his feet way out in front of him, the ultimate in laidback cool as he spoke: “Ice is nice for chilling cold beer, for throwing at friends and for putting down the front of girls' shirts.” There was laughter all around, myself included, and yet I felt emboldened by what I considered my classmates’ sophomoric take on the subject. I raised my hand high.
“Debbie?” My teacher prompted and I stood up slowly, a rosy color rising in my cheeks despite my best efforts to deny it. I couldn’t help thinking in near panic "Ice is nice all right, unless of course it’s paper thin ice stretched over a frigid, watery abyss and you happen to be standing on it!" I calmed my thoughts, cleared my throat, and picked up the innocuous-looking piece of notebook paper. I took a deep breath and began:
Ice is nice for packaging a fearful heart.
One from which happy moments flee.
A thousand shattered dreams are part.
Fortress defense repels all warmth from me.
Dark's the mark seen through the translucence.
There all time is frozen stand still.
Love’s a horrid, painful, penance.
All's sweet, swift hunted for the kill.

There was a full heartbeat's hesitation, and then another. Only absolute silence greeted me. I swallowed, and sunk back into my chair, my cheeks flaming anew. Mrs. Romesburg approached my desk and leaned down. Her glasses were no longer flashing merrily. Instead, they seemed to be gauging me. She rested both hands on the sides of my desk, bringing her face within inches of my own. My heart nearly stopped. Was it really that bad? Then she told me slowly:
“This just sort of…” and she paused, as if searching for the right word before going on. “...comes out of you—doesn’t it?” She said this somewhat accusingly, and I was at first taken aback before she said it again. “Just comes right out of you!” It was then that I recognized it. The feeling emanating from her was jealousy! Not rancorous, but admiring and surprised and slyly amused. The woman was amazed by my poem and was letting the whole room know it. I was stunned speechless. How does one respond to a comment like that? I think in the end I stammered out,
“Yeah, uh, yeah, I guess.” My cheeks were now a crimson-cherry color for an entirely different reason. Mrs. Romesburg had praised my work before—praise I appreciated—but somehow assumed was that generic kind of praise that teachers portioned out to most of their students. This time was different, though. This time I felt certain that it was sincere praise and just for me, and it left me delightfully dazed.
I’m sure Mrs. Romesburg wasn’t aware of it then, but that kind of unabashed admiration of my skill, that kind of immediate and genuine validation of my talent was a spark that lit a fire of passion within me. It wasn't just anybody praising me—It was my teacher! My English teacher thought I was good, very good.
I’ll forever be indebted to Mrs. Romesburg for that, for loving English and writing and letting me know she thought I did it well. Who knows, someday I just might be a New York Times Best Selling Author, and I, of course, will pretty much have to dedicate my first book to my senior English teacher Mrs. Judy Romesburg.
Ice is nice in drinks for toasting Mrs. Romesburg. Ice is nice, indeed.