Never Blame the Umpire Read Online Free Page A

the class hear them.”
    “Some of them are too personal. I can’t read those.”
    Mr. Gallagher said he was going to type some of our poems and make copies so we could enjoy the poems written by other class members and learn from them. He said he wouldn’t type the poems that had NO written at the top of the page.
    I made sure that most of mine had a big NO at the top.
    I tell Ginny how Mr. Gallagher had us write a lot of other things today. Some were three-line poems. He told us not to use rhyme. He said our poems were a kind of haiku, but that we didn’t have to use the 5 – 7 – 5 syllable pattern that a traditional haiku uses.
    I wrote about a girl on the tennis court.
     
On the green tennis court
    Yellow fuzzy balls skip
    Into the twang of catgut strings.
     
    The neatest thing was: when Mr. Gallagher came around to see our work he said he liked it! He said, “You have some good images—your colors, the sound of the ball.” He liked my verb ‘skip.’ He said, “Some writers would have said ‘bounce’; ‘skip’is a more unusual choice. When you’re writing, try to come up with the unusual. Don’t always use the same words everybody else would use.” Then he asked me, “Do you play much tennis?”
    “Some,” I said. “Mostly with my family or my friend Ginny. My mom played in college, and she taught me how to play.”
    “Kate’s good,” Allison said. “She could play in tournaments if she wanted to.”
    I like Allison a lot. She’s a year older than me and we go to different schools, so I don’t get a chance to spend much time with her, but we go to the same church. She’s been in the same youth group as Ginny and me for a couple years. It was nice of Allison to say that, but I don’t think I’m that good.
    “Pretty impressive, Kate,” Mr. Gallagher said. “I hope you’ll write some more poems about tennis.” Then he said, “That’s something I hope each of you will do: write about the things that interest you most. You all have talents and interests that would be fun for others to read about. That’s what poetry is all about—sharing with others how you feel about things.”
    Then some other kids read more three-liners. I wasn’t surprised at the poem Allison read. She titled it, “My Favorite Book.”
     
God’s word beside my pillow
    Filling me with peace
    God’s words of peace for me.
     
    One thing about Allison, she’s not afraid or embarrassed to let people know how she feels about God. I wish I could be that open. I go to Sunday School and church every week. I’m active in all the church’s youth activities. And I love God. I really do. But I pretty much keep how I feel about him to myself. I admire Allison for being strong enough to let people know how she feels, especially when she gets teased by some people for being “goody-goody.” It doesn’t even seem to bother her when people say that about her.
    Another thing about Allison, she never puts others down if they don’t believe the way she does about God.
    Mr. Gallagher had us write a lot of other things, not just the three-line poems. Every few minutes he’d switch to something new, so class never got boring. He read some of his own poems, and he read poems by Robert Frost and Shel Silverstein and some other poets I’d never heard of. But the way he read made all of them sound good.
    The final poem we worked on before the class ended for the day was what Mr. Gallagher called an Expansion Poem. We had to take one of our three-line poems and make it longer by adding details to it. We could describe the place in more detail or addother people or show more of the action. We could tell how the people were feeling. We could make it into a little story if we wanted to.
    I’d written six different three-line poems, and the one I decided to expand was my tennis poem.
     
On the green tennis court
    Yellow fuzzy balls skip
    Into the twang of catgut strings.
    We dance to the music,
    My mother and me, together
    On one