Re: Please Help Me

Posted by glotynn on 2007/4/17 1:14:50

Hi Aspirant,

Good job! I enjoyed reading your essay and could hardly find what to correct. However, there are some minor revisions to suggest.

<<PART ONE>>

THE KEYS

There they were, lying insipidly in a dark corner of my drawer, wearing a thin copper-hued coat of rust.

I took them out of my drawer and looked at them, amazed that they did not find their way into some rubbish dump after my family shifted its residence. I made a few half-hearted attempts to scrape off the rust with a coin, all the while thinking. Trying to remember. And as I continued to look at those keys, remember I did pick up gradually.

I grew up in an apartment in Taipei, in the midst of a housing estate that is was relatively large by local standards. As a wide-eyed tot, I used to toddle all over the flat, admiring the pale yellow hues of the walls, and the colorful marble floor that stayed deliciously cold on easingly cool in those scorchingly warm afternoons. I was an exceptionally subdued baby (a fact that my friends now will never accept), and my quietness followed me into childhood. I was never autistic, just but laconic, but while my parents must have been a trifle worried that their only son was so hushed.

After I started schooling, I developed a habit of retreating into my own room once I reached home after school. My room was my cocoon, my little shell of existence, and I ventured outside only for to have meals with my family, to play the piano, and to answer the occasional phone calls. Apart from going to school, I hardly stepped out of my home. Put simply, I was a veritable recluse.

I took great pains(strength??) to bedeck in bedecking my room with paintings and ornaments, and great pride in keeping it neat. I still have many keep vivid memories of that room - the copy of the Mona Lisa above my table, the whirring ceiling fan that always seemed as if it was about to topple, and the antiquated computer that failed to boot up ever so often. I also recall the amazing number of drawers I had in my steel cupboard, my closet and under my table top. Before I left the house in the morning, I used to lock them one by one with my keys.

The intruding rings from the phone interrupted my reminiscence. It was my classmate. We chatted for about an hour before we hung up, and all the while, I was looking at those old drawer keys.


-- To be continued --