Chalk- I grew up with twenty-one cousins around the age of myself, so there was always something for me to do. Also, all of them lived within 10-30 minutes away from my parent’s house, so I always would go see them whenever I had free time. We all loved watching basketball, which mainly consisted of us watching “our team”, the Cleveland Cavilers. As children, we all wanted to be just like the professionals on TV who could make 3 pointer shots very frequently, so we would practice our basketball skills daily. My specialty was shorting free throw shots and 3 pointers. My cousin Even would always play on my team and he would shot lay-ups. We played very well together.
Before we could practice, we had to use chalk to make lines on whatever driveway we were going to play basketball on. I remember the feel of the smooth, chalk. As we would draw our lines, the chalk would lose small fragments and leave the chalky residue on the ground. When we were are done examining our lines checking for accuracy, our chalk was now only small fraction of what the original amount was. We would always use a dark color like blue, so we could see the lines drawn on the ground were clearer. When the day would heat up we could smell the chemical scent lift off the ground and up into the air. We knew that when the chemical scent had risen into the air, it was time for us to go inside. Finally, we would wash the chalky residue left on our hands from the use of the chalk off once inside.
Play-doh was one of my favorite objects to play with growing up. It had no rules or regulations; I could do whatever I wanted to do with it. Most of the time I just held the squishy clay in my hands until it became warm. I would morph the ball into one big, spherical shape. It was very difficult the get a perfect shape, because my hands have curves in the, which would then leave dents in the Play-Doh. I would keep doing circular motions with the Play-Doh in my hands, until it met my expectations of an almost perfect sphere shape. After using the Play-Doh I loved smelling the chemical scent it left on my hands.
After playing basketball one afternoon at my cousin’s house, my little cousins and I went inside to wash our hands off under the sink. My little cousins including myself loved playing with Play-Doh, so we concurred that we were to play with Play-Doh after we washed our hands thoroughly. I went over to where their stash of Play-Doh normally was, but to my surprise I saw a brand new play set for the Play-Doh. I asked when they had gotten the play set, and they said a few days ago. I was overjoyed and thrilled to hear this information and to see the brand new play set. The play set was the “icing on top of the cake.” We all raced towards it and filled the play set molds with all the colors of Play-Doh we had. We then would leave the Play-Doh out for days for our creations to harden. The soft, shapeable Play-Doh became a crusty and flaky shape that would fall apart when we tried to pick our creations up. My creation was a blue person with yellow, red, and green hair, and when I tried to pick it up, the thin colorful hairs had fallen off.
Comp-osing Our Future 