Need help again

Dear Teachers, could you please edit my paragraphs again. Knowing that there is someone there who will correct my writing is very encouraging. Thank you for your help!

Another luxury of my childhood were toys. My two-year old cousin, who lives here, has at least a couple of hundred toys. Most of them are lying around and collecting dust. For him it is impossible to give equal attention to every single toy; for him it is impossible not to be unintentionally neglectful of them. On the other hand, not even one single toy did I have as a child. That was not a problem for I had my rich imagination. Whenever my younger sister and I were not helping our mom, we played together. For example, we used to make juice with rose petals. Here is how we did it. First we would pick a couple of wild thorny red roses. Very carefully petals were torn off the roses with our skinny fingers and placed into a container filled with water. With a small branch we would stir it until water was colored red. This juice we served to our imaginary guests. Rocks, branches, wood chips, flowers we used to manufacture our own unique toys and set up the stage for our pretend play. Needless to say, playing was my favorite thing to do. Unfortunately, an abrupt end came to it .

Against my will, upon reaching the age of seven, I was enrolled in grade one. Believe it or not, I was not even asked if I wanted to go to school. Obviously my opinion counted for nothing. This made me very angry, however I knew better than to oppose my mom’s orders. The only reason I liked to go to school, from 12:30 until 4:00 o’clock from Monday through Saturday, were beautiful, colorful, dresses my mom dressed me in. There is a story behind those dresses. My cousin, who lived in the same town I did, had an uncle who lived in the USA. He had a daughter about my cousin’s age. All his daughter’s beautiful dresses were sent to my cousin after his daughter got tired of them. When my cousin grew out of those gorgeous dresses they were passed down to my older sister. Finally, I got to wear them when they became small for her. They were so irresistibly beautiful. To my dismay, in school we had to wear a blue robe over our clothes and have all the buttons done up. Even during school hours, I would secretly undo a couple of buttons so that other children’s eyes could admire the pretty dress I had on. I always managed to take my robe off as soon as the bell rang for our ½ an hour outdoor recess which thankfully was not supervised by a teacher. Whenever I had a dress like that on I did not play, for I feared that something bad would happen to it. I did not let anyone even stand close to me. I strutted around like a proud peacock showing off its beautiful feathers. I thought they made me the prettiest princes in the world. As you all know school is not about wearing beautiful dresses but learning. As to what was going on inside the classroom in terms of learning I am afraid I do not remember very much.

In our small classroom crowded with at least 34 small heads there was only one teacher. Each of us sat in our own desk. In the classroom deafening silence reigned. The only voice heard was the teacher’s. We children talked only when the teacher called on us. That’s when we would get up, stand in our aisle and answer the teacher’s question. We respected our teacher like a god. He had no reason to raise his voice for I nor any other child dared to disobey him for the fear of being punished not by our teacher but our parents. In my case, even though I did not want to have anything to do with school, I never told my teacher I would not or did not want to do my work at school.

Honestly, there was too, too much to learn for me- a child who started school knowing nothing. To learn 2 alphabets, Azbuka and Abeceda, to learn how to read, how to write, add, subtract, to learn about nature I thought was absolutely unfair to ask of a small child like me . Moreover, addition, subtraction, and later on multiplication and division I had to learn at home by heart-it was my homework. At school the teacher only tested our knowledge of basic facts. I still remember vividly when the teacher asked me what 4 books plus 3 books equal to and me proudly saying a library. To me that sounded like a lot of books because at home we did not have even one single book. Also, never did I see my parents reading. And to this day, my mom, who is 67, has never read even a picture book. My father died without ever reading a book

Thank you very much for your help,
Spring

Happy 2005!