First Story

Jackie’s Lost Ball

May 1962
Miss Bennett’s 2nd Grade Class
Lincoln Elementary School
Burbank, CA

Up and down.
Up and down goes the ball.
Jackie plays with the ball.

Up, up, up.
“Where is the ball?” said Jackie
The ball went up,
it did not come down.”

Jackie ran to his mother.
“Please help me,” he said.
Help me find my ball.
Where did it go?”

Mother said, “We will look for it.
We can find the ball.
I will help you find it.”

“Look, Jackie, look.
I see something.
Here is something.
It is your ball.”

“Thank you,” Jackie said.
The ball is in the tree.
It went up.
It did not come down

 

Response to “Jackie’s Lost Ball”

This was the last year the author went by Jackie. The last year of complete cooperation as a student. The last year he didn’t know there was a choice in the matter; almost the last year he didn’t know there was a pecking order in the classroom and just about everywhere in the world.

The paragraphs of the story appear as stanzas. This was a craft choice of Miss Bennett. There is a chance that the plotline of the story was dictated to Miss Bennett by the author, and written afterward.

The author is clearly influenced here by the Dick and Jane series, evident by use of simple sentence structure, limited vocabulary and repeated words, “look, look” and “up, up, up.” Protagonist understands rudiments of physics (“the ball went up, it did not come down”) and realizes that without gravity the very nature of the entire universe is at question. Author does not show aversion to science that began for him in junior high school and stayed the rest of his life. Protagonist seeks counsel from reliable source with larger knowledge base to seek resolution to dilemma. Author will make friends and seek out peers with those who have large knowledge base in one or multiple areas all of his life. Consult and consider becomes his unconscious mantra.

Author veers from Dick and Jane homage when protagonist consults exclusively with mom; Dad does not appear in the story. Mom’s approach is to involve him in the process of finding the ball as a collaborative effort. She says, “We will look for it.” She encourages him in a positive manner. “We can find it.” Involving Dad could have resulted in arm-waving, shouting and reprimands about not throwing the ball so high. Protagonist is appreciative and thanks his mother.

Author fails to mention how the ball was retrieved from the tree, but has vague memory of Dad poking at it with a broom. Author can still see the shine of the grocery store ball, see hear the ring of the bounce as it lands on the driveway, still smell the dust and the life-force of the apricot tree where the ball was stuck.

Story is dialogue dominant, very limited imagery, but this is probably due to Dick and Jane model, which added illustrations throughout text, which may explain the pencil drawings on the cover of the classroom anthology, craft choices the author added to his copy, which include

the sun,
a bird,
a boy bouncing a ball,
a woman standing by a tree with her arms up,
a boy holding a ball standing by a tree smiling,
and a small square atop a larger square.

Also featured on the front cover:

Jackie’s Lost Ball

Jackie

written by hand in black ink by Miss Bennett. And two inches from the top and three inches from the bottom, and centered between the left and right edges, a red ball with a blue stripe around the diameter of the ball. The ball so perfectly round it must have been done with a drafting compass.

After studying the image for many minutes, the author sees that the color in the image never faded and that the stripe gets smaller near the top of the ball to give the image a three dimension look and that the two halves of red may represent the ups and downs in the story and the blue both separates and binds them together.

The author was quite pleased to see that Miss Bennett picked his story to be featured first in the collection, until he approaches the other students to low-key let them know who’s story is first and sees that each copy of the anthology had the each student’s story as the first story. The author felt disappointed for a moment but then understood that Miss Bennett had done something extraordinarily cool.