Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Last Things

1999

"The next day, I changed all my classmates’ names to numbers to better reflect their metal hearts."

A girl came over and asked me what I got on my paper. Her name was Darcy Edwards, but I called her Girl 8 secretly. This was because of something Edgar had said. One day he rode by my school at recess and saw me standing alone by the fence. He stopped to talk to me and we watched the other kids playing for a while. All the boys were shooting marbles and all the girls were jumping rope. Then all the girls moved to the swings and all the boys played whiffle ball. Edgar spun the pedals on his bike. “Did you ever think that everyone around you might be an ingenious robot and you’re the only one that’s not?” he asked. In fact, I had never thought this, but now I saw it could be true. It explained why all the girls knew how to play the clapping game and all the boys brought baseball cards to school. The next day, I changed all my classmates’ names to numbers to better reflect their metal hearts.
(p. 46)

Mineral::Metal

Reading

Jenny Offill, Last Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).

11/10/2015