Beyond the Themepaper :: Personal Narrative Papers

Beyond the Theme I woke up yesterday morning, as I always do, at 7:30. I showered, got dressed, brushed my teeth and did my usual morning routine, and then suddenly, while leaning over my bowl of corn pops, which burst from my mouth with the force of an F-10 at lift off, I got it! "Yes, yes, yes," I yelled as I did a back and forth arm movements just like football players do when they get a touchdown, and danced around my dining room, still mindful of my neighbors downstairs, of course. So this is what it's all about I think to myself. Could this really be what Dr. Morgan and the rest of the class has been trying to get me to see? I had just realized that the only way I would be able to go anywhere with this assignment would be to to step out of my body, a body which is so tuned to writing themepapers, and to take a chance at seeing things from a different angle. And so there I was, looking down at myself with the perspective of a bird. I took a moment to admire myself from above. I noticed that I slouch and that my part is very crooked. I saw myself sitting in a small room with tan wallpaper and with no windows. I am sitting at a desk and everything looks normal and simple. And then I notice that I have a frustrated look on my face and I am surrounded by several crumpled up sheets of paper. "Why do I look so perturbed," I ask myself? And then I remembered why I was up here-- that gall darn paper about getting beyond the theme. Oh, yeah. How to get beyond the theme? Well, since I am up here and I have left my body for a while, I might as well take advantage of all the space and room up here and explore and do some things that I couldn't or wouldn't have done down there. I will be a voyager. I am free. Free to think. Hmmmm. Themewriting. What does it mean to go beyond the theme, that unexplored territory few of us have voyaged to or beyond and that many of my classmates and I are struggling to understand. Hmmm. And then, for the second time in less than a few hours, I had another revelation.