Blog Your Blessings: Harold the Pimp

"What is a pimp?" I asked my student who had begun a round-robin story with a sentence about a pimp in a purple suit heading to the mall to buy a matching hat.

"A pimp?" my student grinned, rubbing his neck, pulling on the back of his sneaker, and shaking his head.

"Pimp." I said.

"A pimp is a guy with a hooker business. You know that," the skinny blond across the room said.

"Yes; a pimp is a person," I said. "What part of speech is that?"

"A noun," one of the bright lights flashed. "A pimp is a noun."

"What is our pimp doing?"

"He's walking. The verb is walking...."

This was the slow beginning to what became a lively lesson on sentence revision. (It's a wonder I have a job at all.)

My students wrote a round-robin story last week in which a pimp in a purple suit kills a pimp in a green suit because 1. the green guy owes the purple guy money and 2. the purple guy can't get over how ugly the green suit is. Twenty-two college freshman wannabes concocted a string of sentences and fragments that take this pimp on a short journey that includes a stop in a car to snort some coke, a trip to a Barney museum, a ride in a tow-truck, a chase, two murders, and no regrets.

With a lot of work, they brought this story to life. Along the way, they resolved logic errors, eliminated unnecessary information, and added information as they damn well felt like it because it was fun.

The story had begun as a test for me: Would I accept work that discussed pimps or would I get school-marmy and make them change it to some respectable form of entrepreneur? I decided to go with what they wrote.

It seemed to me the greater question was, would I accept them where they are? The answer was yes, so the only thing left to do was to bring them to a world of complete thoughts.

The blessing: they respected me back and didn't get too crazy. I still have a job.

We have named our pimp Harold. He is the fellow with the purple crayon all grown up and on the wrong side of the tracks doing his pimp thing because along the way something went terribly wrong. It happens.

"Did Harold ever draw his parents into his world?" asked one of my students when we got through this assignment.

Good question. Do you know?

Blog Your Blessings