Monday, November 12, 2007

HW 32: "Barbie Notebooks and Strawberry-Scented Erasers"

In Riverbend's "Baghdad Burning," she describes shopping for her cousin's daughters. It was the beginning of the school year for two young Iraqi girls who were seven and ten years old in October 2003. Riverbend, her cousin, her brother E. and the girl's mother went out to a stationary store to pick out school supplies while the girls stayed safe at Riverbend's house with her parents. Unlike here in the United States were we have large shopping complexes with Staples and Wal-Mart, Iraq has it a little different. Stores are spread out down along the streets of Baghdad and the stores range from small to large in size. Riverbend explains what she decides to pick out for the children, "I went with a few Senafir (Smurfs) copybooks, some Barbie notebooks for the older one, and was hard-pressed to choose between Winnie the Pooh and Lion King for the younger. I went with Winnie the Pooh in the end" (Riverbend 95). When Riverbend chose the notebooks with Barbie and Winnie the Pooh on the cover, it made me think back to when I was younger shopping for school supplies. I was into Barbie and Winnie the Pooh just like these young Iraqi girls were. Maybe Iraqis and Americans aren't that different from each other after all. Other supplies that were purchased for the girls were pencils, copybooks, crayons, and erasers. Riverbend was determined to pick out interesting erasers like ones that were shaped like strawberries and she had a good reason for being picky, "S. wanted to go with some generic pink ones that looked like pieces of gum and smelled like tires, but I argued that kids don't take care of their school supplies if they're ugly" (Riverbend 95). Although the girl's mother was fine with buying ordinary pink erasers, Riverbend believed that the girls would be more likely to respect their supplies if they liked them. The shopping was a success except that Riverbend learned to her dismay that the youngest girl had outgrown Winnie the Pooh.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love scented erasers! I seen lots on myfunerasers.com