My middle school ID cards the 2 school years prior to my leukemia diagnosis
I wrote this short story for a school assignment a mere four months before I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was 13. At the time I thought of this rhyming story, obviously I possessed not even the slightest inkling that I was only months away, like the squirrel, from being shaved myself.
The Squirrel With No Hair
Sam Squirrel envied sheep, fluffy and white. He gazed at their antics all day and night. He visited them in the meadow where they would play; to be a sheep would make his day.
One day their coats just disappeared. No fur was left; it had been sheared. Sam thought they were pretty, pink and bare. How he wished he had no hair!
So Sam went to Wise Owl, who used his claws, to shave off Sam’s fur, even on his paws! Now Sam Squirrel felt ridiculous without his fur coat; so he walked to a lion’s castle and fell in the moat.
Sam Squirrel’s life ended that sad day, on the moat’s hard bottom, he lifelessly lay. The sheep grew their fur back, fluffy and white. To stay a squirrel for Sam Squirrel was what was right.
THE END
The moral is to be who you are; if you don’t, you won’t get very far. Bad things could happen, you never know. Imitation is not the way to go!
By Amy Barta
March 26, 1997
