Please help if you remember this:
It was an after-school special in the late 70’s or early 80’s. It was about a young girl in a classroom. It was set on Venus. Yes, we Earthlings had populated Venus and that’s where everybody lived because Earth was full, and this was long before “Wall-E.” So every kid had been born on Venus, which at the time all anyone knew was that it was super cloudy there, not that the clouds were made of sulfuric acid, and so it was perfectly reasonable that you could set an after-school special there.
The thing was, the sun only came out for like 2o minutes a year on Venus. All these kids went to school in concrete domes or whatever, and it rained and was cloudy all the time like in Seattle. But this one girl, she was born on Earth, and constantly bragged about how she remembered the sun, and flowers, and shit like that. The kids were sick of her. So this one day the sun came out for its requisite 20 minutes and those kids, as kids will do, shut that poor girl in a closet and locked her in. While everyone else went outside and frolicked in the meadow and watched the flowers bloom with unbelievable speed, that sad girl was locked inside and only had a sliver of sunlight to enjoy. Those kids were assholes.
Were you ever that girl in the closet? Do you remember this after-school special? Please share.
damn you for finding it out already!!! i totally had that one pegged.
lucky you i am a total dork and once typed the whole thing out…i apologize for this enormous comment (if it works)
“Ready ?”
“Ready.”
“Now ?”
“Soon.”
“Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it ?”
“Look, look; see for yourself !”
The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
It rained.
It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.
“Its stopping, its stopping !”
“Yes, yes !”
Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could ever remember a time when there wasnt rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.
All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:
I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.
That was Margots poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.
“Aw, you didnt write that!” protested one of the boys.
“I did,” said Margot. “I did.”
“William!” said the teacher.
But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.
Wheres teacher ?”
“Shell be back.”
“Shed better hurry, well miss it !”
They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, st
annnd it didn’t work… email!
And Ray is singing books at the Thousamd Oaks Library on May 14th from 6:15 pm to 7pm if you are interested.
Proof that you and I share a brain. I mentioned this story in a post too. All Summer in a Day. It has haunted me since I read it back in grade school. http://www.dirtandnoise.com/2008/03/when-will-it-spring.html