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Earning Neville, by Fareedha, 12

From the time I was a little kid, I had a horrible case of pet wanting. I liked all types of animals, and I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up. I read Eyewitness books about birds and horses. I asked for a dog or a pair of mice. The thing was, no matter how many times I asked, my parents would not agree to let me have any type of pet. Even though I obsessed over all sorts of animals, I didn’t expect to get a pet. So it was a big surprise when my parents pulled into the Petco parking lot for the first time ever. My brother and sister and I were so excited! We practically bounced into the store. My Dad explained we were there to get one Siamese Fighting Fish, because they were good first pets and my parents wanted to see if we were responsible enough to care for a pet. We chose a handsome royal blue Betta Fish and got busy setting up the tank, decorating the inside with a few plastic plants and laying down fun, multi-colored pebbles. It was very fun in the first couple weeks, caring for my new fish, who we had named Bubbles. I’m a bit ashamed to admit I started lazing around caring for him less and less. I didn’t think it mattered. ‘Its ok if he misses a little food this morning’ or ‘He can go one more day without his gravel being changed’. It was subtle and didn’t seem to affect Bubbles, but my parents noticed my lack of responsibility, and they were not happy about it. Bubbles happily puttered around his tank for almost two years before peacefully passing away at the ripe old age of 3 years. Even though it turned out Betta Fish were only expected to live 2-4 years, I still felt bad for neglecting to care for him properly. Maybe if I had worked harder, he would have lived longer. I hadn’t done a good job of proving to my parents I was responsible, and I probably had hurt my chances of getting another pet. I started to come up with a plan to show my parents that I was capable of taking care of bigger pets. First I had to research the best type of pet for our family. Dogs? We are Muslim, and dogs are not considered clean enough to be kept indoors in Islam, so not a dog. Mice, Hamsters, Guinea Pigs or Birds? Their cages tended to smell bad, and birds make lots of noise. Rats? They are smart and clean, but there was no way my mom would let me keep a rat. Cats? Cats might actually work. Apparently, the Holy Prophetsa had kept cats in his mosques, so they were definitely clean. They were easy to care for. The only problem was my Mom and Brother were all allergic to cats. And I really didn’t want a hairless cat! After looking at all the pet possibilities, I ended up keeping the cat idea. I learned cat fur itself isn’t what gives you allergies. It’s a protein in the cat’s spit that makes you irritated. When a cat licks himself while grooming and then sheds his fur, the stuff irritates your eyes and nose, and in extreme cases, even your skin. Thankfully, my family’s allergies were not bad at all. Then I started looking for hypoallergenic cats. There were Maine Coons, Bengal Cats, Russian Blues, Cornish Rex, Siamese, Javanese, and Balinese. All of them were bred to have less of the irritating protein in their saliva, and not a single one was hairless! The next step was to create an expense list to review with my parents. It would have to include all of the supplies necessary for owning a cat and what the vet trips would cost. I did a little research and then got to work. Whenever I got a chance over the weekends of 4th grade to work on the list, I added more information to it. I also talked to my parents about why getting a cat might be good for our family. Their presence created a more warm and calming atmosphere. It was scientifically proven that petting a cat could lower blood pressure. Having a cat would make us kids more responsible, and it would be fun to have around. When my Mom said a cat would claw at furniture, I told her how if you get a cat when it’s still young, it can be taught not to mess with furniture or curtains. If your cat did develop those bad habits, you could also glue plastic caps onto a cat’s claws to keep them from doing damage or trim their nails with the help of a vet. After I successfully presented my work, my parents seemed impressed and were happy that I had put all of that research together. I even wrote a persuasive essay in 4th grade to convince my parents further that cats were great pets. I was very determined! This went on for a little bit, but after a while I started focusing less on my goal of earning a cat and more on the upcoming school year. I still occasionally brought the subject up with my parents, but as the 5th grade started, there was no cat. It wasn’t until early July when my Dad casually asked on the way to my brother’s baseball game what we would name a cat if we got one. We were very interested in Harry Potter at the time, so it was no surprise when we came up with names like Severus Snape, Dumpurrrrdore, and Rufus Scrimgeour. One Wednesday evening, my Dad came in holding some boxes and set them all down in the living room. My brother and sister were eating dinner and I was finishing up my homework. My mom greeted my dad as she always did, and us kids just went about our

A Child’s View of the Death of George Floyd, by Amara, 9

A Child’s View of the Death of George Floyd Amara DeLong, 9 New Orleans, LA Last year, my four-year-old neighbor dressed up as a police officer for Halloween.  He was very proud of his costume!  Little did he know what was actually happening in the world. Two days ago, my family and I learned about the death of George Floyd.  We watched the video, on CNN, of a police officer putting his knee on the forty-six-year-old man’s neck, even as he pleaded for the officer to get off. At school, we are taught to respect police officers.  We are taught that they protect our community. We are also taught that racism ended with the civil rights movement.  We learn about Harriet Tubman’s fight against slavery, and Rosa Parks’s and Martin Luther King’s fight against segregation.  We learn about Ida B. Wells’s fight against lynching.  Yet, we don’t learn about the racism present today. The evils that Ida B. Wells fought against are still happening.  George Floyd was lynched, and he was lynched by police officers. These are the people who have a responsibility to protect communities, not destroy them. I want to grow up in a country with a greater sense of justice.  I want a country that achieves the goals of our activists and real heroes.  I hope that, one day, children in America can wear a police officer costume with actual pride.  

How COVID-19 Has Affected Me – a perspective from LA, by SierraRose Gibson, 12

How COVID-19 Has Affected Me By SierraRose Gibson, 12 Covid-19 has really affected my everyday life. As a student, I now have to stay home for classes. As a student of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is one of the largest school districts in the country, online school will not even fully begin until next Monday as of the writing of this ‘blog’ (4/6/2020). I am still working on packets given to us by our teachers about 3 weeks ago (and it feels so long ago now), back when we thought we would be back in 2 weeks (so I wouldn’t have gotten them in in time–oops). Now we are looking at around the end of April or even the rest of the semester as an end date–and if the quarantine ends when summer break begins, I most likely won’t see some of my friends in person until we’re 8th graders! (I’m in 7th). Anyway, staying home all day isn’t so bad for me, as someone who prefers staying inside for the most part. I enjoy playing video games, drawing, writing and browsing Reddit and YouTube, and those don’t require anything outdoors. What really worries me about Covid-19 is not that I might get it personally, but that important people in my life such as my mom and my grandmother might get it, as they are more susceptible than I am. What makes me most hopeful is that we will still get to continue school, but at home so at least I will still be able to return to some normalcy. My gym teacher posted a video of herself running around the school track. She told us that all of the teachers were allowed to go back one day to gather supplies, and were getting trained on how to use video calling services and use online learning resources. At that point, though we had already been told about the lengthened break from school, it really set in that we weren’t going back for a while, that my teacher was doing this to let us see that our school, which we had gone to every weekday for 1½ years, was closed for us, the 7th graders. I realized that I wouldn’t run to and from classes and rush to get to my locker before they close the halls for lunch for a long time. That was a true realization point. Overall, quarantine is greatly affecting my life, but there have been some silver linings. I played (at home) a 100% online VR game with my friend. I figured out how to play Minecraft online with a friend who used to come over every weekend to play with me, so we can continue even when we’re in our own homes. I go on long Discord calls in which we don’t need to talk very much to enjoy each other’s company. Quarantine is hard, but I think that we can all figure it out for the time being. Life must go on, one way or another.     SierraRose Gibson, 12 Los Angeles, CA