The third in a series of monologues from some of Evanston's most interesting personalities that you may have seen or even met but never really talked to. These interviewers, however, did, and then pulled themselves out of the final equation completely, letting their subjects' words shine.
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My name is Jasper. I go to Dewey School. I’m five years old, and I play soccer and – um – um – ummmm – I’m in Kindergarten.
Ms. Anderson. Just Ms. Anderson. Just one, and, um, our room number is one-oh-five. So 105, and, like, the most fun thing – it’s called writer's workshop.
You get to read out our sentences, like, "I’m going to surf." A whole sentence in words, which we make even though we don’t know how to spell words – we make our words by sounding our letters out.
You draw in these books and you get to write our stories down. I wanna tell you about both. It’s of me surfing, and of me going to Legoland.
When I was surfing, um, we left my house, and first Benjamin was surfing, and then I started to be surfing. And then we went home.
And this is the Legoland story, and then we when went to Legoland. We drove there and we went on a couple of rides. We went on these car things where green meant go and made the car go, and red was stop. Umm – we went home from Legoland, but first we bought a Lego set and then we – umm – went home.
I’m done talking to the phone, ‘cause it was a really long story.
So simply you’re going to tell it to your whole class, right?
My brother Benjamin, or you can call him Ben, and when I was really little, me and Benjamin – Benjamin was probably five and, um, we went to Disney World and that’s all I remember.
Benjamin likes to play Tek-Deks, me too. They’re these toy skateboards – Why are you recording this anyway? Why do you want to remember this?
[I explain the assignment]
Yeah I get it. You’re simply telling it to the class.
Benjamin’s nine and he’s in fourth grade, and he, umm, rides skateboards, me also. We went to a drift shop one day, and we checked out the skateboards. They, um – they had snowboards there – we got a sticker – I still have it but Benjamin put his on his skateboards.
I can do a Tic Tac on the skateboard. Benjamin can do a Tic Tac too. How you do that is you push your board like this one way, and then push your board the other way. So if you do it really fast like this.
[Jasper stands and shifts his hips left and then right]
You can move forward.
I don’t remember anything else. Anything!
Blue, red, orange, green, brown – and silver and gold.
I like brown and grey and green because it’s army colors, and I like armies. Red, I really like because it just looks really cool. And I like black too, because it’s just a really cool dark. It’s just really cool.
And um, why I like blue, well I don’t really like blue anymore.
Yeah, how do you get [the iPhone] to do it? How?
We have the game Uno, and Chutes and Ladders –
You start at the starting line, and how you move is you spin the spinner, and whichever number – um – the pointer finger gets on – like it points to – that’s how much you have to move. There’s slides and when you get to the all-the-way-top, there’s slides that takes you to all-the-way bottom. If you land there you have to go to the all-the-way bottom.
I usually always win.
I just want this to be over [Home Phones ring].
I’ll get it!
I’m coming back. [Picks up the phone] Hello? What?
“I have the phone Jasper, it’s mom, you can hang up.”
No, I’m getting her. What mom? Mom? – um – So what?
[Hangs up]
It’s been too long. I don’t really remember anything.
I don’t remember when the day was – what it was called – Thursday, Friday – like that, and all my classmates came and Ms. Anderson.
We were playing, and they didn’t clean the playroom yet, but umm – I was mad because all of them got it all messy again.
I was mad at them, because it took a really long time cleaning the playroom. So I didn’t play with them – except Ms. Anderson.
So, I went outside and Coco [the dog] was outside. I was pogoing sticking out there, and that’s it.
“Nothing else—what did you have for lunch today?”
Half a sandwich and half an apple. And some milk and a Squisher [yogurt].
I’m done talking, So can I listen to it [the recording] again?