Chapter 3

10/25/2012

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

Chapter 3 (pages 39-65) - Crossing the Line

The third chapter of The Blind Side involved more back story about Michael Oher. Michael is also commonly known as Big Mike. The Tuohy family is also introduced. Sean Tuohy is the father and he is known as an All-American success story. He grew up poor and played basketball at Ole Miss. He became their all time leader in career assists. He was also drafted into the NBA but decided not to go and now he owns over eighty-five fast food restaurants including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Long John Silver’s. He also married his high school sweetheart Leigh Anne Tuohy. The couple gave birth to two children; and they also adopted Michael Oher. The oldest is Collins Tuohy and the youngest is Sean Tuohy Jr.

            I found this quote referring to Leigh Ann Tuohy and her first few encounters with Big Mike. “She noticed things about him. She noticed, for instance, that he wore the same pair of cutoff jeans every day, and that he hadn’t the first idea how to interact with other people.” This states that Michael was very poor, and he was socially awkward. People were afraid of him because of his size, and he was afraid of them because they had confidence or more money. The Blind Side is based on a true story and the Tuohy does take Michael in and adopt him. The chapter also mentioned that Sean Tuohy had previously helped kids who went to Briarcrest. However, the Tuohy family had never gone as far to help someone to the extent of adoption.

            The narrator states that the Tuohy family was all incredible athletes but they also were dedicated to school and have all gone to college. Sean went to Ole Miss to play basketball and run track. Leigh Ann also went to Ole Miss and she was a cheerleader. Collins plays volleyball and track. Sean Jr. is also going to go to college to play basketball just like his father. I connected to this because I believe that families should be equal between athletics and academics. I have pretty good grades at the beginning of my sophomore year and I plan on going to college. However, I currently run both cross country and track but I don’t plan on doing either in college.

Scary Story Reflection

1.     I tried to think of something that would really scare me. I wanted it to be as original as I could think of. I came up with an adopted kid who wondered about death killing himself and his brother.

2.     Once I got started, I just kept writing the story. I knew before I wrote the story what I wanted to write about and how the story would go.

3.     The page requirement was a little tough. I was worried at the beginning that I wasn’t going to reach it. Then, I figured that I would have a lot of building up and back story to start it out. However, there weren’t much scary parts of this story.

4.     I would go with a nine. I feel confident that my story actually makes sense and is somewhat scary. I even scared myself a bit while writing it. I think that I could’ve used more adjectives and descriptive words to add to the story.

5.     Personally, I would give myself a B+. My story has everything that is required. I also didn’t add too much violence. I believe that a story is better without the gruesome details. Overall, this story was a success.

6.     On my next writing project, I will be more confident before I write it. I will think of more details that will add to the story and maybe put in more adjectives.

~Christian W.

Chapter 2

10/19/12

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

Chapter 2 (Pages 25-38) - The Market for Football Players

            Chapter 2 of The Blind Side gave more background information. The narrator talked about why left tackles are so important. The narrator also mentioned a college football scout named Tom Lemming. He traveled the United States looking for players for NCAA football. He has found many future superstars including Michael Oher, the protagonist in The Blind Side. The chapter also mentions his interactions with other future college and pro players. The narrator also gives more of a back story of Michael Oher. He was poor. He wasn’t known well in school, and the tape that Tom Lemming got to see was really fuzzy.

            A quote that I found from chapter 2 of The Blind Side that was relevant to Tom Lemming was, “In 2000, the U.S. Army High School All-American football game was born, and broadcast on national television. Lemming selected the eighty players for the game. Reggie Bush, Vince Young, Adrian Peterson, Dwayne Jarrett, Chris Leak, LenDale White, Brady Quinn: the game became a turnstile for future Heisman candidates and top NFL draft picks.” This mentions that Lemming found some of the best prospects that would go on to win major awards in college and play in the NFL. Since the NFL draft started, teams in the league were able to scout and draft players out of college to their teams. In the NCAA, there is nothing like that. College teams are forced to recruit high school players. However, there weren’t enough scouts from each college to find the best players in the game. Tom Lemming did them all a favor and wrote books ranking the best high school juniors and seniors. Colleges got copies of the book and wanted to see the players that had been ranked highest in the book. One of the players that Lemming found was Michael Oher.

            I play a lot of Madden. For the people who don’t know what Madden is, Madden is a NFL football video game that simulates on the field games and off the field management. Madden has a scouting system and you can figure out how good players are at certain skills on a scale of about 50-99 with ninety-nine being the best. This is different than what professional scouts use. For example, Lemming gave Michael Oher a ten out of ten on his size and nine out of ten in blocking. These are different systems but they both work for finding the best players for your NFL team.

This Isn't My Body

It was a regular October night when I decided that it was time to go to bed. I usually fall asleep around ten thirty at night. That night, I had the weirdest dream that I can remember. I dreamt about myself but then of my body changing becoming someone else. I finally woke up and walked slowly to the bathroom because I had to somewhat use the restroom. I looked in the mirror as a young woman and then I screamed and actually woke up. I sat up in my bed and realized that I really was awake and that I didn’t have the form of a woman. I slowly rose and when I arrived in the bathroom for real this time, I saw a face of one of my friends staring back at me but I couldn’t tell who it was. I tried to wake myself up, however this was not part of my dream. I went back in my room freaked out more than I ever have been. I took clothes from my dresser and I had my own clothing in there. I decided on wearing sport shorts and a t-shirt, which is what I would wear anyways. I walked to the second floor of my house and upstairs was my sister and said to me “Why does Christian get to have a friend over?” I walked around ‘my’ house and I decided on cereal and went through my day like I normally would. Until, late at night was the first time I saw my cat Schwartz and I picked him up. I stroked his belly as he likes me to do and he clawed me. As I dropped him, I sneezed and remember that I have a friend who is allergic to cats. I then knew whose body I was in. I ran to the garage and decided on biking to the house of my friend. His house was in biking range because it was only about ten miles away. As I got there, I was greeted with, “Oh, there you are honey!” It was the mom of my friend and I saw ‘myself’ behind her watching television in the den. I approached him and trapped him in there and demanded a response to why I looked like this. He said that he met a special genie and that he could only do one thing. The only thing that he could do was make someone swap a body of their choice for 24 hours. He decided to pick me and one event led to another to where we are now.

Chapter 1

10/10/2012

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

Chapter 1 (pages 13-24) - Back Story

In the beginning of the book, the narrator describes the reasoning for why this story takes place. They state why the left tackle position is so important but they don’t give information on how it will relate to the main character. Joe Theismann broke his leg in 1985 in a game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants. His leg was broken because the left tackle didn’t make the correct play and wasn’t as good as the player who had tackled, pinning Theismann breaking his leg. This play went down to be one of the moments that made the left tackle position more important in football.

                I found this quote was found on page 19 in The Blind Side. “Theismann has played 163 games, a record for the Washington Redskins. He’s led his team to two Super Bowls, and won one. He’s thirty-six years old. He’s certain he still has a few good years left in him. He’s wrong. He has less than half a second.” This quote states how the decisions that are made in the past can affect the future of not only your life but also the lives of other people who may or may not be close to you. Everything has a cause and an effect. Whatever is done causes another thing to happen and the whole world is based on by changing actions. This changed the lives of the people involved and also affected the lives of future football players like Michael Oher, the main character of The Blind Side.

                I connected to this chapter of The Blind Side, because I watch a lot of sporting events and I have seen many sports related injuries in sports like football, baseball, basketball and even cross country running events but this was the most gruesome. This injury happened before I was born but it was on national television as ESPN hosts Monday Night Football once a week. MNF is still going on now and as long as there is an NFL there will be a pro football game every Monday night. I have also read many sports books about baseball and football but this one has started out the best of all of them. Chapter one of The Blind Side is just on background information on the story.

The Actual Haunted House

The perfect haunted house would be a real house in which someone actually died in. It can be in any place but must have an old looking theme. There would be stories on billboards that were written in dripping red ink that was about the house. These stories will have the background of the house on them. In the beginning, there will be a tour guide but he will be “killed off” before the tour ends. There are actual ghosts in the house. You see zombies coming from the graveyard and they begin to come into the house. There is no one in the house as you enter and the door shuts after the last person enters the building. There are pictures on the wall with all the eyes looking at you from every angle, they see you. Then the arms of one of the pictures come out and grab your arm and you are pulled into the picture yourself. This isn’t just for Halloween; this house is open all year. Well actually not open, but closed until every last person who had entered had either starved or found a different way to die quicker. Some may decide to kill and cook a person just to feed themselves making them all cannibals. Then the doors of the house open again, little kids come by and want to see what it’s about but they are never to be seen again. Yes, that means that they died. It really isn’t a haunted house just for Halloween because it really is haunted by the amount of people who have died in there. So when you are heading to a haunted house this Halloween, make sure you know if it really is a building that people have died in or if it is just a cheap attempt to recreate that horror.