"Esther M. Friesner - Why I want to come to Brewer College" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

ESTHER FRIESNER

WHY I WANT TO COME TO BREWER COLLEGE

NOBLE SIRS OF THE BREWER College Office of Admissions, permit this humble
person to introduce oneself. My name, for this purpose, shall be Fred
Schenectady, for I have heard it told once, at a lecture on this very campus
by a notable author of fabulous tales, that a thing is called Fred because we
have to call it something and that writers get their ideas from Schenectady
because they have to get them from somewhere.
This sums up my situation, for in truth I am something from somewhere. Indeed,
since coming to these shores I have found that upon first encounter I am often
greeted with: "What in hell are you and where the devil did you come from?"
Those who do not make these somewhat profane exclamations are few and far
between, but I am proud to say that they have included your own august
President of the College, Mr. Ferragus Franklin, and his lissome and beauteous
underling, the Dean of the College, Miss Cecilia Hansen. How far under
President Franklin one may generally find Dean Hansen is, according to faculty
gossip, a matter of record closely linked to those times when the honorable
Mrs. Franklin is out of town or ginned to the gills.
I disapprove of such gossip, for I find it low and insulting, particularly to
those of us who, like my unworthy self, have gills.
Pray do not imagine that I make mention of this physical attribute in an
attempt to procure special favor regarding my application for admission to
your esteemed institute of higher learning. I admit that my appearance is
singular when compared to that of the majority of your student body, but I
assure you that I am in no way remarkable among those of my own kind. True, my
skin is of a more luminous green than many of my breed, and the turtle shell
which conceals the softer portions of my anatomy retains a high gloss in spite
of the long hours I spend immersed in the great pond which abuts the Brewer
College croquet fields, but such observations are the stuff of vanity. I will
mention them no more. As for that saucer-shaped depression upon the crown of
my head in which I bear a modest portion of life-giving water whenever I
venture forth onto the land, it is of neither greater nor lesser size than the
average among my people.
By now I fear that you may have grown impatient with me, for I have dallied
somewhat beside the point of the required Office of Admissions essay, namely:
Tell us in your own words about a life-changing episode from your past and
explain how this relates to your desire to attend Brewer College. If I have
delayed reaching the meat of this essay, I ask your pardon. I do not eat meat,
though blood is another matter, and the heartsblood of this exercise cannot
flow properly without some explanatory preamble. Surely none of the worthy
applicants for admission to this venerable institution has ever willfully
deceived your perspicacious minds by exaggeration, distortion, or other forms
of falsification! I refuse to be the first.
So, the meat:
If memory serves me, my life has been neither especially long nor eventful. I
am not old as my kin reckon age, having first seen the watery light of day
from beneath the surface of a small river near Kyoto, during the first days of
the Tokugawa Shogunate. By your Western calendars this would be sometime in