My days of run ons

So I've spent my whole English teaching career trying to correct run ons. Turns out, according to my writing compadre and a few other folk I've "met" (read: online) lately, run ons rule. So, I thought I'd share some here. Of course I also found out from a somewhat reliable source that these aren't TRUE run ons....but, well, hey, for an English teacher it's the best I can do.

--> She wanted so much and it was without question that she would never have any of it not because it was unavailable, but because, quite simply, she wanted too much, and it was this desire for everything and her concept of receiving nothing that led her to the bridge that night and when she parked her car she parked it off to the side half in the ditch and she knew she probably couldn't get it out but that didn't matter because the only thing that mattered to her was finding something, anything, that she wanted and that she could have and she stepped up on the rail and leaned over the edge and the wind blew over her and through her, rocking her so that she had to hold on tight to not fall over the side and it was during one of these extreme leans that she saw what she wanted, what she must have, what actually mattered and it glistened in the light of the moon standing out amber against the black water and the wind rose up again, a stronger gust this time and she felt herself lighten and loose from the earth, tumbling, one show falling off causing her toes to chill immediately and as the glistening amber object grew closer she saw that it was just a nothing and she really didn't want it after all.

--> For three days I sat and wondered what would happen if I gave into my feelings of love and desperation and fear, hoping that every time I looked at him he couldn't see that I was trying as hard as I could not to flirt and it was going completely against my nature to squish those feelings down, but the problem was that every time I got control over my emotions and my actions he would walk into the room and smile at me and ask me about my day and I would melt into a little puddle of desire all at his feet and try to respond with an answer that made sense and didn't make me look like a freak or a flake, and he would patiently wait for me with that smile and those eyes that burned right through me until I finally had to just stop, and walk away, and now when I see him in the hallway I try to walk the other way, but sometimes I can't, and on those days I breathe deeply, look him straight in the eye, and ask him how his classes are going this semester.

--> I think it probably has to do with smaller inspiration, with not getting too full of yourself, and with understanding the idea that you really can't please people all of the time, especially in a school system that treats its teachers like its students and its students like prisoners, but not just ordinary prisoners, death row prisoners who have to sift from one room to another being bullied behind the warden's back and having to complete task after task when all they really want to do is sleep, and I think that maybe, if inspiration can come out of this, it needs to come in those small ways like a student that finds a book and the book actually speaks to her and it inspires her to read more and before she knows it she's writing not because she has to turn it into the teacher but because she knows she can do better than that author, or the student that has a crush on his teacher and that crush inspires him to study up on her subject so he can talk to her and he ends up choosing to become a teacher just like her so that maybe in the future they can have more to talk about perhaps over a candlelit dinner because she is, after all, only four years older than he and anything is possible when you try to inspire small.

Copyright, me, 2005. So there.