The assignment

My instructions:
This lesson focused a great deal on the concept of show don't tell. For this assignment you will practice writing in a manner that shows, rather than tells.

 Write several paragraphs that are based on the topic of a young girl going with her father to sled on a winter evening or about a boy flying a kite with his mother on a spring day.

 What happens is up to you. Submit your work to the instructor when you are finished.

My assignment, which happens to be autobiographical:

THE SLED

The curly-haired girl was one of fifteen students in the one-room schoolhouse, one of four children in the first grade.  It was winter in Iowa, 1950.  The students had trouble concentrating on studies, with Christmas vacation starting the next day.  There hadn’t been any snow thus far, but the temperatures were frigid, and when she entered the schoolhouse, she was glad for the heat of the coal-burning, pot-bellied stove.  The child had squirmed at her desk as she daydreamed about the sled she was pretty sure Santa would be bringing.  Finally, the day ended.  She usually walked the mile or so to and from school, but this was the second coldest December in twenty years, and her mother usually drove the old Mercury to pick her up.

Her grown-up sister and brother were coming for Christmas with their children the weekend after the big day, but on Christmas morning, it was just the girl and her parents.  When she awoke, she ran into the living room; there, on the floor beneath the stocking that was pinned to the armrest of the sofa, was the coveted sled.  Unfortunately, it had not snowed even once that winter.

Bored, she bundled up, put on gloves and a headscarf, and went outside with her sled.  She was used to playing alone, and had developed a good imagination.  This day, though, she could think of nothing but her new sled, useless without snow.  She ran up and down the slopes of the underground cellar a few times, bored.  Oh, how she wanted snow!  

A thought occurred to her:  She and her parents attended church three times weekly, and she began thinking about things people prayed for.  She’d never prayed on her own, and her family didn’t pray at meals, but for some reason praying for snow seemed like a good idea.  She kneeled on the cellar-hill and briefly asked God for some snow; it was just a one sentence prayer, but she remembered to say “in Jesus’ name” at the end, like they did at church. 

The next morning there were five inches of snow on the ground.  It worked!  Cold as it was, she took the sled outside to a yard that was as flat as a pancake.  She slid down the cellar-hill a few times, but it was a tiny little hill, and not very exciting.   Stepping back inside, she asked her dad if he could take her to a hill someplace, but he was helping her mom get ready for company.  After a little begging, he agreed to go outside with her for a bit and pull her around the yard.  That was better than nothing, but it wasn’t what she had in mind.  So in a way, getting the sled was a disappointment at first.  Later on at the country schoolhouse that was perched high atop a hill, all the kids took their sleds to school.  At recess she flew down the hill with the others, so fast the wind took her breath.  But what she never forgot for the rest of her life was this:  Praying works.