I Want (all of it)

You know what I want?

I want to come up with the most brilliant salutatorian speech and deliver it to my class with perfection, flawlessness, and a certain ease that everyone (especially the magna cum laudi aka the third in class) envies.

I want a standing ovation after I finish, that starts with a slow clap and ends with lots of whistles and foghorns going off. And I want to be able to look at the section where my family is sitting and see the words “We Love Joanna” in big bold letters.

I want to be able to look at the sea of faces that is the class of 2007 and be able to see a handful of my closest friends looking up at me with brilliant smiles that will fill me with joy and pride.

On my way back to my seat I want to trip and fall on my face in these ridiculously priced high heels that I practiced walking in while vacuuming my house. I want the camera to capture the intense look of embarrassment and fear that flashes across my face and I want to see that face again and again that night as graduation ceremonies repeat themselves on PBS.

I want to be able to laugh about my mistakes and learn from them, even though I know I’ll only repeat them in the future.

I want to experience my first kiss in high definition, and pull a Drew Barrymore and say to my Adam Sandler: “There’s nothing like a first kiss.” And I want him to know what I’m talking about and say: “That’s what I’ve heard.” I want him to be kind and beautiful and perfect in every way shape and form and I want him to be all wrong for me.

I want to love him with all my heart and have it broken. No, not into a million pieces, but only in half, so that the next time I love I’ll be able to sew up the broken halves and love again. I want to tell myself that the next time around I’ll be more careful and guard my heart, no more will I be boy-crazy Joanna, but calm and collected, so that the next time Prince Charming attempts to sweep me off my feet I won’t be so easily wooed.

I want to be calm and collected until one night when I make the mistake of going to a college frat party with a couple other girls. This is when the wild side of me comes out, you know, the one no-one’s ever seen before, yeah, that one. I want to have one too many drinks and pass out on someone’s couch where I almost get taken advantage of but don’t because one of my high school buddies recognizes me and takes me to his apartment where he gently lies me on his couch, covers me with a blanket, gives me a kiss on the forehead, and whispers softly in my ear: “Sweet dreams beautiful,” before turning off the light and going to sleep in his bed.

I want to wake up from this strange place and almost scream before I see my Prince sleeping soundly, curled up on the floor, as if attempting to guard me against harm but miserably failing and succumbing to sleeps soft slumber. I want to take the blanket he’s given me, cover him, kiss him on the cheek and say: “Wake Up beautiful.” But I don’t. Because I obviously have a huge hangover from the night before. Instead, I want to wake up with a massive headache and tell myself: “Joanna, you’re an f’ing idiot.” I want to look at my phone and see that I have 100 missed calls and know before even looking that half are from my dad, a quarter from my mom, and a quarter from the girls I went out with that are freaking out and wondering where I’m at. I want to lay there on my friend’s couch, not knowing where I’m at, but knowing I am safe and I want to have an epiphany and realize that life cannot truly be lived until you get drunk for the first time.

After four years of courting my high school friend who by the way was not my high school sweetheart because I wasn’t allowed to date in high school, I want to gasp in sweet surprise when he proposes on the day of our graduation from the Red McCombs School of Business at UT. I want to get married within a couple of months and do the dirty dirty on our wedding night and I want it to feel really really really good. Which I know it would, considering it’ll be my first time and I won’t have anything to compare it to.

About a year or two later, I want to be able to watch my son grow in my womb, I’ll see his tiny fingers and tiny toes, I’ll feel him kicking in my stomach, and I want to feel as if this child was what I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Four months later, I want to find out what it’s like to lose a child. I want to have my baby boy, whom I’ve already named Tristan, to be taken from me without any warning, and I want to cry like I’ve never cried before, and feel an overwhelming sadness that puts me in a depression for six months. But then one day, I wake up feeling a bit nauseous, and after feeling like this for a couple weeks, I want to go to the doctor and find out I’m having twins. Baby boys, and this time, I want to pray to God to let me keep them, and he does.

I want Micah and Jeremiah to grow up to be the exact opposites of each other. Micah will take after me, he’ll be a studious straight A student, who strives to please my husband and I, along with the Lord, and whose only struggle in life will be deciding which shirt he’ll wear to impress Katie who lives next door. I want Jeremiah to be my little rebel. He shuns authority, and the words I say go through one ear and out the other. At sixteen years of age I want Jeremiah to claim that he is now an atheist, and believes there is no God. He’ll listen to what I consider devil music and he’ll lose his virginity to a girl five years older than him. I want to find this out by walking in on him when this is happening, and I want them both to feel really embarrassed. I want to be able to keep my cool however and say: “Young lady, you had best get off my son before I pull you off of him.” She’ll cover her naked body with a blanket and as my son walks past me I want to say to him: “You better remember how good that felt because as long as you live under my roof you’re never going to feel it again.”

Jeremiah somehow manages to make it through high school, and they both graduate and get to walk the stage, Micah being top in his class of course. I send Micah off to Harvard to become a lawyer, and Jeremiah, being the bad-ass that he is decides to enlist in the Army. Once my sons leave I want to feel like I’ve lost half my heart, but I know my husband and I will finally have a little time to ourselves. With the money we’ve saved up over the years I want to travel the world, and I want to grow old with my husband. On the day my husband and I celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary I want to get a call from Micah and I want him to tell me that he just proposed to his girlfriend. They’re getting married in three weeks. And I want to think: “Finally, he’s found someone that makes him a little more of a man.”

In a couple years I want to find out I’m going to be a grandma and my dear Jeremiah will come home a captain. I want his years of service in the military to have taught him values that his father and I couldn’t instill in him his whole life, and when he comes home I want Jeremiah to shake his father’s hand, look him straight in the eye and say: “It’s good to be home.” And then I want him to give me a kiss on the cheek and say: “I missed you Mom.”

I want my sons to grow up and have their own families and live their own lives, but with my husband and I as a main part. One fine day I want to die, no, not in my sleep, but doing something I love to do. I want to finally meet my maker in heaven and be like: “Dang, so this is what I was missing.” I want to waltz around on golden roads and say: “So whassup?” to Abe Lincoln and I want to have tea with Princess Diana and eat food without getting fat all day long.

I want my husband to join me in heaven about a year or two later, after I get all the partying outta my system. Oh yeah, I also want to see my two dogs, Franny and Snickers there too. I know, I know, animals don’t have souls so therefore they couldn’t possibly go anywhere except stay in the ground but I’d like to think my puppies were angel enough to go to heaven. I want heaven to be all that and more and I want to chill with Jesus and ask him to take care of my boys for me. And I want him to say: “Fo sho.”

The End

I Want Exercise

Rhythm in Elizabeth Crane's piece is created much through the use of repeated phrases starting with "I Want..." Shifts occur between simple "I Want" phrases as compared with longer "I Want" phrases that go off of on tangents within themselves, this creates a certain slow/fast pace that the reader picks on. Usually in these "I Want" phrases they mirror shifts in tone as well, because the subject matter switches... sometimes from happy to sad or past to present to future.
The author surprises the reader with shifts from seemingly innocent fun to more tragic and emotional material, this too is where shifts in both tone and pace occur.