A few weeks ago I wrote something for the Random House magazine Hazlitt in which I created a fictional website called RememberZellers. It was in this forum where I imagined a number of posts that people might have left about the famous Canadian discount chain. As fate would have it, a high school teacher in Toronto came across the piece and decided to use it as the starting point for a writing exercise for her grade eleven English students. Each pupil was to write a short paragraph either based on their experiences at Zellers or to create a fictional one, and then send it off to me.<\/p>\n

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These are some of the student\u2019s writings:<\/p>\n

A.P. 16 years old<\/p>\n

Dear Mister Murray:<\/p>\n

You must really like Zellers to have started up that website. Man, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s anything I like as much as you like Zellers. I think you should just get over Zellers. It\u2019s gone. Get a life, dude. Shop online or something.<\/p>\n

This is my paragraph:<\/p>\n

My name is Michael Murray and I\u2019m really old and I love Zellers.\u00a0 All I have in my life is Zellers. I eat there every day and I pretend that I\u2019m looking to buy clothes just so I can be around people. Sometimes I go into the change room to imagine all the girls who have been in their underwear there.<\/p>\n

J.C. 17 years old<\/p>\n

Dear Mister Murray:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re getting extra credit for this so please let Mrs. M know that I did this, okay?<\/p>\n

This is my paragraph:<\/p>\n

My mom made me go to Zellers to pick up a tarp. She wanted the tarp to wrap my father\u2019s body in. She killed him with several forks. He was a bad man, my dad. He used to beat her and me and my little sister Peggy, but one day my mother could take it no longer and she killed him with the forks until he was dead, and that\u2019s how I ended up in Zellers!<\/p>\n

A.A. 16 years old<\/p>\n

Dear Mister Murray:<\/p>\n

Please tell teacher that I completed the project. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

This is my paragraph:<\/p>\n

I think Zellers sounds like a candy that grandparents would give out at Halloween. It sounds like something that would taste old and stale, the sort of candy you\u2019d give to your kid sister because you didn\u2019t want it.<\/p>\n

F.S. 18 years old<\/p>\n

Dear Mister Murray:<\/p>\n

Here is my completed assignment, please tell my teacher that I promptly completed the assignment.<\/p>\n

This is my paragraph:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a Muslim, but sometimes I like to wear a Burqa just to see how the world reacts to me. People judge you and think you\u2019re a terrorist even though you\u2019re not. Whenever I went into Zellers people were suspicious of me because of my Burqa. They thought I was dishonest because they couldn\u2019t see my face, but I could see theirs and I could tell what they were thinking. One day a security guard at Zellers accused me of shoplifting and frisked me to make sure I hadn\u2019t taken anything. I didn\u2019t believe him and acted outraged, but the truth was that I was turned on when he put his hands on me, when he touched me. I went back to Zellers every week after that hoping he would do it again, and he did, each time. I will miss Zellers like hell when it goes.<\/p>\n

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