Essay on “Quiet”
February 21, 2010
(782 Words)


Unless you live under a rock, you should know the exact meaning of quiet. If you don’t, it means silent or without noise. There, you learned something new, person who lives under a rock. Oh, and is it uncomfortable living under a rock? I’m just wondering.

Quiet is not only a word, but the name of different things. It’s the title of a jazz album by John Scofield. It’s also an astronomical telescope, QUIET, that observes the Cosmic Microwave Background. The Quiet is a movie from 2005. It’s about a young, deaf, mute girl (go figure?). Something else, that is quite popular, is the “quiet game.” Parents and teachers have children play this game, especially when all the kids are piled up in the backseat on a long road trip.

Kids know what quiet means. My seven year old sister knows. “It means to not talk.” My four year old brother knows… sort of. “To be quiet.” Even though little and big kids know the meaning, we don’t do it. As my eighth grader friend, Haley Sjoberg says, “we lack self control.”
Kids don’t shut up when adults tell us to because we can’t. We want to talk to our friends, joke around, and have fun. Why would we want to sit still and keep our mouths shut? We can’t help ourselves.

There is a time to be quiet and a time to be loud (person who lives under a rock: loud means the opposite of quiet. It means lots of noise). In class and in the library, it’s very important to lower your voice or to not talk at all. People are trying to focus on what they are doing and you talking and making a ruckus turns their attention away from their book or work and to you. And who is blamed? You.

I think the solution of the world wide problem of kids not listening when adults tell them to be quiet is to duct tape their mouths. You know that they say, silence is golden and duct tape is silver. I don’t think the school board would like teachers to be doing that though, would they?

The reason I’m writing this essay is because it was assigned to me because my class was not quiet in the library. I didn’t plan on doing it until my teacher (Hey, Mrs. Broussard!) told me it would take five As to bring my average to a D because I’d get a zero if I didn’t turn this in. I guess when my teacher told us we had to do this, we were all thinking, “Oh great. We get to do a 750 word essay on the word quiet, its meaning, origin, and maybe even throw in what it is in different languages.” (Hey, that’s a good idea. I think that will be the next paragraph.) Then my teacher told us it would be graded on creativity and grammar. Here you go, Mrs. Broussard. I hope it is creative enough because I sure do have a habit of missing typos when I’m editing (thank goodness for spelling and grammar check!).

Person who lives under a rock, maybe, if you decide to come from under there and join us, you may want to know how to say quiet in different languages (I told you it was a good idea!). If you go to Spain or Mexico and want to enjoy some Mexican music, you can say to loud teenagers quiet in Spanish: tranquilidad. If you go to France, you can tell some noisy French children running around to be tranquillité when you are looking at the Eiffel Tower (that’s a tall tower in France, if you didn’t know.) When you are in the European Union, you can ask the annoying Dutch children screaming while you are eating some Bulgarian yoghurt to be stil.

I should be quieter. I suppose it has some benefits. When you and everyone else are silent, you can focus on your work, writing, reading, or even art. When you are outside, you can enjoy nature. You can hear the birds singing and the wind whispering through the trees. When you are quiet, you can develop your listening skills (I think you can agree I need that skill). Friends really appreciate other friends that are there for them and just listen.

I really hope reading this seventh grader essay amused you and you learned something new, especially you, person who lives under a rock. I know that I learned a bit from the LITTLE research I did. I think this punishment worked, Mrs. Broussard. I think I will be quiet.