Hungry. . . for some delicious attention

Everyone is hungry for attention; its only natural. We all want others to see us, praise us, scold us - just to assure ourselves we are there.

We may not always be conscious to the fact that we are doing things to get attention, but, nevertheless, we commit acts that get us praised and sometimes in a lot of trouble. In Black Boy, Richard set the curtains on fire. He is writing this account as an older man and explains this incident as wanting attention. I don't think he stood there looking at the fire maliciously rubbing his hands together saying, "Mwahaha, this will get their attention!" I think that he was just sincerely curious about wanting to see how the curtains would look on fire. Maybe subconsciously, he was looking for mischief that would lead to attention; he fears his mother and yet he pulls the stunt off anyway.

There was this girl in my class from 2nd grade to 5th grade and she would always make snide, inappropriate comments in the middle of class; she would read magazines in the middle of class too, just to spite our teacher. And, yes, our teacher got very mad - even sent her too the office a few times. Despite all the scolding she received, she still continued to do all the things that got her in trouble. Was she hungry for attention - yeah! One of the signs to prove my point was when she got in trouble, she would always smile and look around to receive laughs and smirks from the rest of the class. So when I think of someone hungry for attention, I think of her, not someone like Richard. He may want attention, but I don't think he always goes out of his way to get it. The cat thing, I think, was to just get some revenge on his dad, not attention.