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Sitting on the porch of her cabin one summer, Phoebe Roer watched with fascination as her dad grabbed a marshmallow and molded it into taffy. Roer, 10 at the time, mimicked him and made her own marshmallow taffy.

"At this young age, I felt an unusual sense of accomplishment from succeeding at something so simple, and my dad seemed unusually proud of me for following his act," Roer said. "I have ever since always taken the time to mold my marshmallows into taffy before eating them, just like I had learned from my dad and just as he learned from his dad."

Now a senior at Page High School, Roer knew immediately what she wanted to write about when Kelly Payne, her English teacher this past spring, asked the class to write a personal anecdote.

"Our teacher told us that a personal anecdote should be about a very specific moment in time that was in fact significant in our lives," Roer said.

Her special moment? Her dad teaching her to make taffy.

She titled her essay "Marshmallow Taffy."

"It's about tradition and adopting the practices of our predecessors," Roer said.

Roer's teacher was so impressed with the piece that she encouraged her to enter it in the N.C. English Teachers Association Watterson-Timberlake Nonfiction Writing Contest.

Roer made it to the final round, where she ultimately was named the winner this fall. She and the other semifinalist were given a prompt and an hour to write another essay before she was named the winner and received the N.C. English Teachers Association Watterson-Timberlake Nonfiction Writing Award.

"I was very surprised," Roer said. "I never thought I would hear back from the contest, and I honestly thought I might be wasting my time in entering it."

Roer was honored at a lunch at the N.C. English Teachers Convention and received $300. She also gets to keep the trophy, which is passed annually from one winner to the next, at Page for a year.

Roer has loved writing from a young age.

"I used to like writing fiction stories and illustrating them," she said. "I think my interest in writing is rooted in that."

Now, she especially likes writing anecdotes.

"I have always enjoyed writing about things that mean something to me or that are close to my heart, unlike a research paper or something of that sort," Roer said.

Currently tops academically in her class, Roer plays lacrosse and runs cross-country.

She also is involved in Young Life and works as a lifeguard and swim instructor at the Greensboro Country Club in the summer. She went on a Habitat for Humanity trip with her church this past summer and hopes to become involved in the Greensboro chapter.

She is the daughter of Charlie and Karen Roer of Greensboro.

Roer plans to attend college next fall, but she has not decided on a major or school.

Though she's still uncertain what her future holds, she believes writing will inevitably be a part of it.

"Although I do not think I will major in journalism or English, writing is a generally required knowledge on any college path and in any career," Roer said. "I think it is vital to know how to write."

Contact Jennifer Atkins Brown at 574-5582 or jennifer.brown@news-record.com.

Marshmallow Taffy

It is human nature to adopt the practices of those who go before us. As a society, we have learned from our native ancestors the fundamentals of survival, such as cultivating plants and hunting animals for food. We have assumed from our immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents the vitals of work ethic and its power to generate affluence from utter nothingness. We have applied the democratic principals of our former political leaders and authority figures into the modern minds and governments of people all across the globe.
The effects of our predecessors are visible even in the diminutive environments of individual homes. Our parents habitually endow upon us their morals and beliefs and increasingly orthodox values. Hence we acquire these very ideals and pass them on to our children and their children and our children's children in an infinite chain of conformity. It is through this unconscious acceptance of others' ideas and habits that the teachings of our parents become a considerable element of our thought, and our parents, therefore, become a considerable part of us.

It was a hot mid-summer night, the kind that made my shirt stick to my back and caused a puddle of sweat from the back of my legs to stain the place where I sat. We were vacationing at the lake house in the north woods of Wisconsin, a family retreat that has occurred almost every summer for as long as I can recall. I was ten years old. The sun had just set and the dusk left a pink tint over the seemingly endless sheet of glass. I was sitting in silence on the steps of the back porch with my dad, unsuccessfully swatting at the merciless swarms of mosquitoes gnawing at my flesh and popping leftover marshmallows from the last night's bonfire into my mouth.

I must have dissolved ten marshmallows before my dad reached into the bag for a taste. He cradled the treat in between the thumb and forefinger of each of his hands, with his left fingertips hugging the sides and his right the top and bottom. I observed inquisitively as he mechanically began to mold the marshmallow, switching the position of his thumb and forefinger on each hand so that he repeatedly pinched, stretched and rotated it. The process began slowly as he tried to compress its plump shape. The marshmallow began to soften and what was once fluffy and whole became a sticky, condensed wad like that of chewed gum. It was a matter of minutes before the compact ball evolved into a smooth, white, buttery goo that easily transferred between my dad's incessantly revolving fingertips. He brought the taffy to his lips and indulged in its sugary essence. All the while, I gazed in envy of my father, who at that moment was an artist, a teacher, an inventor all in one.

Without hesitation, I claimed the last marshmallow and allowed my hands to mimic those of my father's in creation of a gooey masterpiece. I dug my fingertips into the cushion and accepted the sticky residue it left on my hands. I pinched and stretched and rotated just like I had seen him do. And as I sucked the last of the marshmallow's remains off my fingers, I was overcome with a surprising feeling of accomplishment that accompanied the sweet aftertaste of my first marshmallow taffy on my tongue. I looked up to see my father gazing proudly upon me; it was the same satisfied expression he gave me when I first tied my shoe by myself, when I first rode a two-wheeler, when I read my first words.

I am reluctant to deem it a coincidence that I have never since eaten a marshmallow that was not in the gooey state my dad introduced to me. It is hard to judge whether the mallow actually tastes better in the form of taffy and it is definitely not the easier way to consume the fluffy delight. However, it is by model and by tradition that I continue to soil my fingers and invest my time in delicately molding the marshmallow before devouring it. Simply eating the marshmallow now seems overly conventional and exceedingly humane and boring. Upon exercising my fingers over the sweet white pillow one day, I asked my dad out of plain curiosity how it was he so discovered marshmallow taffy. He gave me a wily smile and responded, "My dad taught me."