Analyzing The Essay 'The Grinnies'

“The Grinnies” is an entertaining essay about a young girl who had grown up with a term that she thought everyone knew. It was only through what was perceived as a bad grade that she found out that everyone did not know what she was talking about.
Her parents were both teachers who did not like it that she had made a “C” in English. They continually pushed her to do better. Her parents helped her with spelling and read her compositions. She reviewed her spelling and reviewed her grammar and trough her hard work and persistence she accomplished an “A” which made her very happy. As she was lost in her thoughts about the good grade she did not realize she was grinning and had to explain what she meant when she told her teacher she had the grinnies.
The writer describes the grinnies as a very wide smile with teeth showing and bright eyes. It is also a feeling on the inside that can last a couple of seconds or all day. This feeling can be “joyful agitation” and she describes it as a “bubbly sensation”. Every time someone brings up the event that caused the grinnies, the feeling can start all over again because of the pride inside coming out again.
She apparently made up the term “the grinnies” to describe the look that she had. She talks about other instances where the grinnies were used to describe happiness such as when her brother rode his bicycle the first time without training wheels and homemade ice cream. The family all had the grinnies when she graduated as the Valedictorian of her high school. She goes on to mention that the grinnies can come from a phone call, a visit or just a good thought of something in the past so it doesn’t exactly have to be something