Trampled to death by orangutans. What a silly way to die. Imagine how I would
tell what happened to my daughter. It would make a good bedtime story, full of humor and silly elements. It would have to begin with “It was a dark, stormy night”.
Yeah, that has a nice ring to it, full of mysterious possibilities. I would
begin, with my voice all low and scary,
“It was a dark stormy night when I found out I was being
chased by something. Having legs shaking, I went through bushes and jumped over
the stomps. Suddenly, I felt a chill and turned around. I-“
“Mommy mommy! I want to be in the story too!”
I can just imagine my little girl jumping up and down,
wanting to be a part of the story I was telling.
“Okay. Let me continue!”
“I plunged my hand inside my bag and whipped out my ultimate
weapon. The pepper spray. Few seconds later, I heard a scream of pain.”
“It was a little girl!”
“Yes indeed, it was a little girl who looked just like the little
girl sitting next to me.”
“I kneeled in front of her and observed her face. She kept
screaming!” I would exclaim as I made my girl squeal with my tickling hands.
“MOMMY MOMMY!! Stop!” She would say between giggles and
laughs. Finally escaping my hands, she would say “The person said “I am the
worst person on this planet”, picked up her pepper spray, let go of the girl,
and sprayed it on her own face!” while she took revenge by tickling me back.
Both coming down from fits of giggles, I would continue with
our nighttime story.
“The pain on my eyes got stronger. It’s really itchy so I
ran, trying to find water to clean my eyes. I kept running without being aware of how much time had passed.”
“Suddenly!” I would drop my voice at this point, making her listen carefully wide eyed.
“I was blocked by something. Since my eyes were closed, I
tried to recognize it by touch. While touching the barrier, I mistakenly
pushed something. Then, I noticed something was going wrong. It was the butt of
a bear!”
My girl would stare at me, unable to say anything out of
fear, ironically, holding her old teddy bear Mr. Cuddles close. I needed to
make her more relaxed if I wanted her to fall asleep.
“I played dead. However, it turns out the bear was a kind
bear, just like Mr. Cuddles!”
I can almost see the smile of relief she will make, starting
to pat Mr. Cuddles on the head for being a good bear.
“The bear was here to cure me by giving me mugwort(쑥) and garlic.”
“Just like the story grandma told me?”
“Yes, just like the story of Dangun, the bear had to eat mugwort and garlic for 100 days because it had magic powers. The bear gave
some of it to me, and with the magic powers, after I ate them, my eyes
magically felt better again.”
“This is where Mr. Bananas comes up!” She would interrupt,
holding her monkey stuffed animal up.
“Mr. Bananas? Why?”
“You talked about Mr. Cuddles, now you have to put Mr.
Bananas in the story! His feelings will get hurt!”
“Okay, fine, Mr. Bananas can be in the story. Anyways, my
eyes felt better but I rubbed my eyes with my hands that held the garlic so
they hurt again! The bear started to become annoyed by my stupidity and he
was starting to reach the conclusion that eating me would put an end to its
troubles. So, I made up an excuse of having to feed a monkey that I don’t have
and ran away. After lying about having a monkey, I was swept with the desire to
own one. I ran to the pet store but sadly, they didn’t have any. I ran to my second-best
option, the zoo.”
“And you met Mr. Bananas!”
“And I met Mr. Bananas. I saw that he was the funniest, kindest
monkey of the group so I took him out of the cage to bring to my daughter at
home.”
“That’s me!” She would say, giggling.
“Yes, that’s you! Anyways, I went, and with sudden insanity,
let open all the orangutans in the zoo. I was trampled by them and they went
wild. They set fire to the zoo and went off to the Empire State building. They
started to tear down the building like a King Kong. I lay on the ground, unable
to get up. I felt the pain become numb, and the life slipping from my body. I
closed my eyes and I didn’t have any energy to open them again.”
I would get carried away, and realize that she was about to
cry. I made the story too tragic for my 4-year-old girl. I had to change the ending
to a happier one. Hastily, I would say
“Something hit my head. It was mom trying to wake me up to
go to school. Still crawling, I felt something under my pillow. I carefully
lifted it up and found Mr. Cuddles and Mr. Bananas, waiting for me.”
“So it was all just a dream? You didn’t die?”
“Of course it was all just a dream! Silly, this is just a
story. Now it’s time to go to sleep.”
My daughter, being the kindhearted girl she is, would
comply, getting ready to be tucked in. I would give my daughter a good night
kiss as I always do and get ready to leave. Suddenly, she would grab my hand
and say
“You’re never going to leave me, right? Promise!”
I wouldn’t be able to answer, only smile at her and kiss her
on her forehead one last time and say
“Good night.”
That’s how I would end telling the story. Yeah. That’s nice.
It was all just a dream. The next time I open my eyes, I would wake up next to my
daughter. The siren of the ambulance became fainter, my eyes started to close with a soft smile on my face, imagining my girl's reactions to my story.
Hmmm. Some good things in here, I guess. I like the idea of someone imagining a bedtime story they might tell a future child (why they would be doing this is also interesting....) and I like the "how I would" approach of using future tense. Maybe there's a work of brilliance in here in a radically different draft of this using a radically different approach with a truly planned out agenda with a true purpose.... which (without further adieu) this doesn't have. At all. This is - more often than not - erratic, insane, and not that much fun to read. Pepper spray? A lot of this stuff is impossible to use effectively, in which case it is best to just try something else that won't end up as erratic drivel. I've read great stuff from you, and this isn't it. As stated in class - your challenge is to write something that could "survive" as actual literature. A true short story. Conceptually, you might have the structure and approach - but not the execution. Before we can make sense of one thing, we are jumping abruptly ahead to the next thing, which also won't make sense, and so on and so on until the reader just doesn't care that much anymore. Please don't be offended by these comments (I'm being mean to everyone) but I expected more from you, and I gave you guys a lot of time to think and work on these. Dialogue heavy writing is often hard to pin down and write effectively, so I'm sure in future drafts that you'd try to flesh this out more. Nice picture and I think there's potential here - but it's hard to pull off with the chainwriting material you ended up with (IMO).
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