Saturday, February 15, 2003 What is so rare as a moosie first edition?
A few days ago my sister Helen requested that I post one of my childhood epic short stories, "Che e il signor smith?: The story of a malenchanted polar bear named St. Ignatius".
I got the title from an Italian phrasebook. I got the plot based on photos I clipped from old magazines. If I'm ambitious on Tuesday, I may scan them in and post them. This story is pretty typical of the stuff I wrote from 7th to 9th grade. Note: I did not have friends.
One day as St. Ignatius Polar Bear was wandering alone in a artic wasteland, intently searching for something to kill (he was not particularly hungry, but was looking to kill for the wanton pleasure of it, as bears of teh polar persuasion are wont to do.), he realized that being the masterful hunter he was, he had wiped out every ;iving thing for miles, even the Fox teevee camera crew that was filming a follow up to the parasitic ice worms episode of the X-files. Unfortunately, St. Ignatius polar bear also attacked, mauled, and ate both Scully and Mulder, and therefore, of course the world would never know whether they (Mulder and Scully) would ever just rip each other's clothes off and do, you know, the do.
Somewhat stymied by the boundless desolation that filled his eyes at every turn, St. Ignatius Polar bear hesitated for a moment, then headed towards the water. By snagging a stray rope on a passing Cruise, he, St. Ignatius Polar Bear was carried off to sunny Italy!
"Chi e il Signor Smith?" asked one local (text illegible), for St. Ignatius had taken the name of "Mr. Smith" and "Chi e il signor Smith means "Who is Mr. Smith?"
The second local, who was, as was his neighbor--smeared with mud and wearing a grass skirt, scratched his filthy head with his equally filthy hand and proclaimed quite confidently, "I don't know, but he is certainly not a large polar bear who kills not for the alleviation of hunger, but for the wanton pleasure of it."
At that moment "Mr. Smith" emerged from behind a Marinara bush and slew them both with his mighty left paw. The villagers never suspected "Signor Smith," and he eventually killed every villager. Now, more than ever, the menaing had come back to his life. Thank goodness!
Some notes on the text
This story fit the standard formula of the stuff I wrote when I was just jazzing around as a pre-teen. It was very short, gory, and filled with really scatter-shot cultural references that a well adjusted twelve-year-old has no business finding funny. I didn't turn most of of them in for class, because my English classes barely required you to be literate and almost never asked for creative work.
I probably could have with no problem, because this was years before Columbine, and my teachers took the weird shit I wrote about as evidence that I had a good imagination, rather than as a sign that it was time to incarcerate me.
The "literary culture" at Dead Prez. U. attracts a lot of kids who ooze pretension like I ooze stank, and more often than is healthy, a professor asks everyone to go aorund the room and talk about "your writing background." Creative writing profs. are masochists, but this strikes me as really beyond the pale every single time.
There's always somebody who talks about the novel they wrote when they were eight, or the stories they wrote before they could wield a pen, dutifully copied down by a parent. I want to hit these kids. I don't even know why. I don't doubt their sincerity, but my God! Didn't they have anything better to do when they were little? There were cartoons to watch, trees to climb, knees to scrape, dirt to eat! Then these little shits sit here and say they were dictating friggin' novels to their mothers?
I can picture little Cara trying to pull a stunt like that. "Ok, Mom, drop everything, because I'm four and feeling literary." I would have gotten the thrashing I deserved.
The thing is, I think I resent these kids because they make me doubt my writerly "cred." I can remember feeling ths way even when I was like eleven or twelve. I knew full well that other kids had been doing this nonsense since they could crawl, and I felt like I was way behind. I still kind of do. I feel like the bright but disadvantaged kids in a million Very Special Episodes who confess to the Warden, or Steve from 90210, or Mr. Worf that they got all the way through highschool and never learned to read. I'm almost all through college, and I still can't really define most litspeak. I get through pretentious conversations at the receptions after poetry readings by the skin of my little teeth, I tell you. I find that cocking an eyebrow and repeating the gist of whatever someone has just said, but in a more ironic tone, helps as well. Then I start talking about something delightfully different and earthy, like Blind Date, or what a holding cell is REALLY like.
The weird little nonsense stories I wrote when I was a kid seem better now than they did when I wrote them. I don't think they're gems, nor do I think they indicate special talent, but I made them, dammnit! I made them with great effort, but also lots of pleasure. When I'm sweating over my thesis(as I'm supposed to be today) it helps to remember what it was like to not give a shit about what I was going to DO with my end product, or character arcs, or trying to establish a tone. I really do want to write for the joy of it again.
That said, I now have to produce three times the amount of writing as I just did Writing About Writing. That's the rule I used this summer when I was working on my rough draft in the word-count building spirit of NaNoWriMo, and it worked then.
Also, my housemates are home, which means its my cue to go hide in my room. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 2/15/2003 10:46:00 AM
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