I need your help, kids...
Heyyy guys. How would you like to help me? You'd love to, you say? Fantastic.
For my creative submission to Emerson (and perhaps Ithaca, I'm not sure if they want one yet...) I'm submitting my final piece I did during my Writing the Short Story course at Ithaca over the summer.
This is the part where you guys read it and give me all sorts of constructive criticism. Or just...you know...criticism in general. Please try and keep it realted to the story, you know?
By Ren Long
I spent most of my childhood growing up in a seemingly ideal house. I had a big room with a walk in closet, our basement had been finished and furnished, and we had an attic and a deck and a nice sized backyard. But the best part was our playhouse, complete with a slide and trapdoor, that my father had designed and built himself, with a tiny deck to match that of our real house. There was only one problem with this real-life, non-pink "Barbie Dream House." It was a twin. We lived in what was essentially half a house. It was plenty big enough --I was a kindergartener with a walk-in-closet-- but it came with a mirror family. A family, with their own deck and nice-sized backyard, which was sharing our roof and front porch.
My parents, brother, and I were not selfish people. We would not have minded sharing with these people, had they been civil, polite adults. Larry Dahm, the father, was an overweight retired cop who was currently delivering pizza for a living. He could be loud and brash at times, but you couldn't really hate the man, because his intentions were always well placed. His wife, however, was a completely different story.
Just looking at Sue was enough to make you angry, her round, fat face forever displaying a purple-lipped sneer. Her shrill, annoying voice still rings through my ears when I look at pictures of my old home. The Dahms always had their screen door open, and I'd be outside blowing fluff off of dandelions when I'd hear Sue berating her daughter at police-siren decibels. And because Tiffany was a younger, just as heavy version of her mother, she would scream back before storming outside to play with me.
Yes, I often played with their smug, rude, slightly masochistic daughter, simply because there was no escape. I won't lie, on rare occasions I enjoyed her company. She also had a Barbie convertible which we used to ride up and down the cul-de-sac with Thelma and Louise flair.
Our favorite game was Front Yard Tag, back at a time when the word "run" coupled with the word "outside" didn't send me into a panic attack. The front yard was tiny to begin with, but two cement walkways leading up to our doors from our respective driveways made the patches of remaining grass seem even smaller. The walkways were "base" areas, where one could briefly rest without being tagged. The driveways, however, were "hot lava" areas, where one could not enter and would be immediately deemed "It" for doing so. Somehow, we were amused for hours running back and forth between the walkways, which couldn't have been more than ten, maybe fifteen feet, trying to escape whoever was "It." When we were lucky, we could get my brother to join us, so one person would serve as a distraction while the other scampered to base.
The rules were simple and widely accepted by other neighbors with identical front yards, but this was not enough for Tiffany. She needed intervention. Sue sat on the porch, residing over our games like a strange Buddhistic referee, calling out, "You tagged Tiffany's hair, that doesn't count! You're still It!" Even at eight, I knew there was something horribly sad and pathetic about spending your days arguing tag semantics with a bunch of kids.
Tiffany and I continued with what I referred to as our "friendship of convenience" for years: we hung around each other during the summer because we didn't have anything better to do. We were always wasting our money on some new fad, and that year, it was stickers. We each had more than one sticker book, spent hours arranging them, and were horrified when people tried to use stickers for their regular purposes, like putting them on papers or decorating cards with them. "You'll never get them back!" we'd cry in horror. There was even an unspoken exchange system. Regular stickers were easily traded, but if you had a fuzzy sticker, you could get at least two regular ones for that, depending on how bad the other trader wanted it. A metallic sticker could be traded for a fuzzy, but offering someone one regular sticker for a metallic was laughable. Standing majestically at the top of the sticker food chain were puffy stickers, which were slightly raised and delightful to push down on and watch spring back to its original form. They took up more room in the sticker books, on account of their puff, but were well worth a few bent pages. You could reduce a person to tears by denying them any sort of trade for a puffy, even if it was old and the backing not at all sticky.
Tiffany had somehow gotten her grubby little hands on the messiah of puffy stickers, a beautiful puffy bunch of grapes that I had been eyeing. Not only was this sticker puffy and purple (my then and still favorite color), but it was a scratch-and-sniff sticker. I could not begin to wrap my head around the kind of trade I'd have to offer her for that puppy, but I was determined. I had even made a spot for it in my sticker book in the middle of my "Puffies, Fuzzies, and Other Rarities" page. I knew I was smarter than her, and if I couldn't offer her a good trade, I'd con her out of it, just like in The Sting, that old Robert Redford movie my dad used to make me watch all the time. When the time came for a meeting in the playhouse, I went in armed with sticker books and crafty ideas.
"Okay Tiff," I said, trying to channel my inner Redford, "let's make some trades."
"My mom just got me some alphabet stickers," she informed me, holding up the pack, "I'll trade you two regular stickers for the letters to spell your name, since they're small."
"Which two?"
"The purple dog and the shiny palm tree," she said. This was just the small stuff. I wavered for a second, acting hesitant, as if giving up the dog and tree would be hard.
"Well, okay," I said, pulling out the requested stickers and handing them to her. I watched her as she debated where to place them in her book, practically moving in slow motion. I resisted the urge to tap my foot impatiently; I was dying to go in for the kill. I knew I had to be slow and precise.
"I've been thinking...remember that Aladdin sticker I told you I wouldn't trade?"
"Yeah," she said slowly, looking up from her book.
"I've reconsidered. But it'd have to be a really good trade."
"Okay," she cried, excitedly flipping through her books. "How about a fuzzy pair of lips and a metallic hairbrush?"
I sighed loudly. She looked disappointed, but made another offer, "A cow and a shiny fire hydrant?" I was quite fond of that hydrant, but I couldn't falter now. I shook my head.
"Maybe that one?" I pointed to the puffy grapes nonchalantly, as if I had just noticed their presence and had not been coveting thy neighbor's stickers for the past two weeks.
"But that's scratch-and-sniff and puffy!" she yelped. "No way! Not for one Aladdin sticker!"
My eyes shined and I suppressed a grin. She hadn't said she wouldn't trade the grapes at all. I was in.
"I'll give you the Aladdin, Princess Jasmine, and a fuzzy Dalmatian."
"Nope," she folded her arms across her chest.
"Aladdin, Princess Jasmine, the Dalmatian, and two metallic unicorns."
She hesitated, knowing that I loved those unicorns. "...Two unicorns?" she checked. I nodded. She smiled, thinking she had the upper hand. What a fool. "Nah," she taunted with a stupid little smirk.
I sighed again, and picked up my other sticker book. "I didn't want it to have to come to this," I started, "But I'm willing to give up my most rare Troll sticker for those grapes." Tiffany loved those crazy-haired dolls, a weakness I was very willing to exploit.
"Troll stickers? Really?" she gasped.
"Yes. And no just any Troll sticker," I paused for dramatic effect, "A glow-in-the-dark Troll sticker!" I carefully peeled a green one from my book and placed it in hers. "It's the only one I've got." My brother had about five or so, and had no trouble parting with one. Technically, I did only have one, so I was not being entirely deceitful.
"Fine!" she said happily, and plucked the grapes off her page and handed them to me. I placed them lovingly in the space I had created for them, completely at peace. As I walked back to my house, I could practically hear the ragtime theme of The Sting in my head. Redford would be proud.
I showed the grape sticker to my father and told him of my miracle trade. He was pleased because I was so overjoyed by the sticker, and he willingly sniffed every time I scratched. Unfortunately, this newfound bliss wouldn't last long.
When Tiffany went home, she must have regretted her trade and told her mother, because later that evening, the both of them showed up at our door. "Hello Donna," Sue said to my mother when she answered the door, "Erin traded a sticker with Tiff earlier today. She traded a puffy sticker for a glow-in-the-dark one, but she's not allowed to trade her puffy stickers."
"Hey!" I called from behind her mother, "That's mine now, we traded fair and square!" As far as I knew, she never had a rule about trading puffy stickers before. And what kind of person makes rules for their kid about their stickers anyway, short of 'Don't stick them to your walls'?
"A puffy sticker for a glow-in-the-dark one is not fair," Sue objected. Tiffany nodded with a pout.
"You agreed to it before!" I said angrily.
"She's not allowed to trade her puffy stickers," Sue said loudly to my mother, ignoring me.
"Go get the sticker," my mom hissed. Completely confused by the whole matter, my mother thought it best to end the conflict as soon as possible. I could hear her apologizing as I went to get the precious sticker. I handed it back to Tiffany, who shoved the Troll sticker back at me, its edges bent and its backing no longer sticky.
I had been gypped. My future con artist ways were useless, my Troll sticker was ruined, and I lost the best sticker in the entire universe. I ran back to my room, horribly upset that the world could be so unfair.
My father had been at the store during the sticker debacle, and when he came home, my mother told him the story. He came up to my room, where I had been sulking, face down on my bed for an hour.
"I know you're upset," he said gently, sitting down beside me, "But there's something I want you to understand. Tiffany went home and cried to her mother. Her mother got so worked up that she was forced to come over here and demand you give back a sticker. A tiny, little sticker."
"It was the best sticker in the whole entire--"
"I know, I know," he cut me off, "I smelled it eighty times. Tiffany made a choice, but complained about it. She went back on that decision. She's never going to learn that you can't do that in real life. You have to live with the bad choices you make. She's going to lean on her mother for her entire life, complaining whenever things don't go her way.
"You're different. You understand that what's done is done, don't you? You won't get that sticker back, but you'll be free, independent, and a brilliant, good-hearted kid. It might not seem so good now, but that is the best trade in the universe. A grape sticker for a better life? I'd do it in a heart beat." He patted the top of my head before going downstairs. I mulled over his words for awhile, finally taking refuge in the fact that he acknowledge that I was smarter than Tiffany.
Our family's relationship with the Dahms after that day was nothing short of tenuous. Only after they decorated their house with blinking, multi-colored lights, a Santa statue, and a complete manger scene did we finally decide to move.
I said good-bye to our nice-sized yard, our deck, and sadly, our playhouse. Every time I look into my new, tiny closet, I think about those neighbors and how much I hated them, but also, about the examples they set for my brother and me on how not to act.
No more Dahms for a playhouse? It may not have seemed so then, but that was the best trade in the universe.
---
It is, actually, a true story. I didn't bother to change the names either. I probably will before I submit it, just incase by some magic rare irony/coincidence (you can decide which) one of their relatives is on Emerson's admission commitee.
So let me know what you think. Too long? Too wordy? Ridiculous? Anything will help. Seriously, anyting.
Thanks :)
For my creative submission to Emerson (and perhaps Ithaca, I'm not sure if they want one yet...) I'm submitting my final piece I did during my Writing the Short Story course at Ithaca over the summer.
This is the part where you guys read it and give me all sorts of constructive criticism. Or just...you know...criticism in general. Please try and keep it realted to the story, you know?
By Ren Long
I spent most of my childhood growing up in a seemingly ideal house. I had a big room with a walk in closet, our basement had been finished and furnished, and we had an attic and a deck and a nice sized backyard. But the best part was our playhouse, complete with a slide and trapdoor, that my father had designed and built himself, with a tiny deck to match that of our real house. There was only one problem with this real-life, non-pink "Barbie Dream House." It was a twin. We lived in what was essentially half a house. It was plenty big enough --I was a kindergartener with a walk-in-closet-- but it came with a mirror family. A family, with their own deck and nice-sized backyard, which was sharing our roof and front porch.
My parents, brother, and I were not selfish people. We would not have minded sharing with these people, had they been civil, polite adults. Larry Dahm, the father, was an overweight retired cop who was currently delivering pizza for a living. He could be loud and brash at times, but you couldn't really hate the man, because his intentions were always well placed. His wife, however, was a completely different story.
Just looking at Sue was enough to make you angry, her round, fat face forever displaying a purple-lipped sneer. Her shrill, annoying voice still rings through my ears when I look at pictures of my old home. The Dahms always had their screen door open, and I'd be outside blowing fluff off of dandelions when I'd hear Sue berating her daughter at police-siren decibels. And because Tiffany was a younger, just as heavy version of her mother, she would scream back before storming outside to play with me.
Yes, I often played with their smug, rude, slightly masochistic daughter, simply because there was no escape. I won't lie, on rare occasions I enjoyed her company. She also had a Barbie convertible which we used to ride up and down the cul-de-sac with Thelma and Louise flair.
Our favorite game was Front Yard Tag, back at a time when the word "run" coupled with the word "outside" didn't send me into a panic attack. The front yard was tiny to begin with, but two cement walkways leading up to our doors from our respective driveways made the patches of remaining grass seem even smaller. The walkways were "base" areas, where one could briefly rest without being tagged. The driveways, however, were "hot lava" areas, where one could not enter and would be immediately deemed "It" for doing so. Somehow, we were amused for hours running back and forth between the walkways, which couldn't have been more than ten, maybe fifteen feet, trying to escape whoever was "It." When we were lucky, we could get my brother to join us, so one person would serve as a distraction while the other scampered to base.
The rules were simple and widely accepted by other neighbors with identical front yards, but this was not enough for Tiffany. She needed intervention. Sue sat on the porch, residing over our games like a strange Buddhistic referee, calling out, "You tagged Tiffany's hair, that doesn't count! You're still It!" Even at eight, I knew there was something horribly sad and pathetic about spending your days arguing tag semantics with a bunch of kids.
Tiffany and I continued with what I referred to as our "friendship of convenience" for years: we hung around each other during the summer because we didn't have anything better to do. We were always wasting our money on some new fad, and that year, it was stickers. We each had more than one sticker book, spent hours arranging them, and were horrified when people tried to use stickers for their regular purposes, like putting them on papers or decorating cards with them. "You'll never get them back!" we'd cry in horror. There was even an unspoken exchange system. Regular stickers were easily traded, but if you had a fuzzy sticker, you could get at least two regular ones for that, depending on how bad the other trader wanted it. A metallic sticker could be traded for a fuzzy, but offering someone one regular sticker for a metallic was laughable. Standing majestically at the top of the sticker food chain were puffy stickers, which were slightly raised and delightful to push down on and watch spring back to its original form. They took up more room in the sticker books, on account of their puff, but were well worth a few bent pages. You could reduce a person to tears by denying them any sort of trade for a puffy, even if it was old and the backing not at all sticky.
Tiffany had somehow gotten her grubby little hands on the messiah of puffy stickers, a beautiful puffy bunch of grapes that I had been eyeing. Not only was this sticker puffy and purple (my then and still favorite color), but it was a scratch-and-sniff sticker. I could not begin to wrap my head around the kind of trade I'd have to offer her for that puppy, but I was determined. I had even made a spot for it in my sticker book in the middle of my "Puffies, Fuzzies, and Other Rarities" page. I knew I was smarter than her, and if I couldn't offer her a good trade, I'd con her out of it, just like in The Sting, that old Robert Redford movie my dad used to make me watch all the time. When the time came for a meeting in the playhouse, I went in armed with sticker books and crafty ideas.
"Okay Tiff," I said, trying to channel my inner Redford, "let's make some trades."
"My mom just got me some alphabet stickers," she informed me, holding up the pack, "I'll trade you two regular stickers for the letters to spell your name, since they're small."
"Which two?"
"The purple dog and the shiny palm tree," she said. This was just the small stuff. I wavered for a second, acting hesitant, as if giving up the dog and tree would be hard.
"Well, okay," I said, pulling out the requested stickers and handing them to her. I watched her as she debated where to place them in her book, practically moving in slow motion. I resisted the urge to tap my foot impatiently; I was dying to go in for the kill. I knew I had to be slow and precise.
"I've been thinking...remember that Aladdin sticker I told you I wouldn't trade?"
"Yeah," she said slowly, looking up from her book.
"I've reconsidered. But it'd have to be a really good trade."
"Okay," she cried, excitedly flipping through her books. "How about a fuzzy pair of lips and a metallic hairbrush?"
I sighed loudly. She looked disappointed, but made another offer, "A cow and a shiny fire hydrant?" I was quite fond of that hydrant, but I couldn't falter now. I shook my head.
"Maybe that one?" I pointed to the puffy grapes nonchalantly, as if I had just noticed their presence and had not been coveting thy neighbor's stickers for the past two weeks.
"But that's scratch-and-sniff and puffy!" she yelped. "No way! Not for one Aladdin sticker!"
My eyes shined and I suppressed a grin. She hadn't said she wouldn't trade the grapes at all. I was in.
"I'll give you the Aladdin, Princess Jasmine, and a fuzzy Dalmatian."
"Nope," she folded her arms across her chest.
"Aladdin, Princess Jasmine, the Dalmatian, and two metallic unicorns."
She hesitated, knowing that I loved those unicorns. "...Two unicorns?" she checked. I nodded. She smiled, thinking she had the upper hand. What a fool. "Nah," she taunted with a stupid little smirk.
I sighed again, and picked up my other sticker book. "I didn't want it to have to come to this," I started, "But I'm willing to give up my most rare Troll sticker for those grapes." Tiffany loved those crazy-haired dolls, a weakness I was very willing to exploit.
"Troll stickers? Really?" she gasped.
"Yes. And no just any Troll sticker," I paused for dramatic effect, "A glow-in-the-dark Troll sticker!" I carefully peeled a green one from my book and placed it in hers. "It's the only one I've got." My brother had about five or so, and had no trouble parting with one. Technically, I did only have one, so I was not being entirely deceitful.
"Fine!" she said happily, and plucked the grapes off her page and handed them to me. I placed them lovingly in the space I had created for them, completely at peace. As I walked back to my house, I could practically hear the ragtime theme of The Sting in my head. Redford would be proud.
I showed the grape sticker to my father and told him of my miracle trade. He was pleased because I was so overjoyed by the sticker, and he willingly sniffed every time I scratched. Unfortunately, this newfound bliss wouldn't last long.
When Tiffany went home, she must have regretted her trade and told her mother, because later that evening, the both of them showed up at our door. "Hello Donna," Sue said to my mother when she answered the door, "Erin traded a sticker with Tiff earlier today. She traded a puffy sticker for a glow-in-the-dark one, but she's not allowed to trade her puffy stickers."
"Hey!" I called from behind her mother, "That's mine now, we traded fair and square!" As far as I knew, she never had a rule about trading puffy stickers before. And what kind of person makes rules for their kid about their stickers anyway, short of 'Don't stick them to your walls'?
"A puffy sticker for a glow-in-the-dark one is not fair," Sue objected. Tiffany nodded with a pout.
"You agreed to it before!" I said angrily.
"She's not allowed to trade her puffy stickers," Sue said loudly to my mother, ignoring me.
"Go get the sticker," my mom hissed. Completely confused by the whole matter, my mother thought it best to end the conflict as soon as possible. I could hear her apologizing as I went to get the precious sticker. I handed it back to Tiffany, who shoved the Troll sticker back at me, its edges bent and its backing no longer sticky.
I had been gypped. My future con artist ways were useless, my Troll sticker was ruined, and I lost the best sticker in the entire universe. I ran back to my room, horribly upset that the world could be so unfair.
My father had been at the store during the sticker debacle, and when he came home, my mother told him the story. He came up to my room, where I had been sulking, face down on my bed for an hour.
"I know you're upset," he said gently, sitting down beside me, "But there's something I want you to understand. Tiffany went home and cried to her mother. Her mother got so worked up that she was forced to come over here and demand you give back a sticker. A tiny, little sticker."
"It was the best sticker in the whole entire--"
"I know, I know," he cut me off, "I smelled it eighty times. Tiffany made a choice, but complained about it. She went back on that decision. She's never going to learn that you can't do that in real life. You have to live with the bad choices you make. She's going to lean on her mother for her entire life, complaining whenever things don't go her way.
"You're different. You understand that what's done is done, don't you? You won't get that sticker back, but you'll be free, independent, and a brilliant, good-hearted kid. It might not seem so good now, but that is the best trade in the universe. A grape sticker for a better life? I'd do it in a heart beat." He patted the top of my head before going downstairs. I mulled over his words for awhile, finally taking refuge in the fact that he acknowledge that I was smarter than Tiffany.
Our family's relationship with the Dahms after that day was nothing short of tenuous. Only after they decorated their house with blinking, multi-colored lights, a Santa statue, and a complete manger scene did we finally decide to move.
I said good-bye to our nice-sized yard, our deck, and sadly, our playhouse. Every time I look into my new, tiny closet, I think about those neighbors and how much I hated them, but also, about the examples they set for my brother and me on how not to act.
No more Dahms for a playhouse? It may not have seemed so then, but that was the best trade in the universe.
---
It is, actually, a true story. I didn't bother to change the names either. I probably will before I submit it, just incase by some magic rare irony/coincidence (you can decide which) one of their relatives is on Emerson's admission commitee.
So let me know what you think. Too long? Too wordy? Ridiculous? Anything will help. Seriously, anyting.
Thanks :)