I picked up a book on writing fiction a few days ago, and I’ve been working through some of the exercises in it. At first, I thought they were sort of rudimentary and boring, but I’m finding that they really work to wrench material out of your noggin that you thought you had lost a long time ago between some couch cushions along with all your change and an expired bus ticket.
An exercise that I did tonight called for the reader (which was me) to write about “something silly and foolish” that he had done at some point in his life. I had fun with it, and thought I’d post it here. I wrote it for myself, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share it with y’alls if it’s any good :)
There aren’t many silly and foolish things that I’ve done in my life. For the greater part of my existence, I have been nothing if not fastidiously awesome in all things.
Of course, everybody needs to slip up sometime. Whether it’s Michael touching a boy or Jesus getting nailed to a cross, there’s always a moment when it seems like your day is going downhill.
My moment took place just before the potlatch party we were having in the fourth grade to celebrate all the learning we did about Indians (Native ‘Mericans, that is) that year.
There was a dress code for the potlatch. I don’t remember all the intricate details, but it basically came down to having to wear a dirty old blanket over your body with shorts underneath. I guess that’s because the Indians always wore shorts underneath their blankets during their potlatches. We didn’t cover that during our history classes. "Traditional Undergarments of the Nootkas" just doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that most parents would like their children to be learning.
Anyway, I kind of jumped the gun on the whole changing thing. The plan was for students to take turns changing in the two large closets at the back of the room, but I decided to just go for it right then and there. I walked to the back, in full view of the other students, and whipped my trousers off, including my knickers, and that was that. For a brief moment, before donning my traditional potlatch shorts, in front of every other member of my class, I was standing there, free in the breeze, looking not at all unlike Michelangelo’s David on a sunny Mediterranean day.
Nobody said anything. It was like the spectacle was far too great for commentary. I mean, here they all were, my classmates, probably about nine or ten years old each at the time, and having to come to terms with the fact that they were seeing the most incredible thing they would ever see in their entire lives.
The Great Pyramids of Egypt…
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon…
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia…
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus…
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus…
The Colossus of Rhodes…
The Lighthouse of Alexandria…
These, we are taught in our youth, were the seven great wonders of the world.
But any smart child who was in that classroom with me on that day back in 1987 when I changed too early could have told you, without any hesitation or doubt, that there was, in fact, an eighth.