An old man traveled down the rainy, busy street. Unlike most people there, his clothes were made of real fabric, not plastic. It had been a pain in the neck to find, but he felt it was worth it. Stranger still, he went on his own two feet, not an electric hover board.
He didn't run, but walked with an urgency that was uncommon in this age of constant computer contact. He zig-zagged along the road, upsetting traffic, and asked the same questions over and over.
"Do you hate our Nation? Do you believe in magic?"
He was almost never allowed to get to the second question, because the person he was asking would always shriek at the idea and dart away, start yelling in his face, or simply come at him with fists raised. The very idea, to them, of disliking, let alone hating, the Nation was entirely unthinkable. The man avoided all attacks, and simply walked on with a stern, worried expression.
He had been repeating those questions for hours now. His heart began to sink. Would he ever find anyone suitable? But then he saw a young boy, no older than five, nibbling quietly on a dried slab of Slips. He looked starved and cold. This was not unusual; hundreds of beggar boys lined this highway alone. This child's small eyes, however, were not focused on his scavenged food, or guarding his plastic cup with perhaps a coin or two in it. Instead, he watched each person as they flew by, seeming to be calculating, thinking. The boy's eyes connected with the old man's gaze, and they both knew something important was about to happen.
The man crossed the street and stood before the child. The young boy stared defiantly up at him. If he was scared, he didn't show it.
Heart pounding, the man asked his first question.
"Do you hate our Nation?"
The tiny, starved boy looked around, seeming to consider. Finally he answered simply,
"Yes."
The man could have jumped for joy. Lips curling into a smile, he asked the second question.
"Do you believe in magic?"
This time, the boy did not need to think. He grinned, revealing tiny, surprisingly white teeth and replied,
"Yes."
The man sighed in relief.
"Take this, child."
He held out an amulet, taken from his back pocket. It was a silver disk on a gold chain, engraved with a language long forgotten. If the child accepted it, the man's life's work would be complete.
The kid did not drop his Slips, or hold out a hand.
"What is it?"
This kid was smart. He knew not to trust strangers.
"It is your destiny."
The boy raised a critical eyebrow and looked the man over for a good ten seconds. Finally, without a word, he put out his right hand, palm up.
Smiling, the man lowered the amulet onto his outstretched hand.
The boy watched in fascination as the the silver disk wiggled down his hand and then stopped on his wrist. After a moments pause, it slowly sunk into his skin, like a leaf in thick mud. Soon it seemed that the boy had a detailed, shiny tattoo on his wrist. The gold chain reached up and wrapped around his hand, and soon he had an irremovable bracelet. The process didn't hurt, but it did send happy shivers down his spine. He wiggled his wrist around, entertained by the jingling sound it made.
Remembering his manners, he looked up to thank the man. But he was gone. All that was to be seen was dozens of people on their hover boards, logged into computers attached to their irises.
The boy nodded to himself. In his mothers old stories, mysterious characters never stuck around, so why should this event be any different? He pulled up his sleeve to hide his new treasure, for he knew that if anyone saw it, they would do their best to snatch it, and that would only lead to trouble. Then he raised the stale Slips to his mouth, and quietly, simply, he returned to watching the wet streets.
The Angel's Choir
The
shepherds saw, up in the sky, amid a soft, warm light,
A
crowd of holy angels, singing through the night.
As
they sang for Baby Jesus, (a manger for a bed,)
I
wonder what they sang of, I wonder what they said.
I'm
sure it had to do with hope, with love, and perfect peace,
I'm
sure their voices rang out pure, without a single cease.
I
wonder if they practiced, for hours every day,
Or
if in that joyful moment, their hearts knew what to say?
Did
they have a soloist, or a chorister in charge,
Or
did they all have equal parts, the small up to the large?
Was
I up there with them? Was I in that heavenly throng?
Did
I barely murmur, or did I proudly sing along?
I
don't know if I was there, thousands of years ago,
But
as I sit here thinking, there's one thing that I know.
As
I live from day to day, a song I'll always repeat,
And
even if the times are hard, I'll never miss a beat.
Come
with me, join my song, and together we will sing,
The
same sweet song the angels sang to the King of everything.
My Ramblings
"Uhg!"
I push the keyboard away and slam my head down on the desk.
"Why is all my writing total crap?!" I ask to no one in particular.
I thought I had read something somewhere that said one of the best cures for writers block was to look at the first random object you see and describe it. Maybe I'll give that a go...
It's shiny and smooth, with a small dip in one side to let the juice flow out. The whole thing is a work of art, but it is underused and-
...
Guess that didn't work. Oh, well. I move my mouse away from the input box on Blogger, (I use Blogger to write all my stuff, then cut and paste it to wherever. I like the format- really simple, with lots of curvy lines. Good for the eyes,) and open a new tab in Google. I try a search for 'Cure for Writers Block', which wields 'about 708,000' results, according to the number displayed below, and as far as I can tell, none of them are useful. I get to wondering about that number they display, saying that's how many results they got. They could probably write any number they wanted in there- not like anyone's going to count. And then they list the time it took Google to find all of it, which seems kinda like bragging to me, don't you think? Like, 'look at me, I'm the best search engine ever! I got hundreds of thousands of results, and I did it in less than half a second! I even used decimals! Oh yeah.'
Now that I think of it, I'll bet you anything that they always round the number of results up and the amount of time down. Like, if they got 111,111 results, they would tell us they got 'about 200,000' results. If I had any less of a life, I would probably stop to count them, just to prove Google wrong.
I wonder if anyone would sue Google if they counted them all, and it turned out to be a lot less. I bet someone would. For some people, 'sue them' is the answer to everything. Last year, in seventh grade, my class set up a mock trial and I had to be a witness. We went to a real court house to debate and everything! The court house wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be- no big wooden platform for the judge, like you see on TV. It was just a big room, with grey carpet and tile walls. There were these weird windows that only showed the outline of things. There was this one squirrel that kept running up and down this tree outside, and this kid named Cameron and I were cracking up. Is it disrespectful to laugh at a squirrel during a trial? I bet it is. Oops.
I never know when to laugh. Like, sometimes, the teacher cracks a joke- a reference to a book, or a song, or something, and no one else gets it. So there I am, in the second-to-last row, laughing to a joke no one else understands, and then the teacher starts laughing too, and the rest of the class is just looking at the both of us like, 'what the heck is going on here?' And then I feel like an idiot, even though I'm kinda doing a smart thing.
And then there are other times, at lunch, when someone says something about a certain reproductive organ doing a certain thing, and I'm sitting there trying to figure out how that's anatomically possible while they're all laughing like that's the funniest thing any human being has ever said.
I guess my sense of humor is a little advanced.
A few days ago, I was wasting time in class, and I was looking up funny science jokes, everything from jokes about atoms to jokes about DNA. This kid next to me, Conner, is looking at my screen and laughing, and I swear, he was totally fake laughing, trying to look smart. I look at him and I'm thinking, no way does he get these references. My parents don't get these references. So I say to him, "Stop fake laughing," and he's like, "I'm not fake laughing," and then I point to a joke on the screen, one about Schrodinger's cat, and I ask him, "What's this joke about, then?" He just kinda looks at it for a while, then he looks back at his screen and goes, "Hey, did you know Urchins are a food? You eat the sex organs," and I'm like, hu? And he starts reading off this totally random website he found.
Conner is weird.
No, not weird. Weird is a compliment, coming from me. He's just dumb.
I sit back and look at my screen. I hadn't realized I'd written this much. I flick open a website I use sometimes called 'wordcounttool.com'. You just cut and paste your work into it's little box, press enter, and it counts the words for you.
Okay, it's at 847 right now. Not great, but not that bad either. As I'm looking back at it, it seems pretty fun to read, if I do say so myself. I wonder what I should call it. How about 'My Ramblings'? Yeah, that works. 'Cuz that's all it is, really. Just me rambling on and on...
So, I just got my mom to read over it for me. She sits down at the computer and starts speed-reading in that way she does. Seriously, this woman is a reading bullet. She's done with the page before I've even finished the first sentence!
Anyway. She's laughing every now and then, which is a good sign. I ask her if I can have a cookie. She grunts, which I take to mean, 'Sure, honey, eat as many as you like.'
We have some pretty good cookies right now. They're pumpkin, with chocolate and butterscotch chips. I helped make them, and it was pretty fun. I've been getting into baking lately.
Huh. I just realized that I have no idea how to end this thing. I just finished reading this book, 'The Misfits', and I thought it was pretty good, until the ending. It was a total happily-ever-after thing, and it really contradicted stuff it had said before. I hope my ending doesn't do that. I bet it won't, 'cuz you kinda need a plot in order to contradict anything, and a plot is not something this post has.
So, I think I'll probably put this up on Teenink, one of my favorite writing websites. I'll post it on my blog, too... Maybe I'll do another one of these sometime... or maybe not- wait and see!
I push the keyboard away and slam my head down on the desk.
"Why is all my writing total crap?!" I ask to no one in particular.
I thought I had read something somewhere that said one of the best cures for writers block was to look at the first random object you see and describe it. Maybe I'll give that a go...
It's shiny and smooth, with a small dip in one side to let the juice flow out. The whole thing is a work of art, but it is underused and-
...
Guess that didn't work. Oh, well. I move my mouse away from the input box on Blogger, (I use Blogger to write all my stuff, then cut and paste it to wherever. I like the format- really simple, with lots of curvy lines. Good for the eyes,) and open a new tab in Google. I try a search for 'Cure for Writers Block', which wields 'about 708,000' results, according to the number displayed below, and as far as I can tell, none of them are useful. I get to wondering about that number they display, saying that's how many results they got. They could probably write any number they wanted in there- not like anyone's going to count. And then they list the time it took Google to find all of it, which seems kinda like bragging to me, don't you think? Like, 'look at me, I'm the best search engine ever! I got hundreds of thousands of results, and I did it in less than half a second! I even used decimals! Oh yeah.'
Now that I think of it, I'll bet you anything that they always round the number of results up and the amount of time down. Like, if they got 111,111 results, they would tell us they got 'about 200,000' results. If I had any less of a life, I would probably stop to count them, just to prove Google wrong.
I wonder if anyone would sue Google if they counted them all, and it turned out to be a lot less. I bet someone would. For some people, 'sue them' is the answer to everything. Last year, in seventh grade, my class set up a mock trial and I had to be a witness. We went to a real court house to debate and everything! The court house wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be- no big wooden platform for the judge, like you see on TV. It was just a big room, with grey carpet and tile walls. There were these weird windows that only showed the outline of things. There was this one squirrel that kept running up and down this tree outside, and this kid named Cameron and I were cracking up. Is it disrespectful to laugh at a squirrel during a trial? I bet it is. Oops.
I never know when to laugh. Like, sometimes, the teacher cracks a joke- a reference to a book, or a song, or something, and no one else gets it. So there I am, in the second-to-last row, laughing to a joke no one else understands, and then the teacher starts laughing too, and the rest of the class is just looking at the both of us like, 'what the heck is going on here?' And then I feel like an idiot, even though I'm kinda doing a smart thing.
And then there are other times, at lunch, when someone says something about a certain reproductive organ doing a certain thing, and I'm sitting there trying to figure out how that's anatomically possible while they're all laughing like that's the funniest thing any human being has ever said.
I guess my sense of humor is a little advanced.
A few days ago, I was wasting time in class, and I was looking up funny science jokes, everything from jokes about atoms to jokes about DNA. This kid next to me, Conner, is looking at my screen and laughing, and I swear, he was totally fake laughing, trying to look smart. I look at him and I'm thinking, no way does he get these references. My parents don't get these references. So I say to him, "Stop fake laughing," and he's like, "I'm not fake laughing," and then I point to a joke on the screen, one about Schrodinger's cat, and I ask him, "What's this joke about, then?" He just kinda looks at it for a while, then he looks back at his screen and goes, "Hey, did you know Urchins are a food? You eat the sex organs," and I'm like, hu? And he starts reading off this totally random website he found.
Conner is weird.
No, not weird. Weird is a compliment, coming from me. He's just dumb.
I sit back and look at my screen. I hadn't realized I'd written this much. I flick open a website I use sometimes called 'wordcounttool.com'. You just cut and paste your work into it's little box, press enter, and it counts the words for you.
Okay, it's at 847 right now. Not great, but not that bad either. As I'm looking back at it, it seems pretty fun to read, if I do say so myself. I wonder what I should call it. How about 'My Ramblings'? Yeah, that works. 'Cuz that's all it is, really. Just me rambling on and on...
So, I just got my mom to read over it for me. She sits down at the computer and starts speed-reading in that way she does. Seriously, this woman is a reading bullet. She's done with the page before I've even finished the first sentence!
Anyway. She's laughing every now and then, which is a good sign. I ask her if I can have a cookie. She grunts, which I take to mean, 'Sure, honey, eat as many as you like.'
We have some pretty good cookies right now. They're pumpkin, with chocolate and butterscotch chips. I helped make them, and it was pretty fun. I've been getting into baking lately.
Huh. I just realized that I have no idea how to end this thing. I just finished reading this book, 'The Misfits', and I thought it was pretty good, until the ending. It was a total happily-ever-after thing, and it really contradicted stuff it had said before. I hope my ending doesn't do that. I bet it won't, 'cuz you kinda need a plot in order to contradict anything, and a plot is not something this post has.
So, I think I'll probably put this up on Teenink, one of my favorite writing websites. I'll post it on my blog, too... Maybe I'll do another one of these sometime... or maybe not- wait and see!
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