Ode to My Hamster (615 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1.33 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Cymak (View user info) at 2004-08-19 08:29:29 EDT
Two hours before my train wreck of a Creative Writing class on May 24th, 2004, I had yet to complete an "original fiction piece" to be turned in right as class began. This class was somewhere in between castration and disembowelment in terms of sheer pain, and to make matters worse, the teacher was highly sympathetic to cookie-cutter writing. It was once said that you could guarantee a 4.0 in this class if you did any of the following:
• Talked about your grandfather dying (but refer to him only as "my grandpa").
• Wrote a murder/mystery/romance about a woman caught in an inescapable situation that was a direct result of a male-dominated society (she liked feminists).
• Copied an episode of CSI or Law and Order down on paper, changed a few names, and threw in a surprise/twist ending usually involving one of the investigators being responsible for the crime. Whoopee.
This is the class that said loudly and clearly: if you want to write, you can do it without an English degree. And I wasn't even an English major.
So with two hours remaining, I wrote this:
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Private Rick Templeton slogged through the muddy fields of rice through the jungle underbrush of South Vietnam in late 1969. To his knowledge, the country could have been Cambodia or Laos. In a time when military power went unchecked and generals took more liberties with their troops than ever before, borders were crossed without a care, governments and treaties were viewed as absentee landlords, and above all else, the only law out here was the law of the commander.
But Rick could not bring himself to focus on that now. There was Charlie to be sought, and a platoon of not-to-willing soldiers to seek it.
Gripping his M-16 rifle high over his head to keep it away from the water, Rick continued his march, dragging his weary body out of the marsh and onto a dusty road long enough to spot a small man in a white lab coat, tending to a table of Erlenmeyer flasks and test tubes.
"What the hell?" asked Nelson in his flat, Texan drawl. "This is Hill 49X. Not none o' that chemical shite." He clicked his fingers once, and twenty American-made rifles rose to target the elderly man working with chemicals. Instead of cowering in fear, he merely smiled at the gathered company.
"Hey, wait!" Rick cried from the back of the formation. "That's my high school chemistry teacher. Mr. Jennings!"
"That's right, Rick," the older man said with a nod before going back to his titration. "I've been meaning to confront you about your last test. You see, I know you cheated, but you've just been a devil to track down."
"I...uh...I...um...uh..."
"Rick?" asked the voice of one of his comrades.
"Yes?"
Thompson scratched his head absently, smearing dirt into his hair from his muddy hands. "If he's your chemistry teacher, then shouldn't this not happen until the early years of the next millennium?"
"Oh, look," said Nelson, gazing off into a field of rice paddies. "There's Mr. Peanut."
Sure enough, the Planters mascot was doing high-kicks some two miles off, dancing for a gathered squad of VietCong guerillas.
"Wait, is this the..." Rick's voice trailed off. "Oh, shit. Not again."
WHAP.
"Agh, motherfucker!" screamed Rick at the top of his lungs, arms flailing at his unseen assailant and hitting nothing but air.
"Wake up, dude, wake up!"
"What? Oh, Jim, it's you," Rick stammered.
"Yeah, dude. You've been napping at the keyboard again." Rick stared up at the voice; it was his roommate, Jim, shaking him at the computer station where he had gone to sleep for the last three hours. The burning numbers on the nearby clock read six-thirty in the AM.
Rick stroked his right cheek, only to find he had another bad case of keyboard face. At the very least, story or no story, he needed to stop falling asleep on rough surfaces.
"You look out of it," Jim stated. "Need some help?"
He stabbed an accusing finger at the computer screen. "Yeah, I need a lot of help. I have a fiction story due in two and a half hours, and my brain feels like milk of magnesium. Or motor oil. Actually, it's a little bit of both."
"Well," Jim offered helpfully, "what have you written so far?"
Rick clicked away with his cursor, running his eyes over the Microsoft Word document opened and unsaved before him. "Some amusing dialogue that I'd like to fit in somewhere, a Vietnam war story, a dream about me winning the Kentucky Derby because I'm being chased by vicious lawn gnomes, a mafia/car chase/bank heist thriller, a kung fu fight as described by an elderly man with bowel cancer, a brief soliloquy for my beloved but deceased hamster Randy..."
"You never had a hamster," Jim interjected.
"I know. Anyway...my thoughts on the last ten years of Senatorial legislation regarding traffic laws, a philosophical analysis of the works of St. Thomas Aquins and Blaise Pascal titled, 'Where Does God Dig Up These Morons?' and..." he paused, clicking the slider down the many pages of text, "...about twenty-six pages of the letter 'h' from when I fell asleep on the keyboard."
"Sounds rough," Jim surmised. "Try the hamster soliloquy. That sounds like a real winner."
Rick felt the distinct urge to hurt his roommate. "You're serious."
"The kids'll like it. They'll buy it more than any of those other stories, anyway. Besides, stories of tragic death are a guaranteed positive, both in your class and on the market."
Rick smacked his forehead. "I don't care if they buy it...I'm not selling anything! I don't care about the market value of literature—I just want to make something new before formula thoroughly rapes the language."
"Oh," Jim said, pausing. "Eh, try the hamster thing. The bottom line is: if you ever want to make money with this stuff, write the same story everyone else has read before and change all of the names." Jim strapped on his sports watch and started jogging in place, making his way towards the door for his morning run.
"Now if you'll excuse me," he began.
"Have you ever noticed that runners only smile once they've stopped running?" Rick called out after his roommate as he trotted away.
Barely discernible against the humming of his computer, he heard James yell, "I heard that!"
"Well," Rick said aloud, "here goes."
* * *
Oh, Randy! How I miss the way you packed sunflower seeds into your expansive cheeks! Whiskers twitching in merriment; an inquisitive nose always finding the quickest way to feed trough! How tragic that such a bright young life should be torn fro the world before its prime. A pox on Mr. Whiskers, the tabby cat with a hankering for the flesh of furry woodland creatures. May his sorry feline ass rot in the depths of Hell.
Goodbye, Randy. Keep strong, and remember that in Heaven, you never tire on the hamster wheel, and the sawdust always has the odor and freshness of a recently-changed litter. Until we meet again, beloved hamster, peace be with you!
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This piece of work landed me in an "emergency conference" to discuss my grade, whereupon the teacher proceeded to rant at me for accusing her of being sympathetic to formula fiction (and I had mentioned this before). She destroyed my grade in the class, and even wielded the paper to the other students as an example of "How Not to Write Fiction." Oh, and I lost my 4.0 (I never expected to retain it, as it was only freshman year, but hey, this is Creative Writing for Christ sake).
Sigh. Somehow, I always knew this writing thing wasn't for me.
User Reviews
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-08-20 07:16:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by 1Point21Gigawatts (user info) at 2004-08-19 10:47:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very good. Well written.
Submitted by vodka7tall (user info) at 2004-08-19 10:35:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It's amazing she was able to discern such cleverly disguised irony.
Submitted by Ainkara (user info) at 2004-08-19 09:34:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Woo
Submitted by Random Joe at 2004-08-19 09:13:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 cuz hampsters are cool
Submitted by DeathJester (user info) at 2004-08-19 09:10:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Go burn the teachers house down and submit the method in your next piece.
Submitted by TomcatJess (user info) at 2004-08-19 08:56:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment