"Beginnings," My First Post in 2022
As the year comes to an end there are thoughts and hopes of new beginnings. . .
I have a google document titled, "Beginnings." It's filled with story fragments, and beyond that, the title is pretty self-explanatory. Any story that I started and only have a paragraph or two written gets popped in there, some are longer than others but none are more than a page, and when I get the desire to finish it and pull it out, I can do so. The titles are often the characters' names or something to keep them separate. I thought it apropos that, at the beginning of the year, I would share a couple of fictional characters' beginnings that have been sitting in that document for far too long.
#1, Taxi Driver, Cleopatra (based off the song, "Cleopatra," by the Lumineers)
The girl whose eyeliner ran over her face dash around the corner. She hadn’t talked much and now she was gone, she watched her messy hair until someone else was knocking on the window. She snapped out of the strange spell she was in and they were off on a longer ride this time.
“Do you wanna hear a joke?”
“Is that what you ask everyone?”
She ignored him and continued on.
“I actually don’t like to drive," she said and he scoffed and shook his head as he took his feet off the dash, even brushing off a bit of dirt.
“Alright then. What in the world, why do you do this?” he said plainly.
“I get distracted a lot. It makes my job harder, but I've never caused an accident,” she shrugged while he leaned back in his seat. Chuckling, she brushed a gray hair behind her ear and squinted forward.
“Why do you drive a taxi?” he said slowly.
“I like the people, sometimes, and that’s enough.” She smirked and leaned further forward.
#2, Squirrel story (a story from the perspective of a squirrel)
In a moment’s pause, I watch the world span out below me. I twitch and spin in a circle before settling down even more atop the roof. It’s a dreary winter day, snow hasn’t yet begun to fall, but the world looks about like this before it does. Clouds cover the entire sky and it makes three in the afternoon look like the sun is about to set.
#3, Ramona Flowers
A boy in funny yellow pants stands and reaches his hand out. Never has someone my age asked to shake my hand but I oblige him anyways, thinking we're already starting out on a strange foot.
“Can I sit here?” I ask and don’t even start to answer the question he asked a moment ago. ‘How are you,’ isn’t a legitimate question anyways. It’s like saying ‘hello‘ and ‘you’re welcome.’
The boy nods and we sit down.
“So, what’s your name, stranger?” He crams a chicken nugget in his mouth.
“It’s Ramona,”
“Ramona. . ."
“Ramona Flowers,” I answer, feeling like the interaction was getting stranger each time he opened his mouth or even moved.
“Really? So are you a ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’ fanatic?” He moved on and started eating the little pile of tater tots on his tray.
“No, but my parents are. They didn’t change my last name or anything, that was just a coincidence.”
The boy nodded with his mouth still full and started shoveling the rest of his food into his mouth and finishing his plate almost before I started.
#4, Nia and Grandma
Living a long life makes you realize something. Something about people. That everyone is somehow different, so very different. It is wonderful to see those people and to get to know even a few of them. At the same time, the worst thing about living a long life is watching people see fault in that, see fault in their uniqueness, and in themselves, and dying thinking that they don’t matter because there are billions like them. Billions.
That’s what my grandmother likes to say. Well, maybe not exactly that, I changed some words. One might see fault in that statement. I do. It makes it seem like everyone is different but different and wonderful. There’s too much bad in this world for me to agree. There are people that my grandmother didn’t like and people that didn’t like her, but she is an optimist and won’t change her opinion on that. Those are her words. She believes everyone has some wonderment in them.
I am not an optimist like my Grandma.
“Nia!”
“Gran,” I answer with half as much enthusiasm as I bend in half to give her a hug. “How are you? How’s the food in this place, better than you were expecting?”
“Eh,” she shrugs, “at least there’s a sort of variety,” I was going to proceed, ask what she had been eating and how the staff treat her but stop when she looks me up and down like she is assessing me all over again.
“I think you grew taller,” she ends up saying. I want to roll my eyes.
“Really,” I say instead, “I don’t know how that is possible, I stopped growing two years ago." She looks me up and down again.
“Yes, you certainly did,” she decides. You probably just shrunk, I think but don’t say out loud, instead I just laugh. I know I am tall, taller than most guys I know even, I reached 6’2” when I was sixteen but it hasn’t changed for two years.
Thank you for reading!
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