TELL ME A STORY...

by under74 49 Replies latest jw friends

under74

GOOD STORY fairchild! Thank you!!

Waldo sounds like an ex-jw....poor guy.
fairchild

Waldo sounds like an ex-jw....poor guy.

Haha, hmm, I never specified what Waldo did. I use the name Waldo quite often in my writings. I used to have a skunk whom I named Waldo, but he died last year, got hit by my neighbor's car. He denied it, but his car smelled like skunk as if there was no tomorrow.
under74

I use the name Waldo quite often in my writings. I used to have a skunk whom I named Waldo, but he died last year, got hit by my neighbor's car. He denied it, but his car smelled like skunk as if there was no tomorrow.

Another good story....or tid bit. I've never known anyone who's kept a skunk as a pet....
fairchild

I've never known anyone who's kept a skunk as a pet....
Well, I didn't say I was normal. Some animal was eating my garden, so I set a life trap, in order to catch it. The next day, a skunk had been unfortunate enough to get caught in the trap. Now, how do you take a skunk out of a life trap without getting sprayed? It's not easy. I made a 'spoon' on a long stick and started feeding him catfood. He loved it. After a few hours I was able to come very close to the trap. He knew that I was bringing food and he was no longer afraid. Once I got him out of the trap, he spontaneously followed me home. True story! My cat loved him and they liked to play together, so him moving in with us seemed just like a normal thing to do. He was an albino, and probably shunned by his family because of that. This is what my guess would be, because I have tamed skunks before, and it usually takes a lot longer than a day! In the end, I had grown quite attached to him.
AlmostAtheist

Very enjoyable, Faichild! I loved it!
U74 - Here's another chunk, a particular favorite of mine, but of no one else's, I'm afraid. They tend to ramble on a bit, in an attempt to sound like a Douglas Adams book. Unfortunately, I carry it too far sometimes. I'll have to clean them up if I ever get around to actually finishing it.
(Andrea is trapped in a plot against a person [Brian] in her company [FinMan Consulting]. If she doesn't go along, the axe will fall on her. Prison time, the whole bit. As it is, the guy she's implicating will take the fall. She's very upset about it and has just come from a meeting with the mastermind of the plot, Cleigton Shayne [a female], the owner of the company.)
Andrea dashed into her house, shut the door, and leaned back against it. Her heart was beginning to pound in a way that alarmed her. She had become almost accustomed to the monumental guilt that woke her each morning, haunted her days, and sat on her uncomfortably when she tried to sleep. But this was different. What happened? Perhaps it was Cleigton?s flippant conversation about Brian. She didn?t have any great fondness for Brian, he was just a workmate. But she certainly didn?t harbor any malice toward him, either. She couldn?t decide if it was her own internal grappling with the morality of what she and Cleigton were doing to Brian that was causing her heart (and now her head, she noticed) to pound so, or if it was Cleigton?s total lack of such grappling. Honestly, she felt it just might be the latter. It was bad enough to be doing something terrible. Yes, that was itself ego-destroying enough. But to be doing it with someone that thinks scruples are probably a seafood she?d rather not try, well, that was just too much. She needed to wake herself up, to jar some clear thoughts back to the front of her mind where she could get a good look at them. She gathered herself up off the door and started off for her bathroom.
In mid-step, though, she was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, her eyelids became heavy, and just as one?s body begins to demand a breath after several seconds of breath-holding, so Andrea?s body was becoming insistent on a nap. ?It?s barely the afternoo-oo-oo-oo,? she tried to say to herself, but an uncontrollable yawn took over before she could finish. And as surely as the body demanding breath eventually gets it, Andrea knew that she would be falling asleep very soon. Preferring to do so on her bed, rather than standing in her hallway, she decided to simply obey herself and give in. Cleigton ? FinMan, the whole world, if it came to it ? would simply have to understand.
She pulled her tired head up to look down the hall in the direction of her bedroom, but her bedroom had apparently decided to abandon her. This seemed to her to be an extraordinarily wrong thing for a bedroom ? or any room, really ? to choose to do. She would be willing perhaps to accept it, though, if it weren?t for the very ornate little decorative table sitting about where her bedroom door would have been had it not taken its sojourn. Her tired mind wondered briefly how she would get into her bedroom upon its return, with the little table in the way. It was a cute table, she admitted to herself, the kind of thing she would be likely to buy for herself. Only she hadn?t. Nor had she placed the doily on it, nor the potted plant on the doily. It did seem like just the sort of thing she?d do, placing a plant that would certainly drop potting soil and leafage on a pretty table and the nice, white doily. Then she?d spend the next six months cleaning it and cleaning it. On balance, she realized that she wouldn?t have done it. Yet, clearly, it had been done. Done, in fact, again, about 10 yards farther down the hall. Odd, since her house was a relatively small one, and she didn?t recall having a hall thirty feet long. Sixty. More. The dim hall lights, dotted into the ceiling every ten or fifteen feet, seemed to go on into the distance until she couldn?t discern one light from another. Odd.
A door was evident at the opposite end of the hall. Opposite, that is, in direction only. It had simply not been determined that the other direction contained an ?end?. Not letting that particular odd thing distract her, Andrea opted to walk toward the door. A few questions were jumping and waving their arms at her ? ?Where am I??, ?What is all this??, and the other questions of this ilk that people typically ask themselves when faced with their first infinitely outstretched hallway ? but she, wisely, decided to shelve all such questioning for fear of the panic that would likely ensue were she to set about determining the answers to any of them. Action, not answers. Walking was the thing to do and so she did. She passed table after table, but the door simply would not allow her to approach. While she could never quite catch it in the act, it seemed as if the door was receding from her at slightly faster than she was walking toward it. If she stopped walking and only stared at it, it certainly seemed stationary enough. But if she walked toward it, it seemed to shyly back away from her, becoming more and more distant. Her attempt to outrun it proved not only fruitless, but frightening, as the door responded by dashing away so far that she was hardly able to pick it out.
Confused and becoming scared, she leaned against the rather nice wallpaper and slumped down the wall, scratching a nasty gash in it with her FinMan ID badge. For some reason, the tear upset her. A mix of having damaged something nice, thinking that in some fashion it was probably hers, and wondering if perhaps it wasn?t and she was now going to have the real owner angry with her. Crying didn?t seem to be a likely source of assistance, but she tried it anyway. Through light sobs, she looked first toward infinity, then toward the door. Strong claustrophobic feelings were insisting they be allowed to make her feel worse than she already did, but she felt it was best to deny their request at the moment.
The crying spell actually did seem to have helped a bit. She was still trapped in a windowless hallway with apparently only one door that was faster than she was, but she was beginning to see that she was in some sort of control. When she moved, the door moved. When she stopped, so did it. Perhaps it wasn?t moving away from her, but was reacting to her movement. An experiment she saw on TV as a child came to mind. There was a little girl (ugly, shamefully ugly, she?d even thought so at the time) holding a balloon. The balloon was full of helium, and both it and she were in a van. The point of the experiment was very fun and interesting, despite the narrator?s dull monotone voice and the unattractiveness of the girl, and was this: When the van would turn right, everything in the van would tend to move left. Books would slide, balls would roll, ugly little girls would lean, all left. But the balloon would instead sway to the RIGHT. When the van stopped, everything tended to slide or lean forward, save for the balloon, which floated toward the back. The point was made which she didn?t understand at the time and still hadn?t fully gotten her head around that the same thing that made the helium balloon float also made it react the opposite of everything else. The same heavy air that sank under the balloon and pushed it up, she tried to reason to herself now, must have sloshed to the left side of van and forced the balloon to the right.
The point to all this, and she reassured herself that there was in fact a point, was that the balloon wasn?t stubbornly bucking the trend, it wasn?t rebelling against the natural system, it wasn?t doing anything at all of its own accord. It was simply obeying the laws of physics. She hadn?t needed to understand how it worked to try the same experiment herself as a child. It worked as it should have, even though she really didn?t grasp why at the time.
Perhaps the door, she repeated to herself, was only reacting to her movement. Since it seemed to get farther away when she approached it, she reasoned, it may just get closer if she were to walk in the opposite direction. Of course, if she was wrong, and the door always moved away from her no matter which direction she moved, then it would very soon be completely out of her sight. This reasoning was quickly dismissed, though, because whether she could see the door or not, she couldn?t actually go through it and so letting it slip off into nothingness would only be as bad as what she had now, no worse. It was decided. She would walk away from the door.
Further, she decided to actually ignore the door. She strolled down the hallway, her footsteps curiously failing to echo, paying more than the necessary attention to details like the intricate design of the legs of the tables, the well-kept appearance of the plants, the cleanliness of the doilies. Someone kept them all well dusted, well watered, and probably dry-cleaned from the stiff feel of them. All the while, for thirty, and sixty, and a hundred feet, she fully failed to even take a passing glance in the direction of the door. When she felt that surely the door must now be either quite close or gone altogether, she stopped, and slowly turned her head around, carefully keeping her body aimed toward the void. She was surprised to find that the door was only a light stone?s throw away. Or rather, a heavy stone?s throw. Certainly close, without getting into all that. It was working! She continued walking away from the door, and glancing back to see it approaching her.
When it was within a few feet, she whirled around and grasped the doorknob. Or more correctly, she grasped at the doorknob, for the doorknob ? being as it was, attached to the door ? quickly leaped away from her, carried on the door that obeyed the general rule of ?going the direction Andrea?s going.? This was not as disappointing as it might seem, almost expected. Andrea half felt that it would dash away from her, but she was becoming more confident. Walking away will bring it back, she knew, so why worry?
So she walked again. Just as she started to feel that the door was probably getting close, and as she was preparing herself to glance back at it, the doorknob caught her painfully just above her left kidney. The shock and pain and force of this knocked her down, and she sprawled helplessly forward. The door, mindlessly responding to her movement, also shot forward in its characteristic fashion, that is, slightly faster than she did. The net result was that it shoved her by her feet forward, sliding her on the hardwood floor of the hallway that she was beginning to feel she must accept was not hers.
Since she was now moving away from the door, the door obligingly moved in that same direction, effectively propelling her further down the hallway. As her speed increased, thus increasing the speed of the door, thereby increasing her own speed, and so on, her level of alarm increased with it. Cute tables with potted plants on doilies were now shooting past her such that they appeared as simply an antique blur. When it occurred to her to wonder how they were getting past the door, she carefully positioned her highly accelerated head to firstly not allow any of her flesh to contact the speeding floor and secondly get a look at what must be a spectacular (though oddly silent) crash of furniture and flora. What she saw instead was that the tables didn?t actually seem to ever get past her, or rather they seemed to cease to exist when she looked toward the door. Phrases like ?Schroeder?s cat? and ?entwined participles? seemed to come unbidden to mind, but she assumed she was remembering them wrong and that they likely didn?t apply and so didn?t pursue it any further. Particularly, did she ignore all things that were not the fact that the door actually seemed to recede a bit from her when she looked at it. Or perhaps it was the act of positioning herself to look at it that caused the slight deceleration. In any event, she saw that she had a potential chance to slow herself and she took it. In a quick snapping action, she tucked her legs, spun on her bottom, and met the door with her back. It did have the intended effect, her net motion toward the door had caused the door to retreat from her a bit. However, her own inertia kept her sliding along the hardwood floor, looking now like a child sliding down hardened snow in plastic snow pants. Her continued motion away from the door again drew the door to her and soon it impacted with her back, delivering an unpleasant glancing blow to the left of her head with the doorknob.
The doorknob! And the frame clearly revealed that the door opened away from her! The excitement she felt at this realization lasted as long as it took her to reach back, pat around to locate the doorknob, and turn it.
Or try to.
It was, of course, locked.
She yelped like a teenager informed of the latest unfairness being visited upon her by her out-of-touch-with-today?s-youth parents. In utter frustration at the absurdity and stupidity of this whole situation, she delivered an open-handed smack to the doorknob. The smack was painful, but focusing. And it seemed to tell her something. There was some information she was meant to have received about the door, or the knob, and she could feel some part of her trying to nail down just what it was. She would have preferred to have her whole mind dedicated to this, but there was a terror beginning to rise in her, and she felt she should at least leave some resources available to handle that.
The terrible stupidity of this situation was by degrees establishing itself in her mind. Something was wrong. This seemed obvious to her, being as she was at the moment hurtling down an infinitely long hallway at ever increasing speeds, tables and plants and doilies disappearing like mad around her. ?Wrong? seemed a correct, if pale, description. But something was differently wrong. There was a wrongness that just slightly eluded her, as if it would dart into a bush every time she glanced its way.
Two things suddenly crashed into her consciousness. One was the information her hand was trying to convey to her, which we will come to in a moment. It was very exciting news and she was, it followed, very excited to have it brought to her attention. The other was more terrible, would reasonably be deemed ?bad news?, and so we will consider it first. It was that the door ? heretofore thought to be accelerating her down an infinite hallway ? was now seen to be in fact propelling her down a very, very long hallway. A long hallway that despite its impressive length did have an end. An abrupt, wall-shaped end that she was startlingly quickly approaching. Unhelpfully, the door was still accelerating in response to her own velocity, which increased her speed, and so on. She could imagine that just as the tables, plants, and doilies were failing to smash into the door, she may not actually smash into the wall. But it seemed a poor bit of planning to count on that, so she decided instead to act on the information that she had now divined from her slap at the doorknob which was this: She was on the locking-side of the door. She had felt the locking switch in the end of the doorknob when it poked her in the palm of the hand.
Fighting her nearly overwhelming panic, she tried to place her hand on the doorknob again, this time feeling for the lock switch. She did locate it, it did turn, freeing the doorknob which twisted easily in her hand. Before she tumbled backwards through the door which seemed now to hurtle past her at what she could only hope was something short of ?break neck speed?, she caught a glimpse of the wall, mere yards away and closing.
The only sound generated by her spill through the door and the impact of the door with the wall was a simple thud, as her head touched the hardwood floor outside the doorway. No other sound had been made during the whole ordeal, she realized. Not even a wind sound, or a sliding sound of the fabric of her clothing racing along the hallway floor. The oddness of this, now that she had a non-life-or-death moment to consider it, joined the oddness of the whole event, and seemed collectively to demand to know what on earth just happened.
As is usually the case when the brain is ?caught? in this way, with various components of its own psyche beginning to look behind curtains and demand to see the hand it is holding behind its back, it gave up and let Andrea wake back up. She found herself lying in her own hallway, quite sweaty, quite out of breath, and lying on her side, with a pain in her head that told her it had recently been in contact with the floor. Looking around, she realized that she had actually fallen asleep there in her own hallway, slumped to the floor, and eventually slipped to one side, thumping (or, she thought on reflection, ?thudding?) her head.
Some dreams mean nothing. There are those dreams that are meant to tell us something, and others that are meant to remind us what we should not eat just prior to retiring for the night. There are times when a cigar represents your own feelings of impotence in an increasingly complicated and out of control world, and other times when it is simply a cough and cancer-inducing tube of dried tobacco.
This dream meant something, Andrea was sure. Moreover, she was sure she knew what it meant.
Heavy-hearted, but determined, she ignored her obvious exhaustion and dashed back out, blinking, into the daylight.
Dave
joannadandy

And they lived happily ever after

Last night I was out late. I went to Perkins for hot
chocolate. It was cold and I couldn't sleep. I had just
been in a fight with my parents.
The couple in the booth behind me were talking. I wasn't
trying to listen, I was trying to read my book, but my ears
couldn't help themselves.
"I don't want to be a statistic" was all she muttered.
I could see their reflection in the window before me.
They looked young. My age if maybe a couple years older or
younger. I couldn't see his face, but her face was sad and
flicking between long stares at him and even longer stares
into the carpet on the floor.
"Well what do you want" he said after a long pause.
"I want you to stop being condesending. You're so damn
cynical."
I am a very cynical person myself. I pride myself on
sarcasm. She was calling my character into question by
accusing his own. I wanted to leap from my booth and
say, "what's wrong with that? Why is cynical bad? Being
fucking Betty Crocker and hoping rainbows continually shoot
out your ass isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Instead I slunk lower in my booth. Ashamed of myself for
listening in on what was obviously a private conversation.
I went back to my book. I read the same paragraph four
times. Each time it made less sense than it did the time
before.
Is this marriage?
Her voice was without rage. She spat a few words at
him, but she was not hysterical. I pictured myself in the
same situation rocking back and forth and sucking my thumb,
but she seemed to be handling it all with a calm resolve. I
admired, envied, and pittied her all at once.
His voice was deep but soft. Inaudible most of the time.
I could just hear a deep rumbling behind me when he did
talk. He ordered cheesecake and was silent most of the time.
"What? Are you just going to sit there? You know we
could have stayed at home and I could have stared at you
there" Aside from the explosive "what", again her voice was
icy and withdrawn.
Is this the tone of failure?
"I dunno what you want"
"You're not the man I fell in love with. Or rather the
boy who used to sit across from me."
This struck me as a bit dramatic. This woman was
obviously near my age and yet I constantly refer to myself
as a girl. Perhaps he was still a boy. Peter Pan? Perhaps
she wanted him to grow up.
"I thought I would marry a man I would have deep
conversations with...I thought I would be with someone who
could think up romantic get-aways on his own"
These words hit my eardrums and fell into my lap. That's
what I have always envisioned. The fairytale soulmate of
hollywood and hallmark invention. He knows what your
thinking, you stay up late into the evening talking about
the meaning of life, and you have wrestling matches teamed
with cuddle sessions in the mountain top getaway he
surprised you with at work by sending you flowers and a
note. Perhaps she and I are the ones who need to grow up?
Does this mean "I do" doesn't translate into "and they
lived happily ever after"?
"You hated the time we went camping. I was embarassed. I
mean you say you're not a girl who needs much, but you
obviously can't rough it. I had to listen to you whine all
weekend about how gross it was"
Their blue black silouhettes in the window glass sat
motionless. She refused to meet his stare.
"We could take the bikes...hit the state parks. We could
just take off. Friday, saturday, sunday, monday. It'd be
fun."
"I can't take that much time off" She said as an
exasperated moan.
"We'll leave friday night and come home sunday night
then"
"You don't get it..."
"...No I don't" He didn't say it with anger. There was
no biting displeasure. There was no hurt in his voice, nor
any passion. It was just stated as a matter of fact.
Apparantly neither of them got each other.
Does anyone get anybody?
Maybe this is what you get when you marry a beautiful
girl. She has been treated like a princess all her life and
expects her husband to become Ken. She wants to be wisked
off in a pink convertible to a stable by sea so they can
ride their horses Nightshade, and Dreamwalker on the
moonlit beach.
Maybe this is what you get when your a good looking guy
and your brain just isn't wired into that hollywood romance.
I've made up my mind. It's better to marry the ugly.
Ugly girls have never had romance and don't expect it. Ugly
guys have never had an opportunity to be in love and go all
out to flex their romantic muscle. Ugly people cling to
whatever whisp of affection wafts past them.
I always thought I would be happy if I could just be in
a stable relationship. I could show someone how big my
heart is, and life would be rainbows and bubblegum. I
always thought if I could just get married I would be
happy. To have someone by my side in sickness and in
health. It doesn't work that way though.
The waitress brought me my change. I slipped my recipt
into my book as a bookmark. That same paragraph still not
comprehended. Much more of my life was incomprehensible as
well.
I wrote this one a while ago...it was the only thing to post on such short notice, but if anyone liked it I can compose something else tonight.
frenchbabyface

... ok ... true story (not meant to be funny)
even forget to tell to Six
When I was in Texas on Six's bike having a ride in town ... to have fun really playing with the bike I've stoped on a big Parking lot there was not a lot of cars there at all ... I saw a car on the lot which was driving quiet slowing (really not as usual) that catch my attention cause before to see it I've heard a big noise like a little crash ...
So this car was trying to park next to apparently another car now and kicked this one too kind of hard (as if it was impossible to park in knowing that there was lots of places available without any car around ... ... So I've though it's a kid having fun or what ??? ... ) ...
So I'm looking in a way to make sure the one who's in the car can see I do WATCH and wonder if I would have to be a witness or something in case of a big crash ... so the car went slowly backward - forward / backward forward ... knocked the same care again ... forward / backward forward again and then went very slowly somewhere where there was no car parked and stopped ... and ... a very very very old woman came out of it, acting like nothing happen, arranging her very hairbrushed white hair, walking very very very slow too ... to get into a fast-food
I thought it's time for anyone to take this car and her licence out of her hand ... Geeeeeeeeeez she's dangerous !!!
xjw_b12

Geez Dave I'm going to have to take a speed reading course to keep up with you. Maybe I'll wait for the ppaerback release
This short story is my contibution from the "What would a JW romance novel be like?" started by minimus a couple of years ago.
Of course I plagerized it from the Onion, and edited to fit the JW story line.
under74

Fairchild- Thanks for sharing the story about your skunk. Man, I wish I wasn't as wimpish as you.

Dave- That's another good story. I loved the bit about the baloon and the ugly girl in the van. PERFECT.

FBF- What can I say. You're funny.

Xjw- thanks for another...

joannadandy- That kicked ass! If you got more to post please do...even if it's not this thread.
Perkins...geez, I remember Perkins the last one in Seattle got shut down ages ago. Do you still got them in your area?
poppers

The bars had just closed...I was standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change. It was a foggy night in the city, the streets were empty and it was late...She appeared outta nowhere and started talking to me as though we were already in the middle of a conversation. I don't think I'd ever seen her before, but the more I listened to her the more I realized there was something about her that I recognized.

Then it hit me...like when you step on a rake and the handle thwaps you right between the eyes! Huh, I'd known her before alright, only in another place a long time ago. Suddenly she was as familiar to me as an old couch, but she looked like a chaise lounge to me. She was the kinda woman who could lie naked on a beach in Tahiti but all you'd be lookin' at was the shape of her fawn eyes as she dropped her lids over them. She didn't take my breath away, she put it back...I realized I hadn't been breathing right for a long time.

My only thought was she's so beautiful that it scares me. The funny thing is, is the more I listened to her the more I remembered...little pictures would drift into my mind...

There was the time long long ago on our own planet when we went floating into the wind pool, just the two of us...looking up at the red moons through the rain.

And the time we stood in the white cloud tower, our robes blowing in the storm, and we promised to love each other forever and ever...

I felt her hand on my arm and she said, "Where did you go?" Suddenly I remembered that horrendous battle on Andares when they carried me away on my shield and she was crying. We took off as fast as we could after that...we had to get away from those electric guns. We kept on goin' and travelled to San Bartan on the desert planet and hid out, we took all our stuff. For several years we traded stolen water for gold. It was the kind of life that had an edge to it, but...I got tired of killin' informers.

Then I got into some real trouble on Sayka 5...I strangled the king. They locked me up for the night, and I lost my head in the village square in the morning...we kinda lost touch after that. Although, I thought I saw her planet, Chella, once several years later, in one of those air-tight rooms where they show pictures, but by the time I got there she was gone.

And then during the years and years I was racing in space, I...well, I guess I just forgot about her, although she'd always been a mystery to me. I was so busy travelling from galaxy to galaxy
I had no time for anything else.

And then, finally, I came to this planet a few years ago, and if anyone had asked I woulda said I didn't know her, but I'd like to - I woulda been tellin' the truth.

But, here she was now, standing in front of me, and I remembered our promise. I put my hands on either side of her face and said, "Oh, I missed you girl...it was too long a time to be away. But, here we are, again...the traffic light has turned green...shall we, shall we cross over to the other side?"

She gave me a kiss and said, "Yeah...if we do it together." And we did.

////////////////////

This was written by the actor Geoffrey Lewis and performed by his storytelling group called "Celestial Navigations". I have told this story many times in school, with slight modification...the kids always enjoy it.

TELL ME A STORY...

And they lived happily ever after

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