Creative Writing

You know those days where you let your kid stay home from school because he doesn’t feel good and then  you spend the entire morning questioning your decision?  Yes, it’s one of those days.  So, since I am stuck at home with a sickish kid, I thought I would sit down and share some creative writing that I did yesterday.  But first let me tell you why I wrote my little story.

Yesterday morning I was talking with Josh and the neighbor boy about writing stories in a way that makes the reader experience all the senses.  (Our neighbor is in middle school and had missed his bus, so he came and hung out with us to catch the later, primary school, bus.)  He was telling Josh about a report he is doing on the Vikings and was actually helping me to convince Josh that three and four word sentences in a story (“I went to the park.  It was fun.) are not the best way to catch the readers attention.  I have to say, it was nice to have an ally in this kid.  So, as an example, Josh naturally starting talking about puke.  What almost 10 year old boy wouldn’t want to talk about puke?  As an attempt to help him understand, and maybe look a little bit cool, I gave him a very descriptive sentence about puke.  It went something like this: “The gray, chunky puke spewed from my mouth.”  All of the kids went silent and stared at me with their mouths hanging open and, for one second, I was cool.  Until Josh said, “MoOom!” 

Later, while I was in the shower where I do my best thinking, I continued to think about the gray, chunky puke.  More and more adjectives, verbs and metaphors came to my mind and before I knew it, I was typing out a story on my phone.  As I typed the story, it took me back to the time that Josh got sick in Shad’s truck.  If you want to see Shad freak out, puke in his truck!  Seriously.  So this story that I wrote is actually based on a true, disgusting story, told in the voice of Josh.  Here you go:

The grayish pink, chunky vomit spewed from my mouth covering the back of the seat in front of me.  The pungent contents of my stomach slowly slid down the seat back and dropped onto the tan carpet that covers the floor in the cab of my dad’s truck, like hot lava slowly flowing down a mountain side.  My stomach was churning and cramping causing me to double over from the pain.  After one last heave, it appeared that my body was done emptying itself of the contents of my stomach.  I wiped the tears from my eyes then sat back in my seat to admire the giant mess that my gastric contents had made.  Slowly, I looked up at my dad silently staring at the mess with tears rolling down his cheeks, and all I could think was: I am NEVER eating at that pizza place again!

I read this story to the kids last night.  They were laughing and thoroughly grossed out at the same time.  Hannah went so far as to grab the barf bowl out of the drawer in a dramatic attempt to show me just how grossed out she was.  Josh was red in the face and cracking up.  Shad had his back to me as I read the story until I got to the part about him crying, then he turned around with a grin on his face.  As a mom, I have learned that I need to keep my kids guessing.  It may be showing them the video of the lunch lady talking about extra sloppy sloppy joes (they thought that was so dumb!) or rapping the entire theme song of The Fresh Prince to them (can you say blank stares?) or writing them a disgusting story about puke.  Someday they will remember that I was maybe a little cool at one point in their childhood.

The End.