The Writer Who Cried “Dry”

Life is just not the same when you can find a cucumber’s face staring up at you from your bathroom sink, now, is it? Hence, I wrote nothing this week accept a raccoon fantasy. Let me explain.

I’ve been tutoring 9-year-old twins this year and included “our” boys in some of the projects. This week we did a parody on the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.

We had:

1. A monkey in a rainforest who was so lonely he pretended to be falling into a volcano and called for help. When he really does fall and his voice grows fainter and fainter, everyone comes running. But all they find are claw marks.
2. A boy by the ocean who saw a story on TV about a shark in the water. He calls “Shark!” and all the villagers run with their harpoons. Twice. When the real shark comes and the villagers finally come again, all they find is an arm.
3. A robot 100 years from now is bored. He claims that a giant robot is attacking him and all his robot friends come running. This happens twice and both times they see that he is fine. Then one day he is so immersed in reading a book that he doesn’t notice the giant robot coming. When the other robots arrive, all they find are a few wires.
4. A shark is lonely because all he sees in the water are miniature fishes swimming. He complains that a giant orca is attacking him. His parents come swimming. Twice. Then they decide he’s just joking when the giant orca really does come. All they find of him are a few fins and bones.

And the raccoon fantasy? Okay fine. I guess if I can’t get a blog written, you are stuck with my sample stories, which I have to confess I might have prepared with more care if I would have thought I would share it with you. I haven’t edited it at all since I read it to the boys, except adding a period I missed. I also (in retrospect) am not sure that it’s a very good reflection on nurses. So if you are a nurse, maybe you should not read it. Anyway. It’s under the photo, so read on at your own risk! 

I hope you read lots of other great blogs that are full of inspiration to make up for this one! 

The Lesson Roger the Raccoon Never Learned

By Katrina Lee

In a broken house next to the city landfill, Roger the Raccoon went to live out his last days. The broken house was called the Raccoon Retirement House. All the old raccoons who could no longer walk through the park looking for rotten sandwiches to eat, came to the Raccoon Retirement house to live their last days. Nurse raccoons and assistant nurse raccoons brought food to the older raccoons. The raccoon nurses helped Roger wash his masked face. They helped him brush the graying fur on his fluffy ringed tail.  They brought him his coffee in the morning, at least if they could find a half-empty cup in a garbage can to dump into his mug, which was a ping pong ball broken in half.

Even though Roger had all these nurses and assistants to help him, he was unbearably bored and lonely. He was so tired of every single day being the same as the day before. He was tired of the moldy bread.  So one day, he decided to pretend that something dreadful was happening.  Perhaps then people would pay attention to him.

“Help!” Roger screamed from his bed of rotten cabbages. “Someone is strangling me! I’m choking, I’m choking!”

All the nurses and nurse’s assistants and cooks and housekeepers came running to Roger’s room.

“It’s so nice to see everyone,” Roger Raccoon said. “I guess I’m not choking. I must have been dreaming.”

And the nurses fluffed Roger’s pillow and laughed and walked away, because at a retirement home you are not supposed to get angry with the old people.

Well, Roger told himself he should not lie again. But a few weeks later, he got so bored, he just couldn’t resist.

“Help!” Roger yelled with all his might. “Something is choking me! My air is leaving!”

Again, all the nurses came running. They smoothed Roger’s pillow and gave him some chocolate.

Well, the next day, Roger was bored again, and so he stood up on his bed and poked around at the privacy curtain. The curtain was an old feed sack that someone had found at the city landfill, and it smelled deliciously of moldy blueberries and fermented cabbage. Roger stuck his nose through a hole in the bag to get a better whiff. Suddenly, his foot slipped on the rotten cabbage pillow, and he fell. The hole in the bag tightened around his neck.

“Help!” Roger shrieked. “I’m choking!”

“Ah,” said the head raccoon nurse. “It’s just Roger having his dreams again. “No need to stop your work, everyone. I will check on him as soon as I finish mixing this medicine.”

“I’m chok—kurg, kurg—”

The raccoon nurse looked up in alarm. She ran to Roger’s room on all fours, her pretty ringed tail bouncing behind her.

But alas, it was too late! And so Roger never got to learn his lesson, that it is never worth lying in order to get attention.