Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Early Writer

In case you are curious how a writer begins their long journey of words, I remember writing as a child. My sister and I often teamed up to write stories and I thought I might share some of them in my blog. When we were in middle and high school we became entranced with a girl whose mother was hopelessly inflexible and old-fashioned. Her two girls became reflections of their mother's taste. This sparked in us our first stories about Trudy Jean Cox. Believe it or not, the Trudy Jean stories (circa 1964-65) although misplaced, have been memorized by my sister with her Kodak-brain. So I present to you the early musings of a writer. Actually a writer team.
The Name of this story was Ankle Sox
Trudy Jean Cox stared distastefully into the mirror. Where, out of all the shops, boutiques and department stores in Holloway Park alone, had her mother managed to dig up this rag?
(Her photographic memory fades here. "Oops, I can't remember what the rag looked like. Did it have puffed sleeves and a gathered skirt? I seem to recall that it was a dingy brown."
Just picture Cinderella...
"Trudy Jean!" called her mother from the living room. "Come here! I want to see the dress on you."
For a minute, Trudy Jean hesitated. But she knew her mother wouldn't be happy until she'd seen her in the dress, ugly as it was. So she steeled herself and walked out into the living room.
Now Diana goes on to say, "I think we might have to reconstruct the story. It's starting to sound pretty good to me. Remember that after her mother approved the dress, she went and shortened another one in her closet, and wore it with her Sunday shoes." ...They weren't new, and had a strap around the ankle, but they were better than saddle shoes, and her mother had a fit.
But right before that, they went to a hoity-toity shoe store named Hanover House, where a tall, distinguished salesman introduced himself as Mr. Dahl, and showed her some school shoes. She liked the first pair, but her mother made him take them back and bring out saddle shoes instead. When he brought some boxes out, "Mrs. Cox took the liberty of opening the first box, while the salesman examined the wrinkle in the carpet which had caused him to assume a prostrate position on the floor and throw the boxes at Trudy Jean."
Then she says that it just gets better and better. One can only hope...

5 comments:

MC Howe said...

Okay, now, you say you were a child, but just how old were you? I can't think of too many 8 year olds using the word prostrate. I think you should take advantage of your sister's memory and get these down in their entirety.

jkraus8464 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jkraus8464 said...

OK sorry about the above comment. What I was trying to say was that we were a little older than that...say 12 or 13 but it came out 12-23 which definitely was not true. Anyway we wrote a lot of funny stories.

jkraus8464 said...

OK I goofed up on the prior comment. What I wanted to say was that we were between 12-13 years old when we wrote these stories. Our Nancy Drool ones are spectacular.

Sharon said...

Funny and sad. I was usually the Trudy Jean at my high school. A group of Trudy Jean's made up our "crowd."

Keep posting your "tween and teen" stories.
Sharon