Monday, March 19, 2012

Old Story

This morning I was sitting in Italian class, enjoying my sourdough bagel with dill cream cheese and waiting for the prof to start, when my sister came into the room (yes, we share an Italian class.) saw me, and started laughing.
Hey, she said.
Hey, I replied, why are you laughing at me? Is there something on my face? My hair?
Oh, no, she giggled, I was just going through this "empty" notebook I took from home, and found a story you started writing ages ago...
Where is it? I demanded. I was worried slightly; some of the stuff I had written as a teenager was never meant to be read by anyone else.
Here it is, she said, handing me a piece of lined notebook paper. And now I will share it with you:

                                        --------------------------------------------------------------

"I can't marry Georges!" Cassian wailed. "Daaaad! No. I refuse. I'll run away before I marry that pig-faced, pot-bellied, son-of-a-guppy!"
                Her father sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. "It' a done deal, sweets. I know he's not the handsomest, smartest boy in the village, but," he added hastily, seeing his daughters expression, "He is a well-respected butcher in the town, and he comes from a good family, strawberry. You'll have a good life."
              Cassian's red face grew redder. "Unlike you, Dad, who broke social boundaries to marry a warrior freak and produced me! You raised me to find love at all costs! I can't believe you're doing this."
             Cassian's dad heaved another sigh and rolled his eyes to the heavens, praying for strength. "Cassi, my sunshine, do you want to continue being ostracized from the village your entire life like me? Your mother left us with nothing except broken hearts and a bad name. This is your chance! You could walk down the street with your head up, for once. If you do this for me, your father could die in peace."
           Cassian's face was stony. "I can't believe that you'd force your daughter to marry a man who leers at my chest each time I fetch the meat; a man who every Sunday pinches my bottom when the minister isn't looking, just to restore your social standing."
          He studied her face intently, and then seeing no remorse replied weakly, "Ha ha. Well, I did."
           Cassian seemed to finally accept the news. Her face went white and she sat down quite suddenly. "Oh my." she whispered. Her dad kneeled beside her and tried to hug her. She sat like stone, and finally he gave up.
        "Your mother's wedding dress is on your bed," he said, "I'll see you at the church tomorrow morning." and he walked inside the little stone cottage they lived in. Cassian continued to sit like a stone, but behind her great grey-green eyes, her mind was working furiously. "I can't marry Georges," she thought, and shuddered. A mental image of the balding, hugely fat man with blood-stained fingers leering at her came to mind. And then "I wonder how much he paid for me." Cassian knew that she wasn't considered the village beauty (that prize went to Griselda with her chocolate curls, porcelain-blue eyes and luscious red lips), and that she looked like her mother a lot. She was tall and skinny, all legs and arms, and had a proud face with dreamy eyes and a big nose. Sure, she admitted, I have nice hair

                                  -----------------------------------------------------------

That's all there is. I have absolutely no recollection of writing this, but I'm pretty sure it was written when I was between 15-17, because I was in the self-centred habit of making every main character I wrote look almost exactly like me. Ha ha. I think my favourite lines are "pig-faced, pot-bellied, son-of-a-guppy", and the way her father calls her "strawberry, sunshine, and sweets" all within 2 lines. Oh, and the names "Georges" and "Cassian". Those are some awesome names.

After my sister showed me this and we shared it with our friends, we killed ourselves laughing. Better to laugh it off than be horribly embarrassed, right? RIGHT? Then again, it's always amusing to find old stuff you wrote as a kid, hahaha.

2 comments:

  1. I shudder to think that I'll dig up the original 20 pages of the first draft of my novel, written way back when I was 19. It was some bland, puerile, disgusting mix of Time Cop and Futurama. I'm glad that's been dealt with.

    You shouldn't be embarrassed about this, though. I actually rather liked it. I dig the character names. And the dynamic between the father and daughter just sizzles. It's cliched to say so, but I'd love to read more...

    ReplyDelete
  2. haha postman, i believe that if there was any more it would as cliche and trite as what there already is! but it's through writing this sort of stuff that we grow, right? I hope you are well in Korea! Keep the posts coming! I love living vicariously through you!

    ReplyDelete