Tell me a story!

ok i've re-read it, and i guess it's not that narrative, more internal monoologue, but i hope its some use!

it was a dark and grey morninng as my mothers battered vauxhall cavalier pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road. it was cramped in the car: despite spending twenty three years couped up in the box room, i had managed to accumulate a considerable amount of crap, not to mention the essentials, such as clothes, kettle and other nick nacks that you eternally take for granted when living with your parents.
my brother shifted and complained under the portable tele that sat on his lap. i ignored him.
my thoughts were mixed, and therfore my emotions: how would i cope? i was pretty self sufficient, but how was i going to cope with the combination of meeting new people, living with strangers, and who were these people, these strangers? no doubt there feelings were also going to be mixed this drizzly sunday morning, but were they better equipped in social situations? was this course the right course for me? would i get that first i desired, or will i flounder and struggle with new concepts that i simply couldn't comprehend?
as we drove past an all to familiar road, i thought how i would react when i saw my ex? she had a year head start, and had already setled in, whilst for me, who knew?
i looked at my mother, who despite being 47, her looks defied this age, except for the perpetually worried expression on her face. how could my mother cope without me about? one of my brothers is a schitzophrenic, the other a depressive, and relied on me to do things round the house. not just relied. depended on me. she was hardly in the right state of mind herself, being clinically depressive, and it was a this point, driving down the motorway to my new life, did i realise that for the first time in a long time, this was all about me. always the odd one out of my family, the academic, and all i had were questions. and who had the answers? how would i fare against all the trials and tribulations that moving out, accepting full responsibility for myself, and strivinng towards my aspirations? who was there to help me out?
well, as i approached the south coast of england,driven by my mother, and unpacked, aided by my brother, only to see them get in the car and become an ever diminishing dot on the horizon i knew that in my heart of hearts, whoever held the questions, also held the answers.
i can only ever depend on me.

A story, huh? Well, here goes…

When I was about 18, I got a job managing a diner overnight. This is kind of important to the story because it was at that point that I started witnessing my family life like a movie I was only half paying attention to. Every time I’d look, these people were doing things that made no sense to me because I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on before that. I’m not doing a very good job with this analogy, so suffice it to say that I was working up to seventeen hours at a time, and I’d come home to sleep, and get up and leave almost immediately for work, so when I saw my family, it was for a few minutes at a time, a few days a week.. Thing seemed normal for a while. Until one day, when everything… changed.
I came home one Saturday morning at about eleven. I hadn’t slept for a few days, save for a few naps I was able to grab in the booths in the wee hours when we had no customers. It’d been weeks since I was there for longer than a few hours at a time when no one was home. I walked into the house feeling, and I suspect looking, like a zombie. It was Saturday, as I said, so my Mom was home. I came in the front door and loudly announced that I was home, and that I was going to bed. I opened the door to my bedroom and stood there for a second, trying to understand what I was seeing. There was a man, about 35, sitting at my computer, wearing my bathrobe. “Hi.” He said, not even turning to look at me. It took me a second, but eventually I was able to respond with a confused “…Hi…”
I turned on my heels and went downstairs to the kitchen where my mother was. “Ma?” I started as I turned the corner into the room, “There’s a guy in m-”
My mother was sitting at the table with a block of mahogany wood, a hammer and chisel. “Yes?” She said.
“What, um, what are you doing?” I said.
“Carving a duck decoy, what’s it look like?” she responded, looking at me like I was crazy. I was beginning to think that she was justified in looking at me like that.
“Oh. Okay. Um... Why?” I wasn’t really sure how to process this.
“To attract ducks, fool! Is there another use for duck decoys?”
“…And you want to attract ducks because…?”
“Did you want something? I thought you were going to bed.” She said, in her ‘I-don’t-have-time-for-this’ voice.
“Oh. Yeah. Uh, there’s a guy in my room.”
“Mmhmm.” She put on her glasses and because to eye up the wood.
“Well, um, it’s just… who is he?”
“Leonard.” She said, still eyeing up the block of wood.
I could see I wasn’t getting anywhere with this conversation, so I just let it drop. I went to my sister’s room, hoping that she was there. I lucked out, or so I thought. She was there, she was busy assembling a ceiling fan with blades shaped like cheese graters. I decided not to ask about it, opting just to get the information I came for. “Hey Laur.”
“Hey,” she said. “How was work?”
“It was okay. Who’s that guy in my room?”
“Leonard.”
This was getting frustrating. “Yeah, I got that. Where’d he come from?”
“Um, Toledo, I think.” I was starting to wish I had the energy to fly into a berserker rage and break everything in sight.
Whatever. “I see. Very helpful. You know why Mom’s carving a duck decoy, other than to attract ducks?”
“Is there another use for duck decoys that you know of?” She asked
I sighed. “No, I guess there isn’t. Thank you, Laury. You’ve been most informative.”
I went outside to smoke a cigarette. I was dead tired, wishing to God I could just go to bed, but there was the small matter of the man in my room wearing my bathrobe playing free cell that I had to deal with. Not to mention the fact that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep because I would have been wondering why my mother was carving a duck decoy, or where my sister got a ceiling fan with cheese grater blades. Or why she would want one. As I stood in my driveway, my father pulled up in his truck.
Now. My father is by far the weirdest person in this motley crew of misfits I call a family. Mind you, he’s not ‘wear-tin-foil-on-his-head-to-block-the-mind-control-impulses’ weird. More like ‘rewire-the-toaster-to-receive-radio-signals” weird. If I was smart, I wouldn’t ask this man any questions. I would just deliver a friendly greeting, receive one in return, and go back to dealing with the whole “strange man in my room” issue.
I am not smart.
“Hey, Pop.”
“DodRaibeid! You’re home! We never see you anymore. How’s work?”
“It’s okay. Hey, listen. There’s a guy in my room.”
“Leonard?”
“Yeah, Leonard. Tell me, Pop. Where’d he come from?”
“Toledo. Why?”
I started to sense a great conspiracy, or a cosmic joke being played at my expense. “Okay, Toledo, right. But what’s he doing in my room?”
“I don’t know, son. I just got here. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s playing free cell. He’s really good at it. Beat my high score.”
“Okay, fair enough. Let me ask a broader question. What is Leonard doing in our house?”
“As opposed to…?”
“Oh, I dunno, Pop. TOLEDO, perhaps?”
“Well, for starters, he doesn’t live in Toledo anymore. Is your mother in there?”
“Yeah. She’s carving a duck decoy. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you?” I figured it couldn’t hurt ask. Turns out I was wrong.
“Not really. I’m pretty good at painting them, but I couldn’t carve one to save my life.”
“Right. I suppose you know an equal amount about the cheese grater fan Lauren’s putting together?”
“It finally came?! I have to go see it!”
And with that, my father took off into the house like a little kid on Christmas.
I finished my cigarette, and went into the house. I packed up my essentials, and went to the diner. We had a cot in the back and a shower and stuff. I showed up at my parents’ house once in a week for a while. I don’t think they noticed I was filling up my car with stuff every time I came over. Even after all my stuff was out and in my new apartment, I still visited. Leonard was still there. Turns out he was from Dayton, not Toledo.

i moved out. so begins this story, like the rest. i ignored my mother's accute anxiety at the thought of her only baby leaving the nest, because i would be damned if i wanted to feel guilty. i moved into a house which i was supposed to be sharing with two roomates, but said roomates didn't arrive until almost a month after i showed up. so i spent 23 days alone in a strange, decrepit house, in an unfamiliar city. me. the small town girl who'd only been left home alone by her parents once in her 18 years of existence. i had no drapes in my room, and every night, i'd try, lying on my matress on the floor, to not imagine serial killers peering in the window at me. to ignore the creaking of the pre WWII floorboards that sounded like creeping footsteps. to breathe normally when the sirens in my downtown neighborhood passed by every half hour, rising and fading in the strange half-dark of the streetlights.

that's what i remember more than anything else. the lack of curtains and the paralyzing fear.

eventually, i sewed some green drapes with cute little blue ribbon ties. and stopped worrying about every little thing that came along.

moral of the story and whatnot.

*Space Reserved*

STORY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Growing up as a child I was always grasping to the flavor of life even though I seemed to be filled with trauma.Now I could give reasons for being what some of my teachers called a troubled child but the truth is I was just a gray duck floating in a pond of stubborn swans.So my freshman year of high school I found my stress point reaching a boiling point...And then one day in early fall something in my soul just snaped and my sanity came crashing down. I believe it's called a nervous break down.My mother came home that day and found me laying on the ground curled up in a ball like a hurt dog try to touch me even breath on me and I would howl and snarl at you.That was my last day in a inner city high school.So now that the days of finding bullet holes and watching rats run down the halls was over I need to find some where to finish my education.
The state in it's wisdom said they would pay for me to go to boarding school.About a month later I packed my bags and left home to spend the next several years away from everything I ever new.
But that is another story

Me moving out of my house was a short affair and not worth mention. I want to give you a story, but this is not the subject for me to give you one worthwhile.

ok...ill just freewrite something here....

once upon a time, there was a bunny. this bunny was cute. however, there was a cuter bunny in the forest, whom everyone loved very much, because he was the cutest bunny. so the second cutest bunny got jealous, drove to the local sporting goods store and bought a handgun.

so the second cutest bunny invites the cutest bunny over for dinner. then he shoots him. now hes the cutest bunny.

the end.

The story of Tiny Finger

Many, many years ago there lived an honest man and his wife in a small village in the southern part of Japan. This couple lived in happiness together, and even when they were tired from the day's work, they cheered each other with the news of the day. Kenta, for that was the man's name, would tell his wife of the things which had happened in the village that day, and Mori, the wife of Kenta, would tell her husband the news her neighbors had related to her.

Although they were poor, Kenta and Mori were cheerful together. Their happiness was not complete, however, for they had no son to carry on the family name. Each morning the old couple would pray that the Sun Goddess would bless them with a son of their own. Kenta and Mori wished for a son so badly that one day while praying they said, "We will be happy even though our child were but as small as our little fingers. If you give us a child we will do anything in return for your kindness."

Many months passed, but still no child was born. At last, when they had almost given up hope, Mori surprised her husband by telling him that soon they would have a child. Oh, their delight was beyond description! Immediately Kenta hurried to the village shrine and thanked the Sun Goddess for the blessing bestowed upon their marriage.

But when the day of the baby's birth arrived, everyone was astonished and puzzled to see that the child was no larger than the little finger of a human hand.

Nevertheless, Kenta and Mori were happy, and they remembered their promise to the Sun Goddess. Accepting this blessing, they named the baby d the tiny boat were out of sight.

In the river Yodo the little wooden boat bobbed up and down like a cork. But Tiny Finger was a strong boy, and, using all his strength, he rowed with the chopstick. Oh, but it was a dangerous trip for so small a boat, and the oar seemed so heavy, even though it was only a chopstick. But that was natural, for you must remember that Tiny Finger was small, and that the chopstick was even taller than he was. Sometimes the wind blew, and the large waves almost wrecked the little boat. And sometimes large fish appeared from the blue waves and attacked the strange little traveler in his small, funny craft. However, Tiny Finger did not lose courage, and he rowed for many days and nights, keeping his boat skimming over the water.

After a long and hard voyage, Tiny Finger reached Kyoto. At last he had arrived where he longed to be -- in the city where the emperor lived.

Full of delight and feeling extremely brave, Tiny Finger went into the city of Kyoto. Everything was strange to the little country boy, for he had never before been in a large city -- or, for that matter, in any city at all.

Tiny Finger just gazed in wonderment at the sights. On the main street long processions of warriors marched one after another in wide ranks. On one side of the street rode an armored warrior lord on a splendid white horse. And on the other side of the street was a wonderful golden carriage, perhaps belonging to a princess, carried by two strong bearers.

The brilliancy and noise of this splendid city overwhelmed Tiny Finger, and his heart beat fast with excitement. He grasped his precious sword even tighter, and set out for the palace of the emperor.

Soon he came to a tall, wooden gate where two huge warriors stood with long swords. There they guarded the gates and watched all the passers-by. So Tiny Finger knew that he had found the palace of the emperor at last.

Being so small, Tiny Finger nimbly jumped through an opening in the huge gate and entered the garden of the palace. Timidly he approached the front door of the palace and cried, "Hello! Hello!" But his voice was so thin that no one could hear it.

Then with all his might Tiny Finger shouted over and over again, "Hello, great lord, hello!"

And at last, hearing the weak voice calling, one of the guards noticed Tiny Finger and brought the Lord of the Palace to the doorway.

But what a strange thing -- no one was there! At least the Lord of the Palace thought that no one was there. He did not expect such a tiny visitor.

The thin little voice kept calling, "Hello! Hello! Great Lord of the Palace, I am down here by your feet! "

And when the Lord of the Palace looked down, there stood the smallest boy he had ever seen. Why, he was no longer than a finger!

The great lord bent down and in a soft voice asked of Tiny Finger, "Strange little boy, what do you want?"

Tiny Finger replied, "I am Tiny Finger, and I came here to learn to be as great a soldier as you."

The Lord of the Palace was delighted with this speech and with the bravery of the little visitor. "You shall be a soldier," he said. "Come and meet my young daughter. I think I will make you her personal guard."

So that is how Tiny Finger went to the great Japanese city of Kyoto and how he became the personal guard of the princess of that city.

Life in the castle with the princess was a wonderful experience for Tiny Finger. The princess grew to love her finger-high guard, and she had him accompany her wherever she went.

One day the princess was visiting a shrine on the outskirts of the city, and Tiny Finger went along as usual, for he was her personal attendant. On their way home they passed through a deep forest, and just as they were near the middle of the woods, a tall, fierce bandit suddenly appeared before the princess. The bandit was very bold and he gruffly caught the princess by the sleeve of her kimono.

"Help me! Help me!" the princess cried. She tried to escape from the bandit, but he was too strong, and he held her fast.

Seeing the princess in danger, Tiny Finger unsheathed his needle sword and sprang at the shaggy bandit. Running and kicking, he finally succeeded in pricking the bandit in a sensitive spot with his needle sword.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! I have been cut!" roared the bandit. Then he looked all around for the one who had hurt him. But Tiny Finger was so small that he could run in and out between the bandit's feet, sticking the long needle into the bandit's big toes and into his heels. And the bandit was so tall and so clumsy that he could not catch Tiny Finger. Nor could he escape from him. Every time the bandit tried to run away, Tiny Finger would catch him by one trouser leg and stick him with his needle. This he did many, many times, and every time the bandit tried to catch Tiny Finger, the little boy would hide between the bandit's toes or in the folds of his trousers.

The bandit could not get away from the little boy, and he could not catch Tiny Finger. So he surrendered. And when Tiny Finger jumped down to the ground, the bandit escaped into the forest, leaving behind him many precious treasures and a mallet.

The princess, who had stood trembling under a tree while Tiny Finger fought with the bandit, now approached him with delight and appreciation.

To her small protector she said, "Thank you most kindly for bravely doing battle with that wicked bandit. You have saved my life. If it had not been for you, the bandit would certainly have carried me away into the forest. And he would have made my father pay a large ransom for my release. I will tell my father how brave you are, and he will reward you."

Then the princess picked up the mallet the bandit had left, and she said to Tiny Finger, "This is a wonderful and mysterious mallet, my little soldier. It is a treasure of the bandit family. If you make a wish, you will receive anything you ask of it."

Tiny Finger was most delighted, and he made a wish. "Please," he said, "make me a tall and strong boy like all the other boys of Japan."

He shouted this wish three times, and, to his astonishment, he grew several feet every time he shouted. Before the very eyes of the princess, he became a handsome and strong warrior.

There was a great feast in the banquet hall of the grand palace that night. Many soldiers praised Tiny Finger, and everyone admired his beauty and strength. The great lord was so pleased with the bravery of the young warrior that he gave his daughter in marriage to Tiny Finger.

The next day Tiny Finger and his lovely bride set out for the town where Kenta and Mori lived. But this time Tiny Finger did not sail in a rice bowl, nor did he row with a chopstick. The old lord had given the young couple a strong and sleek ship with tall white sails to help them skim over the water.

Off they went over the blue waves to visit the aging parents of the young warrior. In time, Tiny Finger became a great lord himself.

THE END

I got my paper back today- I got a 95. You guys rock- thanks, everyone!