Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- “…a noun, a verb and a participle walk into a bar.” | the Wakefield Doctrine Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- “…a noun, a verb and a participle walk into a bar.” | the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- “…a noun, a verb and a participle walk into a bar.”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

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Here we are at Thursday already, which means it’s time of the delightful, self-induced torment that accompanies my determined effort to meet the challenge of zoe (nee Josie)’s  ‘Six Sentence Story‘.  It’s fun. It’s aggravating and I believe I learn something every time I hit publish.

 

It took only a glance to know the TV antenna was damaged beyond repair, the real question was how to disconnect it and throw it from the roof, thin metal arms bent in every possible direction, a single mass, courtesy of the wires that connected the parts and once gave life and function to this relic of pre-cable TV. Wire cutters and an increasing desire to be anywhere but on a roof, made subtlety and finesse the briefest of distractions, clip<>…clip<>…pull<<…clip<>…pull<<, free of attachments, all that remained was to move it to the roof’s edge where, after glancing over the edge, a single push on the tangled mess, and the post-storm job was over.

almost, because the worst still lay ahead, as everything about the ladder screamed uncertainty and danger. Having no other choice, he turned back, facing the only solid spot in his world that wasn’t 16 feet down,  stepped out into the air, found a rung with his right foot, committed his weight and the ladder, slid on the wet deck below, moving in the only direction possible, outward, the once solid ladder turning into something that moved, and moving downwards faster than his field of vision could account for, became un-important.  As he continued in the falling, a variety of things acquired importance and value, as they came into view, the gutter on the edge of the roof, approached him from below,  the thought,  “..in the movies‘ filled his mind, temporarily displacing the non-verbal,  non-rational, primal thoughts:   ‘STOP FALLING” (and) “GRAB SOMETHING”, like the darkness of a romantic evening, washed out by the light of a Sunday morning, the gutter kept moving by, passing from down to up, once out of sight, losing all significance.

Hitting the wooden deck below, his first feeling was relief,  that there was something underneath him that remained in place, there followed then, the cautious checking of what he was, before the world stopped mattering, moving first arms and then legs and finding everything moving as he would will them, lay back in the rain and waited for his world to re-assemble.

 

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clarkscottroger About clarkscottroger
Well, what exactly do you want to know? Whether I am a clark or a scott or roger? If you have to ask, then you need to keep reading the Posts for two reasons: a)to get a clear enough understanding to be able to make the determination of which type I am and 2) to realize that by definition I am all three.* *which is true for you as well, all three...but mostly one

Comments

  1. ivywalker says:

    HOLY SHIT! Did that really happen? You described it incredibly well… I felt my eyes get wide when the ladder slipped out… damn! “…committed his weight and the ladder, slid on the wet deck below, moving in the only direction possible, outward…” little gasp right there!

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      yes, yes it did. interesting effort… this writing thing lots of words (which is the easy part) less words (still kind of fun) make it allow a sharing of an experience …very cool (if and when it happens)

      I still hate these 6 sentence story exercises

      lol

  2. Denise says:

    I knew when no one answered the phone, something was wrong. It was Christmas Day, wasn’t it?
    Nice re-telling. In it’s awfulness that is :)

  3. christine says:

    DAMN!!! Clark! I had no idea you could write like that! Bravo!! Seriously, that was awesome. You described it all so very well. My eyes got wider and wider as I read.
    (Glad you survived to tell the tale.)

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      thank you, Christine zoe’s thursday challenge has become my impetus to try to improve my writing and such, yeah just some metal pins nothing too extreme.

  4. Kristi says:

    Yikes! This was pre-blogging, right? (Because if it were post-blog, one of the fleeting thoughts would have been, “This will make a good post, if I survive!”)

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      lol…. yeah, well before the blog (which was 2009), it was the mid-nineties and Ola was with us at the time.

      • Kristi says:

        It didn’t even dawn on me until right now that perhaps the biggest indicator that this story took place pre-blogging was the fact that there was an antenna on the roof!

        • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

          good call… Except the time frame did include internet (mid nineties) but the joke around the house was that I didn’t think cable TV was ‘worth the money’ when TV was free for the price of an antenna (sometimes, afterwards, P would joke about the 15k antenna on the roof).

          lol

  5. valj2750 says:

    How long was that antenna on top of your roof before you decided to take it down? Christmas day? (per Denise?) Man, you coulda really been hurt. OMG. When my husband climbs up on the roof I get all nervous and jerky and worried. I’m gonna have to worry about the ladder now. Anyway, yay – he lived to tell about it. (And you did a great job making pictures with words).

    • clarkscottroger clarkscottroger says:

      there was a terrible (actually, it was a very cool storm…one of those winter rain storms when the temperature was in the 50s lots of wind and rain) storm on the night before Christmas Eve Day… I went up on the roof that early afternoon (of Christmas Eve)… had to, the antenna was hanging half off the roof and I was mostly concerned about holes in the roof (from the bolts holding the mast that supported the antenna) leaking into the house.

      (…now when I have to go up on (or to…to clean the gutters).. I just about cement the footings of the ladder into the ground…lol)

  6. ivywalker says:

    Hey you have a wee pictorial piece in the great unsticking… go find it Waldo! clue (and small gift) … you dont have to read it…
    https://unchartedblogdotorg.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/the-great-unsticking-2015-progress-report-and-ftsf/