Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Hey! Wait, you’re in the right place! Thursday is still zoe’s day to challenge all who care to step up and write a story using six, (and only six), sentences. As is our way, the title of, (any given), Six Sentence Story is totally impulse driven and the best we hope for is that it has, at minimum, words that involve the use of the same ‘S’s’ as are found in the name: Six Sentence Story.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should explain how the Title came to be and, by doing so, properly set up this week’s Six. It’s no secret that I look at these Six Sentence Stories as opportunities to learn and practice ‘the writing thing’. I’m a total student of the, ‘hang-out-with-people-who-have-skills-you-hope-to-acquire-and-some-of-it-may-rub-off-on-you’, school of self-taught writing. So this morning I’m sitting here playing solitaire hoping to come up with a ‘hook’. I already had an idea of the rhetorical clothes I was going to try to hang on the cue word, ‘market’, but I just couldn’t hear the story. Then I got to thinking about POV and it occurred to me that, to the best of my recollection, I haven’t tried a Second Person Six Sentence Story. Of course, part of me was, all, like, ‘probably a good reason you haven’t, clark’. In any event, I did what comes naturally and looked up Second Person Point of View,
“a narrative mode in which the protagonist is referred to by second person pronouns, such as ‘you’ …traditionally, the second-person form is used less often in literary fiction than the first-person and third-person. But it is… a very common technique of … genres such as guide books, self-help books, do-it-yourself manuals, .. advertisements, and also blogs.” cha ching!)
You’d rather stay in and watch Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons, but your mother says she has a couple of things to pick up at Oliveira’s Market and, clearly seeing a need to convince you, promises to have you back before the show starts, so you shrug into the grey winter coat, un-doing the shiny metal clips that bite into the cuffs and, with a short black elastic ribbon, holds your mittens and you defiantly, (but unobtrusively), put them in your pocket.
It’s only a short car ride, the quiet streets now bare of leaves on trees and Summer People on Vacation, so there’s not even time to play with the radio.
The door to the Oliviera’s Market has a little bell on a piece of metal that the door bumps into when it’s opened and makes a tiny bell sound when you walk in, under a canopy of your mother’s blue wool coat and the grey-hazy cloud of her Chesterfield. You wander the narrow aisles, the dry peppery smell of the section where they have tilted wooden baskets with potatoes and onions, is right next to where they sell the hamburger and meats, wrapped in yellowish-brown paper, sealed with a single strip of masking tape from the holder on top of the glass display case. You look around and spot your mother, already at the counter and figure there’s just enough time to check if any new comics are in, spinning the rounded metal holder that display the Superman and Batman and Archie Comic books, one above the other and you see one that you know must be new, but hear your mother say, “Let’s go, I want to keep my promise at least this one time,” and you’re out the door and into the car.
Back in the living room, you walk to the TV, pull out the switch that turns it on, flip down the rounded oblong panel on the front, give the middle of the three cone-shaped controls a slight turn to stop the upwards rolling of the picture, and, with a backwards flex of both arms, throw your coat behind you, towards the couch, (not noticing that the pocket now contain only one mitten), and sit into a cross-legged position that you know will make you mother say, ‘sit back, you’ll go blind being that close to the TV’.
You wonder, as Bluto beats up on Popeye, why Popeye doesn’t just eat his spinach when he leaves his house, or, even if he forgot, eat it as soon as he sees Bluto grab Olive Oyl, who you don’t think is all that pretty and, besides, why does she keep letting him grab her, it’s not like he doesn’t do that every single time he shows up at her house.
About clarkscottroger
Fantastic use of second person voice in a very readable and identifiable with story. You are the first person telling the story through your own eyes as if observing self in situation from an objective you. Love it
thank you, val! fun… (to try out things and practice and such)
Ditto what Val said! Nicely done.
I so remember those clips for your mittens :D
yeah, can’t recall ever, actually wearing them properly
How i remember those old TVs, watching the cartoons was the highlight of the day! Well written.
for us, at the time, it’d be 4 or 4:30 before the cartoons would crowd out the soap operas
Never had mitten clips, we had gloves…just sayin’ great job.
funny, it took getting out of childhood to realize how warm mittens can be! (I’m one of those people with zero cold tolerance and half the time, when wearing gloves (in the winter), I’ve got my fingers balled up inside to try and get warm lol)
Nice story. I could see what you saw, and felt like I was there. Well written and enjoyable story.
Annie at ~McGuffy’s Reader~
thank you!
Nicely done. You have plainly expressed the boys reluctance of having to go to the market, and his decision to use that errand to look over the comic books while waiting to return home, at which time he removes his coat without knowledge of a mitten missing, and proceeds to continue watching a show that was interrupted for a visit to the market. He sounds like a typical kid!
yeah… focus on details and appreciation of consequences of actions not figuring so big in the world yet.
It would make a LOT more sense if he just ate it for breakfast, wouldn’t it?
yeah! what the hell! I think the guy totally had a spinach problem… waited for the adrenaline to boost the rush, no doubt (and lets not even get into the interpersonal train wrecks of those other two! a generation to grow up with them as role models? maybe the state of the world is not so tough to understand!)
Well done. Second person is definitely not a frequent choice. Funny, I was looking for a ringtone for the new phone and came across the theme song from the old Popeye the Sailor cartoons. Weird, eh?
I remember this well however on Olive Oyl’s behalf I must protest as she was no worse that half the girls in my class! And as for being grabbed by Bluto, Popeye didn’t seem to be that interested.
Magic. You put me right there — inside the store, the character, the entirety of place and time. Fantastic!
thankee
Omg clark, you did such a wonderful job on painting this picture….the details are so spot on and told so well…i was smiling through the whole thing!