Hey kidkins!
Sorry for the rather sporadic posting of late. I have been a bit run off my feet with this whole ‘college’ thingy. Yeah.
I hope to post some stuff about my Public School Adventures in the near future, but for now, here is a rather emo short story I just wrote for an English creative response.
Title ideas are most welcome!
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To whom it may concern:
Once upon a financial year, there was a city. The City exists outside of space and time. The City is grey and heavy. It is made of blocks, rows and rows of blocks, stacked next to, in front of, and upon each other. The City is a machine. It looms ominously in storm drains, in elevators, around corners.
Remember children? Remember mums, dads, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins? Remember family?
There is a house. The house belongs to the Unlucky family. It is a small house, but the Unluckys don’t mind. They love their house. It is filled with memories, possibilities, fun, activity and love. There is barely enough room in the Unluckys’ house for them.
In the small, bright living room the Unluckys have an old piano. The piano was bought at a fete by Grandma Unlucky decades ago. It is very out of tune and some of the keys don’t work, but the Unluckys enjoy sitting in the living room on warm summer nights and listening to Grandma’s creaking old hands try to play songs they used to know. They cheer for Brother Unlucky to sing nursery rhymes in his awful mewling voice, and clap for Sister to play her piercing recorder until their ears bleed. The adults and older children play Monopoly on a faded and battered board amidst the constant noise and activity of the little Unlucky children. At the end of the day, the parents tuck the children into bed and sit on the weather beaten porch, enjoying the last rays of the sun before turning in.
There is a place for everyone in the City. The grey block between the two grey blocks is a childcare centre. It is the perfect place to hide children during the day, where they can play behind closed doors and concrete walls. The childcare workers serve them two thirds of the recommended two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables a day with fixed smiles and glassy eyes. High up in the grey block is a board of directors who spend their days wondering how to cut the running cost of the centre.
Five blocks down and two blocks across, there is a grey block. The block is a nursing home for the elderly. It is a place for forgetting. The wrinkly inhabitants stay locked inside the block, out of the sight and mind of the City. Their daily lives are reduced for their comfort to a simple mixture of eating, sleeping and watching television. They needn’t think about anything else.
Say, remember smiling? Remember the sun on your face? Laughing together? Remember your friends?
The Unlucky children play in the street with the other children. They build forts and ride their rusty bikes. They play for hours in the park, in the trees and in the sandpit. The warm air fills with the sound of their laughter and carries it into each home in the street. The adults smile and greet each other with genuine happiness, always offering more than they have to a friend in need. The Unluckys’ house is open to them all the time, and is a place of love and sharing.
The residents of the City have many friends. The children sit in their neat, grey rooms and smile unfamiliarly at each other over video messaging. Their affections become twelve-point type on a webpage, suitably impersonal, and their achievements shine through their 200-word ‘About Me’ sections of their blogs. Their personalities become the customised html script that adorns their lives.
The adults’ communication is highly efficient. They leave messages on each other’s mobile phones, or voicemail on cordless home phones. Detached emails whizz through cyberspace, and, very occasionally, printed letters travel in anonymous grey bags handled by grey-uniformed workers and into grey pigeon holes. But not often, as it is very time-consuming.
Remember growing up? Remember how you were going to make your mark on the world? Your fortune?
Birthday parties are frequent in the street. All are invited to the festivities. They eat cake and chat about their own birthday parties in the street over the years. The Unlucky grandparents get caught up in nostalgia and smile secret smiles to themselves as they watch the children play and fight. The children swing from branches and fall on top of each other, laughing gaily. They will grow up; get jobs, start families, have their own lives… but never leave behind their loved ones. For now, stuffing their faces with cake is enough. Birthdays are not sad occasions – they are part of life.
In the City birthdays are large, expensive affairs. Guests drink champagne and talk civilly about the weather. The birthday girl or boy receives extravagant presents and is promptly sent off to university. They spend years in grey institutions before finally graduating. They return then to their own isolated corner of a block – broken, trained, educated – and try to use their new skills to make as much money as possible. They outfit their homes with excessive technology, have children, substitute lavish gifts for love and send them to their rooms alone at night. They hide them in childcare centres, eventually send their parents into nursing homes, and go back to turning the cogs of the City machine.
The City thrives in grey silence.
Please, remember those days.
A Friend
