My Morning Story
by Wayne Scheer
I woke this
morning and tripped over a story. To be more
precise, I stumbled but remained erect, which at
my age is no small feat. (Feel free to insert
whatever additional word play here you'd like.)
To be even more exact in my wording, I didn't
really reel over a story, but part of one. A
fragment. No subject of interest, no verb of
action, it just hung there, a morning moon waning
prosaic.
I moved on to the bathroom where I found another
story piece. I wasn't sure where it had come from
so I washed it thoroughly, it being too early in
the morning for a dirty story.
To my dismay, I found an allusion while I
prepared coffee. On the kitchen table laid or
lied (one or the other) a bunch of connotations.
Apparently, they cluster, forming a constellation
of connotations. Connotations are an annoying,
cloying gang often engaging in group vex.
In my office, I saw personification snuggle with
a dust bunny, but I'd rather not talk about it.
I sat at my desk trying to piece together this
jigsaw puzzle, but the similes weren't similar
and the metaphors were so mixed nothing fit.
I had obviously dropped some pieces along the way,
so I scavenged under the couch and found the
entire alphabet, A through Z, (or zed, as the
case may be). No plot or theme, but I reasoned
such substance to be superficial and considering
how my back felt as I scavenged, this was to
be a story for the aged. (I apologize, but
these puns keep popping up like a Whack-a-Mole at
a carnival.)
I at least had the basic tools to write a story.
And since my toolbox contained nothing more than
a metaphorical butter knife and a hammer, the
alphabet seemed enough. Plot and characters,
chainsaw and lathe, these could be dangerous in
my hands.
Nothing much made sense, but I created order from
chaos by arranging the scraps into sentences, the
sentences into paragraphs--clear and precise--an
English garden of prose. But it seemed too tame,
so I took the punctuation marks I found in a
planter, especially the commas, and strew them
about, willy-nilly, since no one really knows
what to do with commas any more than they know
what a willy-nilly is.
When I completed my story, which now looked more
willy-silly than just willy-nilly, I found one
extra punctuation mark, so I used it!
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