Every summer in recent years, I’ve asked my 8th graders for ideas to help write a short creative story in this space. They give me the first and last lines of a story, and it’s my job to fill in the middle. This gives me a break from pontificating and allows me to flex my creative muscles. I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I enjoy writing them! This week’s inspiration comes from Gavin Lewison.
Addy tripped over a crab. This shouldn’t be odd for two reasons. One, Addy is a klutz. Two, we were at the beach. What was odd was what happened after that.
To give you a little background, there was a group of us at the beach celebrating the end of the school year. We were finished with middle school and would finally be high schoolers! That was both awesome and terrifying at the same time.
Addy is pretty cool, even if she isn’t a rap beast like I am. But that girl has a hard time walking and chewing gum at the same time unless she’s playing sports. It’s really strange. Still, I like to give her grief about it every chance I get, so when she fell to the sand after running into a crab of all things, I hooted with laughter.
“Shut up, Gavin!” she responded as she dusted sand off herself.
“Yeah, be quiet!” came another voice. All of us standing there looked at each other with confusion. Then we looked down at the crab.
“Umm…” we all said at the same time.
The crab’s eyes seemed to stand even higher. “What? You never heard a crab talk?” came that voice directly from the crab itself. “What am I saying? Of course you haven’t! You humans don’t think crabs can talk!”
We all huddled around the crab. She told us her name was Florence and that she was probably in big trouble now for letting us in on the big secret of crabs being able to communicate.
“Do crabs in other countries speak different languages?” asked Addy.
“How would I know?” replied Florence. “Do I look like a world traveler?” Her sarcasm fit right in with our group of friends!
We spent a lot of time at the beach that summer. Florence was a hoot, but we kept her secret. We were bursting at the seams to tell someone, but how would we ever prove it? Florence could just clam up (Ha ha, clam) if someone else came around. Anyone we told would just say we were describing a chimeric creature. Still, how cool would we all be if we became famous for this?
At last, we came up with a plan. We would invite Florence to the beach house that some of our families shared. She was always complaining about being stuck on that beach. We assured her that nobody else would be there, but we secretly planned to set up my phone to record Florence talking; she was always wary to talk if she saw us with our phones on the beach.
When we convinced Florence to come to the house, she scuttled in tentatively at first. After cruising around to make sure everything was legit, she made herself at home by climbing up on the couch. This was perfect since I had hidden my phone in the cabinet across the way. I went over there to turn on the speakers to play music and surreptitiously turned on the camera.
Florence had always been pretty cool about things, though every now and then she made some mean comment about humans in general. This side of her came out big time that day. She was ranting about how we humans had it made with our opposable thumbs and vehicles and everything. We tried to calm her down, but to no avail.
Finally, she really lost it. She used her claws to tear up the couch and pillows. Everyone was hesitant to move in and stop her for fear of getting torn up by those weapons of mass destruction. I yelled at her to knock it off, and she sprang off the couch and came right at me.
As I backed away, I bumped into the cabinet, knocking my phone out and to the ground. Florence’s eyes grew wide and she scrabbled over to it, crushing it between her pincers, and ruining all our evidence of her ability to speak. She then tore through the screen door and headed for the beach, leaving behind a wake of destruction. That’s why everybody despises her.
I hope you’re enjoying these short stories. I’ve got a few more in the weeks to come. However, I also wanted to note that my radio program, “Whatever Flips Your Waffle,” focused on Minnesota sports, is not only on 365Sportscast.com every Wednesday at 7:00, but you can also find it on Spotify and YouTube after the original broadcast. Check it out!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is chimeric, which means fanciful and imaginative, as in, “The chimeric creation of the toddler served as an imaginary friend for years.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!