Serious Fiction

Once upon a time there was a baby alligator who liked to play hopscotch. All of the other alligators thought this was weird so they never talked to him. Even his mama alligator, who was once known for her strange passion for dancing, thought it was a weird thing to like to do. She cried every day, wishing and wishing that her baby would stop playing hopscotch and be a normal alligator. The baby alligator’s father was too busy bowling and watching good television to notice how distraught his alligator wife was, so he paid no attention to her. One day, alone and confused and misunderstood, the baby alligator ran away with his hopscotch rope. The mother cried and cried, more than she usually did.

She went into her closet and took out a dusty old box. When she opened it, music played and a ballerina rhythmically twirled. She removed her old Velcro dancing shoes which she once proudly twisted and jived in. She sobbed into them.

The baby alligator, who stupidly did not bring a bundle sack filled with snacks to stifle his hunger or pictures to remember the home he grew up in, sat glumly by the edge of the highway, wishing he hadn’t been cursed with a useless, foolish hobby. What would he do in the future? How would he pay the bills? How would he feed his kids? Would he ever get to go to Busch Gardens? He cried big fat alligator tears.

One of his alligator tears landed on a magic pebble, which sent bright rays to the heavens.

 A giant Buddha alligator floated down from the sky and gave him a magic jumping rope. The Buddha alligator said that with this jumping rope, he could do anything.

“Anything?” asked the surprised baby alligator.

“Anything,” confirmed the giant Buddha alligator.

Suddenly, the baby alligator was no longer glum.

He happily jumped into the middle of the street and danced, which was something he did not normally do.

But then a giant truck filled with dairy products came by and flattened the poor baby alligator.

The giant Buddha alligator exclaimed, “Ho, shit!” and started to meditate.

Back home at the alligator reservation, Mama Alligator was still crying into her Velcro dancing shoes.

She was crying so loud, that she disturbed Papa Alligator’s good television. The Papa Alligator still had not noticed that the baby alligator was gone. He was a neglectful father.

“Wassamatter, honey?”

To be continued.

Notes:

Sitting in Taste, a coffee house close to my chool, I watch a middle-aged woman update her facebook page. She wants to change her profile picture. I watch her take various pictures on herself on Photobooth. Maybe she wants to be a writer. Maybe she came here because she wanted some focus and concentration.

In the first one, her eyes are closed, and that’s no good. She’s only done this three other times before, she doesn’t know how this works.

The second one is taken with a filter, and that’s sort of cool and artsy-fartsy, but she’s more simple than that.

She decides to take the third one in sepia, because that’s the color of her mood. She buries her sepia-colored hand into her sepia-colored hair. She turns her face towards the window. The screen flashes. She checks it out. She thinks, hey, this is me. She looks at her co-worker’s profile picture, or her cousin’s cute friend’s profile picture, or that guy she met at that bongo concert, his profile picture.

She thinks, maybe he'll look at mine.

 She closes her lap top, unplugs it, and makes her way into a gray mini-van, deciding that today was not the day for inspiration.

Tomorrow, maybe.

Her panty lines stick out underneath her pants, which are velvet and blue.

 Don’t think about anyone else.

1. A bouquet of sunflowers. I want someone to give me a bouquet of sunflowers. Then I want to walk everywhere with it and make people wonder who gave me a bouquet of sunflowers.

2. I want a big purple house with wind chimes and a garden filled with sunflowers.

3. I want my life to be like a movie, with a soundtrack and cuts that go with the beat of the music.

4. I want things to be easy, but things are only easy at Staples.

5. I want my mom to get off my back. I’m getting aches and I think I need to go see a chiropractor.

6. I want to get into a good college so that I can say to all of my mother’s clients, all of my mother’s friends, all my father’s friends, all of my mother’s family, all of my father’s family, my friends, my friend’s parents, the people who work at Starbucks, my teachers, my ex-boyfriends, and the people I haven’t seen since pre-school but have found again on Facebook, that I got into a good college, and that all it took was some hard work and luck.

7. I want my own room.

8. I want to be that woman who dropped out of high school to go to beauty school. She loves dresses from Betsey Johnson and is a bartender at a local trendy venue. She listens when people have to pour their hearts out and answers when they ask her about all those tattoos.

9. I want my first time to be special.

10. I want to be an independent feminist who lives by herself and doesn’t need anyone but herself, but I also want to meet the love of my life on a train and I want us to have kids and live in a big purple house with wind chimes and a garden filled with sunflowers and I want us to talk about something random and beautiful, like street lights or dogs barking in the middle of the night or how good it feels to get into a car after a really hot day, because our meeting will be random and beautiful, and when we see each other we’ll just know.

11. I want to be a singer in a rock band, or a New Wave Alternative Synthetic Pop band, and I want to almost hit it big.

12. I want to write a story about my life, and then write a script about my life, and then direct a movie about my life, and I want to be played by America Ferrera.

I guess I have to live it first.

13. I want to win an Academy Award for I haven’t decided yet, and in my speech I want to mention how many times I’ve practiced this speech in the mirror. And then I want to say thank you so much, especially you who did that for me, I couldn’t have done this without you, this, this is for, this is for everyone who’s wanted something, who’s practiced their speeches in the mirror, thank you so much, especially you, I love you, I’m so grateful.