A Foolish Figure

I didn't get into romantic (as in boy meets girl.  I never have gotten into Romantic as in Wordsworth and co.) literature until...dunno...probably some time in middle school.  I guess I still prefer friendship stories to romances as a general rule, but I have moved beyond the late nineteenth/early twentieth century boys' adventure novel stage.  When I was in seventh grade it was still going strong.  I read Stevenson, and Kipling, and Henty, and Alger, and all those guys voraciously.  And it really showed in my first attempt at fiction. Many of the other girls I knew told harrowing tales in which poor girls were abducted and made into slaves, etc.  I would not stoop to even writing about girls.  Hmph.

My family is very good friends--we may as well be relatives--with a family a few states away, and we often go to visit them in the summer.  There are three girls in that family and two (including myself) in mine.  As you can imagine, five girls do not get much sleep at night if they are together.  I am the eldest of this little company, so our week-long pajama party entertainment was often up to me.  The summer before seventh grade (so, when I was eleven) I told this harrowing tale over several nights, to such great acclaim that I went on to write it out in its current form:  (It's good to be the oldest!  Age has always been associated with wisdom, and to the 13 and under crowd, a year counts for an awful lot.)
 

 

 

( Tommy Holmes, Cabin Boy )

As my sister said when she reread it, it is sad that we can never recapture the joy of the actual telling.  But it's still a good memory, so I actually had a lot of fun rereading that story.  I don't think I've looked at it since eighth grade at the very latest!  I hope someone else gets a kick out of it as well.  :-)