Wednesday, February 20, 2008

My attempt at a short story

It's no O. Henry or Roald Dahl, but may I present to you my first short story since sophomore year of high school? Pretty please? Well here it is:

The Man Whom Nothing Ever Happened To
a completely un-exhilarating story in second person

(I know the title isn't grammatically correct but I think it sounds pompous to say "The Man To Whom Nothing Ever Happened")

You knew this guy named Dale and nothing ever happened to him. Remember how he wore tapered blue jeans and flannel shirts like he still thought it was 1993? You couldn’t stand that. You kept wanting to say to him, “Hey, Dale, why don’t you try bootcuts or carpenters with a t-shirt once in a while?” but he was a quiet guy so you didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Besides, it wasn’t like he could afford a whole new wardrobe or anything – he wasn’t winning the lotto any time soon, since nothing ever happened to him. You knew he had a job because whenever you saw him Thursday nights at the Denny’s on 64th he was driving his work van, plus he never ditched out on the bill. But he also never splurged on pie for dessert, so although the money was there, there just wasn’t much of it. You, on the other hand, sometimes even ordered a milkshake. Once you got daring enough to order a Coke during dinner and a milkshake for dessert, but you had to pay for that later with 100 crunches and a 10 minute jog around your neighborhood. You saw Dale didn’t wear a wedding ring, so when you were seated next to him one day you asked him why he never brought his wife out to dinner. He looked up at you as though he’d never wanted to get up the courage to talk with you before and said, “Don’t have one,” then went back to eating his dinner waffle. Of course he wasn’t married – nothing ever happened to him. Then that next Thursday you purposely sat next to him and struck up a conversation about how you were going to go out dancing that weekend and would he like to go along, but he politely refused you. Remember that? You were so sure that you could break his habits, but he told you that he just liked to watch MacGyver reruns with his dog on Friday nights. So you suggested Saturday, but he had to wash his hair. After he left abruptly you mused that perhaps nothing ever happened to him because he never did anything. To be fair, though, it wasn’t actually true that you were going dancing – how could you without a partner? You weren’t going to get stuck with some giant greaseball who last applied deodorant in November. But if Dale would have come along then you could have found somewhere to dance. Determined to change him, you ran out to your car (you had already paid the bill) and set out to follow him. What were you going to do if you caught up with him? He was leaning up against his van, smoking a cigarette and he saw you running out right away. You couldn’t play it off like you were late for something because earlier in the conversation you admitted that you weren’t doing anything that night, so you had to say something. “Hey – I didn’t catch your name,” you declared. That’s when you found out his name was Dale, but he didn’t ask for yours. He never came back to Denny’s after that. So what? Nothing ever happened to him so why should you care? Maybe nothing ever happened to you, but at least you updated your wardrobe and ordered a milkshake every once in a while, right? And you’ll go dancing tomorrow night, with or without a partner.

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