Thursday, June 5, 2014

TBT ~ story skeleton

My son with his first grandchild, a couple of years ago.
In a boxful of my children's artwork and school work, I found an undated "fill in the blanks" story outline to guide children's creativity at school.  The mimeographed sheet, with its purple ink, was titled A STORY SKELETON.  I don't know how old my son was when he wrote this, but he could print well (so was probably not in the first grade), but had not yet learned cursive.  Maybe second grade?
One day I met a boy called___Charlie Crabbtree.  He said he lives on 66 Avenue.  That's about a block from where I used live.

He was walking with a friend who was___about seven years older than I was.  They were carring something that was in a giant paper sack.

I said to them,___ "What in the world is in that paper sack"  they did't say a thing.  So I asked again.

But all they replied was,___"None of your buissness kid.  So I knock him flat.  They started to run away.

After they left I saw that they had dropped___thier giant paper sack

I didn't know what to do with it, so I___ took it home.

That was foolish because suddenly___ I opened sack and a thousand WASPS CAME AFTER ME.

The only thing I could do was___run for my life.  One stung me on the leg.  I couldn't run more.  I asked Charlie to take his wasps back.  He said he wouldn't.  The wasps went back to thier nest.  And that is the end of that.
I think I detect too much television in the "knock him flat" sentence.  The old Saturday morning cartoons, 40-some years ago, were all about violence, which has only gotten worse over the years.  The spelling and punctuation, by the way, were left just as my son laboriously printed this story.

1 comment:

Susan Tidwell said...

I love this idea, and look at the imagination it brought out in your son!