FOR NOVEMBER’S FLASHBACK FRIDAY, HERE IS AN EARLIER POST FEATURING A NARRATIVE FROM MY TEEN YEARS:

This was a short piece, a narrative I wrote in undergraduate school.  I found it when clearing out an old file folder, and thought it might be worth sharing.

We had taken inventory at Woolworth’s that night, and I was late coming home from work.  I dragged myself upstairs, prepared to face high school homework, and tiptoed through the room where my twelve year old brother was sleeping  and into my own attic bedroom.  Dad had divided the attic between us and had done a good job converting it to bedrooms. The paint on the walls was battleship grey, appropriated from the Naval Base, and the door between our rooms was a few inches too short for the frame, allowing heat from the register to heat both rooms.

I lay down to sleep and was immediately startled by a rustling noise that sounded like crumpled paper scratching across the linoleum.  The noise seemed to be coming from under the bed!  I had been terrified about the idea of mice ever since at the age of nine, one had tried to make a nest in my long hair in this very room. Turning on the bedside light, I searched quickly, not really wanting to find anything. My heart sickened as I lay down and turned out the light again when the noise resumed. This time I leaped far clear of the bed, unfolded the double bed spread on the twin bed, and kneeling peered under the bed itself.  I almost had my nose snipped off by an old snapping turtle!  MICHAEL MARION MASON, I yelled at my brother, come get your snapping turtle out from under my bed!

Mother said she heard us both barrel down the stairs, then Mike with no explanation to anyone, opened the side door and threw something frisbee-shaped out.  Poor me.  Poor turtle. Poor confused parents. Lucky Mike, for he received no punishment.