Why I was Not Born to Write: A Sea Full of Stories: chapter one

My friend Vanessa (of Pizza Beard fame) recently said that she couldn't recall me having a penchant for writing when we were in elementary school. That's because I didn't have one.

Behold, A Sea full of Stories:

(See those 'a's? Total poseur 'a's. I never wrote
them like that but thought you were cool if you did.)

A Sea full of Stories is an anthology of marine-based shorts written in the 4th grade. It begins with "A Whale of a Tale."

Told from the perspective of Snowflake the whale, it's the heart-warming tale of--oh, wait. Shit, wrong story---this story isn't heart-warming at all.

Nope. The opening story of this collection is a gruesome first-person account of drowning at the hands---or fins, rather---of mega flaky friends.

Let's dissect (click to read):

1)

Not above freezing, not below freezing, but about below freezing. Good use of estimation: the tone has been set to ominous.

2)

Ideally, these names should be read in a slow, solemn voice for cinematic effect. All together now:

Ice.
Ice Hole.
Snowflake.
(pause)
I'm Snowflake.


3)

Haha, dumb whale. "Wer'e." He doesn't even know how to punctuate. And, if his only hope is a small breathing hole, which is getting smaller and smaller each day, and he's pretty sure that they'll all die, why the hanging around? But I will give him credit for explaining, in the midst of his dramatic narrative, that they're stuck only because of a freak aberrance of seasonal ice coverage.


4)

Whoa.


5)

Hmm. Let's turn to the illustration for help:

It's not clear why the Inuits are making holes in the ice, or why they're making 24 of them. That's a high number for what we can assume is an extremely tedious task. The larger of the two men looks appropriately pissed, while the other slightly bemused. Possibly because his ice pick resembles something else. In any case, it seems that they're either making holes for ice fishing or, as we might deduce from the events in this story, a strangely designed, needlessly labor intensive and drawn-out method for trapping whales who have chosen to loiter instead of heed the call of evolutionary survival instincts. Even when their skin is visibly swollen and bleeding.

6)

Cherishing the freedom of your friends, even when your friends are savages and leave you to die at the tenth hole? Snowflake, you are a true martyr. Albeit one who doesn't spell well and forgets to close his quotes.

What grad fish has to do with any of this, I'm not sure.