I’m going to stare at the candle all night long.
Look! Did the candle blow out? No. It’s still lit. And, there’s another one lit! Uh-oh! We don’t have any more candles after that second one is lit. We’re going to have to light a match.
I HOPE THERE’S NOT A MONSTER IN OUR HOME!
Are we inside a cave? Or are we at home? OR ARE WE AT HOME AND THERE’S A BEAR IN OUR HOUSE? Tough question, you know. Are there bears in here, because they might pop out and catch us. RUN! IT’S A BEAR! We have to drive at the highest speed mark.
Is the bear behind us? Or is it in the trunk? THERE’S A BEAR IN THE TRUNK! HELP! Could someone call Animal Control? “I don’t have a phone,” said Daddy. “Neither do I,” said Mommy. Harper said, “I do.” So she handed the phone to Mommy and she quickly dialed.
Finally, Animal Control came. They took the bear out of the trunk and Mommy, Daddy, Meredith, and Harper jumped out of the car. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>
I think those mushrooms you ate were bad…..
It’s all Meredith. I had absolutely nothing to do with it!
Awesome!
whoa! excellent use of a variety of punctuation marks Meredith! Did I somehow miss “Staring at the Candle, Part I”?
I followed it right up until everyone jumped out of the car after animal control took the bear out of the trunk. I mean, ifthe bear’s no longer in the trunk, why leave the car? And what about the candle?
WHAT ABOUT THE CANDLE?!?!
Julie—Jeff took dictation. Most of the punctuation is his. (Meredith has no patience for writing out her own stories. She tends to pace around the room and yell them out sentence by sentence.)
Sir—Part III will probably include a lesson about the dangers of leaving lit candles unsupervised. Also, I’m almost positive that Animal Control cannot keep this bear contained. Someone is going to die. (We’re going to have to light a match.)
Now that I imagine the author pacing and yelling, I think I like this story even more than I did upon my initial reading.
I hope she concludes her stories like she concludes her songs: with a dramatic slide across the kitchen floor.
She’s Gertrude Stein for the younger generation.
I think she should try her hand at haikus next!
And here I thought this was some sort of cryptic report on how Meredith felt during a power outage that you might have experienced. All the required elements were there – – candles, no phones, darkness. Silly me. Glad it’s just fiction.
Margaret Atwood wrote a book – I believe it’s Lady Oracle – in which the main character gets her first poem out of an ‘automatic writing’ experience that involves staring at a candle and writing while looking into a mirror…
I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the blog. I felt she found my letters and read each one out loud. I prayed that she would finish but she just kept right on. She wrote as if she knew me in all my dark despair. And then she looked right through me as if I wasn’t there. But she just kept on writing, writing clear and strong.
That Meredith, telling my whole life with her words…
Oh my that sounds just like the kind of story my now 16 year old used to tell when her older sister was in kindergarten. My mother used to write them down in short-hand. I still have them in her baby book – they were so hysterical!
I love young child imaginations and excitement in telling a story!