The Weird and The Wacky Meet

Where YouBetIAm comes to write….

Creative Non-Fiction Exercise

This is just a random bit from a creative non-fiction exercise we did.   It’s based on the story of a classmate and I really liked what I was able to do with her tale.  Since I wrote it, it’s been banging around in my head, and I’d like to take it further.

 

 

My clothes are on fire.

 

Luckily I’m not in them.  Maybe not the best way to begin a story, but it certainly grabs your attention; I mean it would grab mine.  When I saw my jeans, shirts, and underwear in flames I don’t even realize that they were mine.  I thought that my uncle had just lit a bag of trash on fire in the middle of the living room.

 

I am the type of person who will make a bad joke at this point and say, “Hmmm, I wonder what this says about what I think about my wardrobe.”

 

Still, it’s upsetting, and I feel myself hurling myself down the stairs, as if I am not even there.  It’s not registering, very little is registering.  All I knew is I wouldn’t give my uncle money for his coke habit.  I’m young, I don’t have any money.  Where does he think I could get money?  And now he’s kicking me out.

 

It feels like an eternity, but it’s really just an instant that he’s crying.  Just another in a long line of apologies that I’ve had to accept.  It feels like a real apology.

 

My uncle offers to steal me new clothes.

 

I wish I could make another joke here.  But I can’t.  I think there is some absurdity in his words though.  “You like Abercrombie, right?”

 

Copyright 2005

by Amanda Evans

Date: 04/19/05