Read this short story from Elliot Perlman today in class. Liked it a lot and wanna share it with you guys. It has a sad feel to it toward the end. The boy in the story loves dinosaurs (just like me. I like the T-rax most though) Anyway here goes:
Nicholas doesn't remember anything. He was still a baby, really. There's no point even asking him. I have to remember it all myself. Nicholas had just stopped wetting his bed. We lived in the flats near the chocolate factory. Standing in the street at night, you could smell the chocolate cooking. Dad and I would go for a walk while Mum was getting Nicholas ready for bed. Sometimes the wind would take the chocolate into the flats and I could smell it from our room. When I went to bed Dad would read me a story and turn the light out. I'd close my eyes and, with dinosaurs in my head, I would sniff in the chocolate till I was asleep. (I always breath through my nose so that nothing gets into my mouth without my knowing it. Bill Economou from upstairs once swallowed a fly in his sleep. He said his window was open. He was dreaming about chocolate.)
The books dad and I read were always about dinosaurs. I couldn't get enough of them. At that time I wanted to be a dinosaur scientist when I grew up. Dad said he thought it wasn't a bad idea and that i was well on my way already. He said it beats making shoes in a shoe factory, which is what he did. I think he had a fair amount of respect for dinosaurs too.
The first dinosaurs lived on earth more than two hundred million years ago and you can't even imagine how things were for them. I tried to imagine them in Australia, because there were dinosaurs before Captain Cook and the Aborigines or anything you can see around now. They weren't stupid, either, like what people think. Bill Economou said they had to be stupid because they became extinct, but he couldn't come up with another group of backboned animals that lived on Earth for more than a hundred and sixty million years. The facts stared him in the face.
Dad calls me Luke but my full name is Lucas. Once i told Bill Economou that I was named after a dinosaur, the Lukosaurus. I think that shut him up for a while. The Lukosaurus lived in southern China and was two meters long, not counting his horns. A couple of weeks later Bill Economou came downstairs to our flat all of a sudden, knocked on the door and accouned to Mum, Nicholas and me that he was named after a dinosaur too, the Billosaurus. I told him that there was no such dinosaur but he said there was. Mum shirked it the way mums do. She said she hadn't heard of the Billosaurus but there might be a dinosaur called that. I went to Nicholas's and my room to get the books. There was no such dinosaur. I would've known about it if there were.
Bill Economou said it was a Greek dinosaur and that I wouldn't know about it. That's when Mum laughed. Nicholas doesn't remember this of course. Then she said that maybe it was a Greek name for a dinosaur and would he like some cordial. Bill Economou never says no if you offer him something. Mum should've known that. It was probably his sister who told him to say that about a Billosaurus. It didn't sound like something he'd think of on his own.
Bill Economou has two sisters, two brothers and his mum and dad. One sister, Mary is the oldest and the other is almost too young to talk. His brothers, Con and Nick, are older than him too. Nick used to play cricken with us for a while bu then he stopped. I usually keep away from Con. I think Bill Economou does too. Mr Economou likes to get you in a headlock. It's not so bad sometimes. The Economous live directly above us and we hear them. Mum says we don't need to watch TV on one of their good nights. They don't sound like TV. I don't know why she says that.
Mary Economou fights with Mr. Economou. Sometimes Bill Economou invites me up if it's a good one. She's seventeen and still cries. She yells at him in English and he yells back in Greek. I hear a lot of Greek words from Mr. and Mrs. Economou, nearly every day. Never heard Billsaurus, though. Bill Economou says Mary's boyfriend always makes Mr Economou shout in Greek even when he's not there. He can often predict when it will start. The bes tones were when Mary wanted to leave school and when the police came asking for as soon as he saw the police car pull up in front of our block. He did the right thing.
Bill Economou was in the same class as me at school. He had always copied me in lots of things but tried not to let me know. I always knew sooner or later. Earlier in the year we did a couple of projects together, but Mrs. Nesbitt knew that I'd done most of the work. Bill Economou was even a bad colorer. Lines meant nothing to him. I was actually pleased when Mrs. Nesbitt said Bill Economou and I had to do one project each. I don't think he should've asked why. Later he agreed with me about this.
Of course I chose dinosaurs. I had big plans. I knew my project would take days and days, some days just for thinking. There were more than three hundred and forty types of dinosaurs. I knew I couldn't handle them all. I didn't actually like them all. As well as the Lukosaurus, I liked the Tyrannosaurus, the Branchiosaurus and the stegosaurus best. My favorite period was the Cretaceous period. This was the heyday for dinosaurs. There must have been hundreds of different kinds of dinosaurs just roaming around chomping on things during the Cretaceous period. Mum said this was my Cretaceous period. I asked dad when his was. He said it was before he was married. He must've eaten a lot then. Dad's a big man and when he's hungry there's no stopping him. Mum said that before they were married there was no stopping him.
I had figured out that some kids would just do lots of drawings of something and call that their project. Others would copy out slabs from a book and call that their project. These projects would be all right, they might even get two or three red ticks or even a silver star. But I wanted a gold for my dinosaurs. One gold star was my personal best. I wanted to beat it. It had got to where red ticks meant nothing to me. Mrs. Nesbitt was giving them to sucks for behavior and to milky girls for a chart of "The Fruits We Eat." Dad said that dinosaurs would be hard because there were not pictures of them in magazines to cut out. Mum tried to get me to swap my dairy products but I just couldn't. You don't get a gold for pictures of milk. It had to be dinosaurs. Dad said he admired me, which was good I thought. He said, "Luke, I admire you."
I had decided to write out my own theory of why dinosaurs became extinct and to do a drawing of the Lukasaurus. Then Dad gave me a great idea. He suggested making cardboard cutouts of different types of dinosaurs. He said I could fit the dinosaur cutouts into slits in the top of an upside-down box. Then I could move each dinosaur in a different slit to show how slowly they must've moved and which ones came first after the beginning of the Earth. This was a great idea. It could get me a gold. It probably would. Mrs. Nesbitt would never have seen anything like this in her life. Dad said he would bring some shoeboxes and cardboard offcuts for me from work. I asked him not to say anything about it in front of Bill Economou.
*now to end with my favorite paragraph of the story . I'll finish up the story soon :) End of part 1 and Time for work! :)*
Dad gave me the idea on one of our chocolate walks. I was pleased he hadn't tried to talk me out of dinosaurs and into dairy products. He didn't like milk much. I've never seen him drink it. He said he'd drink it if it was on tap. Then he laughed and lifted me up high in the air. I was way above his head in those hands at the end of his thick arms, sort of near the moon. He held me up there for a good while in the chocolate wind and we didn't speak. His arms didn't waver so I was perfectly still in the air. Only the sky moved, just enough to give tiny shakes to the stars. That was the last chocolate walk we had. I don't remember a chocolate wind much after that, either.
Nicholas doesn't remember anything. He was still a baby, really. There's no point even asking him. I have to remember it all myself. Nicholas had just stopped wetting his bed. We lived in the flats near the chocolate factory. Standing in the street at night, you could smell the chocolate cooking. Dad and I would go for a walk while Mum was getting Nicholas ready for bed. Sometimes the wind would take the chocolate into the flats and I could smell it from our room. When I went to bed Dad would read me a story and turn the light out. I'd close my eyes and, with dinosaurs in my head, I would sniff in the chocolate till I was asleep. (I always breath through my nose so that nothing gets into my mouth without my knowing it. Bill Economou from upstairs once swallowed a fly in his sleep. He said his window was open. He was dreaming about chocolate.)
The books dad and I read were always about dinosaurs. I couldn't get enough of them. At that time I wanted to be a dinosaur scientist when I grew up. Dad said he thought it wasn't a bad idea and that i was well on my way already. He said it beats making shoes in a shoe factory, which is what he did. I think he had a fair amount of respect for dinosaurs too.
The first dinosaurs lived on earth more than two hundred million years ago and you can't even imagine how things were for them. I tried to imagine them in Australia, because there were dinosaurs before Captain Cook and the Aborigines or anything you can see around now. They weren't stupid, either, like what people think. Bill Economou said they had to be stupid because they became extinct, but he couldn't come up with another group of backboned animals that lived on Earth for more than a hundred and sixty million years. The facts stared him in the face.
Dad calls me Luke but my full name is Lucas. Once i told Bill Economou that I was named after a dinosaur, the Lukosaurus. I think that shut him up for a while. The Lukosaurus lived in southern China and was two meters long, not counting his horns. A couple of weeks later Bill Economou came downstairs to our flat all of a sudden, knocked on the door and accouned to Mum, Nicholas and me that he was named after a dinosaur too, the Billosaurus. I told him that there was no such dinosaur but he said there was. Mum shirked it the way mums do. She said she hadn't heard of the Billosaurus but there might be a dinosaur called that. I went to Nicholas's and my room to get the books. There was no such dinosaur. I would've known about it if there were.
Bill Economou said it was a Greek dinosaur and that I wouldn't know about it. That's when Mum laughed. Nicholas doesn't remember this of course. Then she said that maybe it was a Greek name for a dinosaur and would he like some cordial. Bill Economou never says no if you offer him something. Mum should've known that. It was probably his sister who told him to say that about a Billosaurus. It didn't sound like something he'd think of on his own.
Bill Economou has two sisters, two brothers and his mum and dad. One sister, Mary is the oldest and the other is almost too young to talk. His brothers, Con and Nick, are older than him too. Nick used to play cricken with us for a while bu then he stopped. I usually keep away from Con. I think Bill Economou does too. Mr Economou likes to get you in a headlock. It's not so bad sometimes. The Economous live directly above us and we hear them. Mum says we don't need to watch TV on one of their good nights. They don't sound like TV. I don't know why she says that.
Mary Economou fights with Mr. Economou. Sometimes Bill Economou invites me up if it's a good one. She's seventeen and still cries. She yells at him in English and he yells back in Greek. I hear a lot of Greek words from Mr. and Mrs. Economou, nearly every day. Never heard Billsaurus, though. Bill Economou says Mary's boyfriend always makes Mr Economou shout in Greek even when he's not there. He can often predict when it will start. The bes tones were when Mary wanted to leave school and when the police came asking for as soon as he saw the police car pull up in front of our block. He did the right thing.
Bill Economou was in the same class as me at school. He had always copied me in lots of things but tried not to let me know. I always knew sooner or later. Earlier in the year we did a couple of projects together, but Mrs. Nesbitt knew that I'd done most of the work. Bill Economou was even a bad colorer. Lines meant nothing to him. I was actually pleased when Mrs. Nesbitt said Bill Economou and I had to do one project each. I don't think he should've asked why. Later he agreed with me about this.
Of course I chose dinosaurs. I had big plans. I knew my project would take days and days, some days just for thinking. There were more than three hundred and forty types of dinosaurs. I knew I couldn't handle them all. I didn't actually like them all. As well as the Lukosaurus, I liked the Tyrannosaurus, the Branchiosaurus and the stegosaurus best. My favorite period was the Cretaceous period. This was the heyday for dinosaurs. There must have been hundreds of different kinds of dinosaurs just roaming around chomping on things during the Cretaceous period. Mum said this was my Cretaceous period. I asked dad when his was. He said it was before he was married. He must've eaten a lot then. Dad's a big man and when he's hungry there's no stopping him. Mum said that before they were married there was no stopping him.
I had figured out that some kids would just do lots of drawings of something and call that their project. Others would copy out slabs from a book and call that their project. These projects would be all right, they might even get two or three red ticks or even a silver star. But I wanted a gold for my dinosaurs. One gold star was my personal best. I wanted to beat it. It had got to where red ticks meant nothing to me. Mrs. Nesbitt was giving them to sucks for behavior and to milky girls for a chart of "The Fruits We Eat." Dad said that dinosaurs would be hard because there were not pictures of them in magazines to cut out. Mum tried to get me to swap my dairy products but I just couldn't. You don't get a gold for pictures of milk. It had to be dinosaurs. Dad said he admired me, which was good I thought. He said, "Luke, I admire you."
I had decided to write out my own theory of why dinosaurs became extinct and to do a drawing of the Lukasaurus. Then Dad gave me a great idea. He suggested making cardboard cutouts of different types of dinosaurs. He said I could fit the dinosaur cutouts into slits in the top of an upside-down box. Then I could move each dinosaur in a different slit to show how slowly they must've moved and which ones came first after the beginning of the Earth. This was a great idea. It could get me a gold. It probably would. Mrs. Nesbitt would never have seen anything like this in her life. Dad said he would bring some shoeboxes and cardboard offcuts for me from work. I asked him not to say anything about it in front of Bill Economou.
*now to end with my favorite paragraph of the story . I'll finish up the story soon :) End of part 1 and Time for work! :)*
Dad gave me the idea on one of our chocolate walks. I was pleased he hadn't tried to talk me out of dinosaurs and into dairy products. He didn't like milk much. I've never seen him drink it. He said he'd drink it if it was on tap. Then he laughed and lifted me up high in the air. I was way above his head in those hands at the end of his thick arms, sort of near the moon. He held me up there for a good while in the chocolate wind and we didn't speak. His arms didn't waver so I was perfectly still in the air. Only the sky moved, just enough to give tiny shakes to the stars. That was the last chocolate walk we had. I don't remember a chocolate wind much after that, either.
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