A Spring Morning

He had missed the 7:30 bus by literally a couple of feet. The driver passed by John without remorse as he frantically sprinted to the curb waving his arms higher and faster than an air traffic controller. Now he had to wait at least 20 minutes for whenever the next bus would arrive going into Kansas City.

The air was cool and although the sunshine promised a clear day without rain, his gray wool cardigan with the wooden bowl buttons wasn’t enough to keep the chill from seeping in. John loved this sweater and wore it everyday. It was the one his son Keith had given him for his birthday last year.

No one waited with him there on the corner of Botano Avenue and Chestnut Street. No cars drove by either. The town was still asleep this Sunday morning. John sat down on the scratched up aluminum bench underneath the graffitied bus sign and stared out at the monotonous suburb neighborhood that stretched out before him. House, driveway, car. House driveway, car. House, driveway, car. The pattern was broken by an RV that jutted out onto the street.

He noticed a few feet away stood a naked tree that was sprouting red buds. It was the beginning of Spring yet John felt like winter. Up in the branches a clump of mud and sticks housed a little bird chirping loudly. Chirp. Chirp chirp.

John walked over to the tree to get a closer look.

“What’s the matter? You hungry?”

The bird started to chirp more furiously.

John thought about Keith and how this time last year they had found a little bird with a broken wing in their backyard. Keith had wanted his father to make the little bird stop crying. He asked his father to make him feel better. Although John was able to save the bird, he could not say the same for Keith.

He turned his head down to the floor and just as he was about to take a step, he stopped. Beneath him, on the concrete was a clump of lifeless fuzzy feathers and a beak. Just a baby bird, he must have fallen trying to leave the nest. John stared at the bird a moment and could see nothing else but its lifeless body. Behind him he could only the little bird’s cries. The sight of death again so soon made something in John snap and within seconds he was overwhelmed with feelings. He started sobbing uncontrollably and was paralyzed with sadness. He could not move, even for the 7:50 bus that whizzed by.

Analyzing Writing Style

So this week, I picked up a book to read for enjoyment, not at all related to school, and altough its not a fiction work, the writers (there are two) are hilarious. I literally laugh out loud reading what they write. They have this way of making the details so ridiculous--yet they are real and it makes it all the more interesting.

The book is called "The Ridiculous Race" about two guys in their thirties, who are comic writers for different television programs, who decide to race around the world without using airplanes. The first person who come back to LA wins the most expensive bottle of Scotch they can find in the city. The authors are Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran.

Here are some examples of the details that made me laugh out loud, the absurdity in truth.

Vali describing his companion/translator in Mexico:

" For starters, she was beautiful. I'm not great at describing people. so bear with me. She was somewhere between zero and twenty feet tall and h ad mocha-colored skin. She had either two eyes or two mouths. He hair was long, brown, and luxurious--like a brown Lamborghini. And her personality was even better than her looks. She was funny, smart, and sexy--like a slightly nicer brown Lamborghini. Once, while in mexico, a waiter made eye contact with me, pointed to Juliana, and then gave me a thumbs-up. "Craigslist," I mouthed back." (17)

" She was born and raised in Colombia, the most kidnap krazy country on Earth, with a kidnapping incidence of over 10 times its nearest competitor. I thought I felt a chill run down my spine, but it turned out to just be an ant. The incredibly high Colombian kidnapping rate meant there was a good chance that Juliana had kidnapped someone at least once before." (16)

Steve starting his trip by trying to find a ship to take him across the Pacific:

"With the help of the daring traveler's greatest friend, the Internet, I learned of a German company called NSB (short for Niederelbe Schiffahrtsgesellscaft Buxtehude, which at no point in my trip did I hear anyone pronounce.)" (31)

"Aside from trying on my snug, plush orange survival suit and getting a seat assigned in the lifeboat, Hanjin Athens seemed about as exciting as a giant floating Kinkos." (34)

Vali's attempt to buy a jetpack in Mexico to get across the Atlantic ocean:

"As he strapped the pinnacle of modern engineering to my bnack, he told me three things: 1) The jetpack can hold only thirty seconds worth of fuel. Adding more fuel makes the jetpack to heavy to take off. SO until another safe fuel with better weight to stored energy ratio can be found, thirty seconds in the max amount of time a jetpack will fly. It turns out that's why NASA abandoned its jetpack program. I asked Juan if it would take longer than thirty seconds to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. He said yes." (50)

Anyways, there are lots more examples, but I think its the seriousness or the "realness" of the ridiculous or tone that these writers use, that just makes it so funny.

'Unspectacular'

Here's the assignment that was due today:

Eggs for Breakfast

The day he died, grandma had made him eggs for breakfast. Usually she scrambled two and left them plain, and then grandpa would squeeze on half a bottle of ketchup himself. But this particular morning, grandma decided to melt some cheese and fry some turkey bacon (it was on sale that week), to put alongside his breakfast. The coffee wasn’t extra strong, but served the way it always was, with a dribble of milk and two spoons of sugar. (Grandpa liked his coffee the way he liked his conversation, light and sweet.) The morning paper’s headline shouted out nothing more spectacular than the day before, and the sun was shining just as brightly as any other April morning that week. Yet at precisely 8:14 am, grandpa’s heart stopped beating and so his breakfast went cold and had to be thrown away.