My Mom's Stuck in Her COMPUTER!!!

So, it’s March Break and I have more free time, and so…more blogging! My previous post was only a few days ago at the beginning of this week, but this one is centered around a children’s story. (The other post was for adults, one entry down. Check it out if you like.) 

THE COMPUTER

The story I’m putting up this time is called The Computer. It’s a draft for a picture book and while it could be fixed up a bit, I kind of like where it’s at right now too. Anyways, it’s a story about a boy whose mom gets stuck inside her computer monitor for a day, and it’s about the process of dealing with this and trying to get her out.

                                                The Computer by Victoria Simpson

     Juan’s mom was typing that day. Typing, and typing and typing. Clickety-clickety, klackety-klackety, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack-CLICK! Juan was worried. If his mom worked any LONGER, her hands might become part of the keyboard and her eyes could grow into two big, round saucers that never blinked, like an alien’s. And this would be a problem. 

“We’re supposed to go swimming,” Juan said. He loved the pool. “When can we GO?” he asked, and peered over the screen. 

 “Just give me another minute,” said his mom. “I’m almost finished.”

  Well, Juan knew that it was never just ONE minute- it was always at least twenty or thirty- and so he went into the living room and turned on the T.V. Nothing much was on-it was a Saturday afternoon. He picked up a robot he’d been working on that was lying on the couch and fiddled with the arm that was falling off. He stuck the legs out so it looked like a star. And then something terrible happened. It was horrible. Juan heard a terrible sound and it made him feel awful. There was a great big, wide, long… g-g-GLOOOOMP! And then a… KERRR-runka-runka-runka-runka-CHUNK! It was a loud sound, with gnashing teeth. And then there was a scream- “AAAAHHHHH!!” He dashed down the hallway and rounded the corner. He threw open the door. The computer had eaten his mom.

                                                                    

 He threw his hands up in the air.  

  “Well, that’s just GREAT!” he said. “How the heck am I going to get to the pool NOW?” 

 But then he felt a bit bad because his mom DID look really uncomfortable. Her face was squished right up in the corners of the screen. What a way to ruin a day. 

“Can you hear me, Mom??” Juan asked. But Mrs. Gonzalez just raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

  

Well, Juan didn’t know what to do. He’d once seen a person get their hand caught in the disk drive, but he’d never seen anyone swallowed right up. And so, he pressed ‘enter’.  He turned everything off and then he turned it all back on again. He found a number and phoned the computer company and he tried to make a deal for some answers, but nothing worked. It cost fifty-three dollars and no one could help. And so, after saying, “I’m sorry, Mom,” instead of wasting a big sunny day inside, he put on his jacket and went next door to find his friend Billy. 

 

  “How’s it going?” Billy asked. He was leaning against the door frame, looking out at the park.  

 

  “It’s ok,” answered Juan-but he kept his eyes on his feet, looking pretty glum. 

  “I’d ask you inside, but my sister’s got her friends over,” said Billy. 

  “That’s ok, I don’t really want to go inside, anyways,” Juan answered. Billy looked at his friend. 

  “Is something the matter?” And Juan didn’t know how to say it. 

  “The computer ate my mom,” he mumbled. And to his surprise, Billy nodded. His friend knew what it was like. 

  “The phone ate my dad once,” he said. “He went right through the receiver. He was gone for a really long time. It was almost two weeks.” Billy shrugged and gave a sigh. “I guess it was a really long conversation.” Juan shrugged too.  

  “You want to ride bikes and go over to the big hill? We could race between the swings and slides, or even go between the pine trees.” 

 “Sure,” said Billy. And the wind whipped up and off they went.

  They flew over the dirt and curved by the fountain on the path. The mist sprayed their faces like an ocean breaking on the rocks. And when they reached the open space, Juan put his bike down on the grass and Billy zoomed over to the slides. 

  “Let’s go back and forth seventeen times!” Billy said. And so they did. And then he said, “We could do anything.” They climbed up the trees. They put out fires and ran in the castle. They carved new swords. And then Juan looked down from a bridge and said, 

  “Let’s go for a trip on the ocean.”

Well, it sounded like a good idea, but Billy wasn’t sure. 

  “How can we run a whole ship when there’s only just the two of us?” His friend gave a pause. 

  “Just watch,” Juan said. And he raised his hands and put out a call. Everyone came over. Billy and Juan became Captain Ronald and Pirate Pete, and the sailors built a mighty ship. They worked very hard-they crossed the waters and slew angry dragons, and then when it was time and everyone was tired, all the pirates got twenty-seven weeks of vacation.

  Which was very nice. 

But with all their time, they decided to do more. And so, they sailed off to India. They went to Australia. They saw beaches with coconuts and carnivals with clowns, and they even felt the whistling ice of the North Pole. “Vacation is fun!” someone said in the sun.

 

  And Juan said, “Yes. No one should ever have to work. Ever.”  

  “But maybe just enough to make a boat-” said his friend. 

  “Perhaps,” said Juan.

  And then they sailed home.

  As the long shadows of the afternoon came down, it was time to go in. And so, they put their sticks in a pile by the tree for the next time, because sometimes it’s the simple things. 

 The boys crossed the park. Billy put his bike back on the porch.  “Are you sure you’ll be all right? With your mom and all?” he asked. 

  “Yeah,” said Juan. “We’ll figure it out.” And they both said goodbye.

 Juan walked in gently through the hallways. His dad was asleep in his chair. He tiptoed back towards the study. And he felt unhappy because he still couldn’t see his mom. But then he remembered that sometimes, it IS the simple things. All of this traveling had given him an idea. He opened the door and went to the computer. It was the one thing that he hadn’t done yet. He tried it. He pressed ‘PRINT’. And Juan was right-out popped Mrs. Gonzalez. She gave a big, big stretch. 

  “Thanks so much dear, it was sure getting stuffy inside. Was I in there all day?” she asked. 

  “Almost,” said Juan. And he gave her her hat and she gave him a hug. “Come on, let’s go,” he said. “It’s a big wide world out there.” 

  “Good thinking,” said his mom. And they went outside.

                                                                      

                                           

 

FILES FROM THE PAST

Hi. I haven’t done anything in a while. I’ll re-phrase that: I haven’t done anything directly related to this blog. And so, finally, here we are.

The truth is, I’ve gotten side-tracked and gone back to working on a short story for adults that I began a while back, maybe a year ago. As in many projects, I had the beginning of something but I wasn’t sure which mountain top to take the story to in order to continue it. (I’ve been avoiding mountain tops of late but it’s probably time to start climbing-I do hear that’s where the best view is, haha...) 

Anyways, after critique dinners with friends, fried chicken, and lattes with hipsters, I’ve decided to give the rest of the work a try. It's funny how some projects need to lie in waiting for quite a while before we can get the right amount of courage to continue them. 

I'm sharing the writing, here- the intro. Please feel free to read it and provide any kind of feedback you like.

I hope you enjoy it. It’s the beginning of a tale about Axl Rose and his quest to better the world by giving out free cheese cakes. And it’s about enlightenment in Toronto.

Here's a summary:

Direct and to-the-point, Lilly’s leadership and trailblazing skills have served her well, leading her far away from the sticks and tumbleweeds of hick town. The traffic lights of Toronto’s city streets now make her happy and she plans to keep it that way- what with a sane, faithful husband at her side, a bottle of filtered reverse-osmosis water on her desk, and a pair of feet planted firmly in the international downtown business world. Life couldn’t be a happier thing. Her family's bewildering antics and hippiness are well out of reach. But all of that's about to change when a new adventure sets in, with an aim to bring all the craziness back. And it all starts backwards- with dessert first.

   

                             *                                     *                                 *

                                                         Some Dessert 

                                                                                        

                                                                               by 

                                                                  Victoria Simpson

     “Hey, who brought the cheese cake?”

     Tom was sitting with his feet up on the desk near the printer, when a tall woman in a smart orange blouse marched around the corner, ready for her morning. Lilly stopped short in her tracks and visibly brought her mind to the present situation.

     “What cheesecake?”

     A blank.

     “The one that’s sitting there, next to your husband,” said Tom. He made a nod towards her desk.

Lilly put her laptop and attaché case down on the chair in her cubicle and went over to the box that was sitting beside a framed photo of Greg, her husband, that had been taken hang gliding over fields off the escarpment in southern Ontario, last summer. The box had a neat pink bow tied around it and a triangular sticker. Pink and blue- a classical font. It read: “Kurry’s Kitchen-Proper Cakes since 1889.”

     “It was here when I got here,” said Tom. He shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d come in early or something. O.K! So, here’s to another glowing round of who can underscore Walter’s prices first and put Strathcome out to sea before lunch, having them begging..BEGGING for…”

 Lilly turned the box around and picked it up. It was heavy-heavier than a bunt at least, and much more solid. She placed it back down.

     “Well, who put it here?” she asked, her back to Tom.

     “No idea, my friend. C’est un mystere. Why ME askin’ CHEW.”

     Lilly hesitated.

     “But was anyone in the area? Someone must have seen someone.”

     “Nada. No clue,” said Tom. He started in on his computer. A small envelope lay behind the cake, close to Lilly’s electric pencil sharpener and she hadn’t seen it before. And so, she picked it up and opened it.

     “Dear Madam,” it read. It was scripted in Word; an Edwardian font. Not hand-done, but Lilly could appreciate the fancy curls and swirls, nonetheless. She continued:

     “Good morning. You are the recipient of my twenty-fifth cheesecake. We’re on a bit of a trial        

      run, and trying cherry this time. I’m starting a campaign on embracing the ‘sweeter things’ in     

      life and cheesecakes are first on my list. Basically, I feel that the world needs to slow down

     and savour what it’s got. I’ll see you soon to find out how it went.

     Eat slowly,

     Sincerely,

     Axl Rose

                                        

Lilly closed the card. She wasn’t sure, entirely, WHO Axl Rose was. She knew he was in a band, one of those heavy metal ones, big rock sounds- head wraps, long hair, lots of black on their posters, that sort of thing-but, when put on the spot, she didn’t know really exactly where he fell. But she felt safer now about opening the box, even if it could have been a rather false sense of security. A tad bit more snuggly. (Was Axl Rose snuggly?)

     “You know, I was thinkin’ you know, what if it’s a BOMB-“ said Tom. He chuckled and kept on typing.

     “You open it…and KAPOW!! All of us are blown to smithereens,” he laughed more loosely. “Yowsers! All of that for a cheesecake!”

     Lilly ignored him. Standing next to the box, she felt a closer kinship with Aerosmith or Guns’n Roses, or Metallica. She cut the seal with her nail.

     “You want some? It’s cherry.” She lifted the lid and took a lick with her finger. Mmmm…rich and creamy.

     Tom failed to turn around but logged quickly into Facebook.

     “Wow-O.K-! Umm…no thanks. There’s always poison.”

     As a hungry employee who’d skipped yet another breakfast, Lilly felt differently. She took the dessert from the box and cleared a space for it on the metal filing cabinet and let the

sweetness of sugar and vanilla creep upwards for a moment, spreading itself out in the air and caressing her nostrils with the slightest wave of enduring aroma.

     She took a serviette from her drawer and with the help of a ruler, (which had never in its desk life, actually, as of yet been used,) Lilly cut a small sliver from the pie and placed it neatly on the napkin in her hand. She broke off the end and tasted it. A tangy sweetness; a bit of zest mixed with cheese and waves of custard-filled dreams inundated the senses like a welcome spring meandering through town on a hot Iowa afternoon. The experience wafted down her throat, massaging the esophagus as it went.

    And that’s when he appeared. And not as Lilly had expected. He didn’t jump up from the product development department or come forth from the hallway planter, oozing out from the tangled ferns and the dying bamboo. Nope. He simply sauntered gently around the corner. He admitted later that, in fact, in future circumstances, yes, he would provide more time for reflection. It was difficult for the recipient to give any kind of detailed feedback on the food with such a small window of opportunity to taste. But she’d swallowed, and there he was.

Axel. Or rather, Axl.

     “Hey there, m’lady- how was it?” he’d asked. Lilly’d searched her mind for an answer.

     “It was rockin’….man,” she replied. As if trying to fit in-crowds and crowds of Axl Rose.

     “No, but the cherry- you know, did it come across?” he’d sounded uncertain. “Because we’ve

 been trying a new recipe, and”- Lilly had cut him off, words come tumbling out.

      “It was fantastic! It was wonderful. It was- I’ve never had such fruit

sensations...It was as if-”

And that was all it took. Over the course of a conversation and through the simplest mention of orange rind, not only did what some would type-cast as the best entertainer of all time meet

Des Moines’ top project manager of 2009, but it was at this point that a particular path was begun for both. A path down which there would be a simultaneous discovery-in different rooms, and in different time zones, mind you, but a discovery nonetheless-of one of life’s little mysteries. Which could solidly be classified as the divine connection they both shared through Great Aunt Helga.