Not a longform sports story
November 14, 2012 § 2 Comments
Unrecognized dead silence and then annoying interruption as the alarm clock sounds at 6:59 am. It’s time to wake up, it’s time to wake up, it’s time to wake up in the morning. Kenneth lumbers out of bed, silences the alarm, and walks past the large empty bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that he had finished the night before. It’s Wednesday.
Days simply go by and the routine rarely changes. Kenneth can look back on his life and reminisce on the good times and the bad times, but he knows that the two are rarely any different. Rather than “good” or “bad,” his life just has times and then those times begin to blur together. Even at this moment as he writes this, he knows that this is now but later on it will be before and that earlier it was “in awhile” and then he even gets to this word and it wasn’t now anymore, it was then.
Kenneth shakes his head like a Yahtzee cup, he’s so confused after what he just wrote.
However, he needs to do something to provide less consistency in his life. Consistency leads to complacency and complacency is something that should only be reserved for school and work. If you’re complacent in every day life however, you’re ready to just give up. Kenneth doesn’t want to give up, he wants to move forward. He wants to advance, to pursue his dreams and reach his goals. That shouldn’t be too hard; He only wants to write a long-form sports story.
Where did it all begin?
Rural Flashback
The buzz alarms loudly, but this time behind a half-empty 40 of Olde English 800, as Kenneth fights through the cans and bottles to silence it for one more day. It’s Monday in college.
Set among the rolling hills of golden wheat and brick buildings, he knows that this will be the perfect setting for the next section of his long-form story. People love the shit out of rural America in this type of essay, and they drip from their nether regions when “rolling hills of golden wheat” are mentioned. The farms and agriculture of this country are like a domestic-foreign setting that remind us of days-gone-by. Most of the people that read these stories on the internet are used to a city or suburban setting, so it gives us an escape to read of experiences that we know little of.
Pullman, Washington is the home of Washington State University and also miles from most modern conveniences of civilization. After four hours of traveling through vast nothingness to reach the college, it’s a sight for sore eyes just to see a Safeway again. Though most of the students frequent Dissmores IGA. Readers of this long-form story will regale themselves in possibilities of what Dissmores could really be like, therefore it is more interesting than a simple Safeway.
He could go on about how instead of going to Wal-Mart, he went to Shopko. Damn, that’s random.
Forget the fact that Pullman, though small and a college-town through and through, is just another suburbanite area except that it’s full of students instead of adults. Kenneth rarely found himself in a field or farm, more likely to be passed out drunk on a stranger’s porch or his bathroom floor. However, if we can relate this to alcoholism then it will be a disease that conjures up feelings of intrigue and interest that would embellish a rather mundane college experience.
Perhaps if we go further back in the subject’s life we’ll find more interesting anecdotes of suffering and tragedy…
Subject’s Childhood
Nope, we won’t. We can try!
His parents got divorced when he was 3. His father abandoned him. Nothing too unusual for any child of America. Ruining his perception of love and marriage. Kenneth would find himself eating a lot and watching television and movies with most of his free time. This made him an obese and he escaped his wretched life by living vicariously through made-up characters and lavish realities of other universes. He was fine with it all though. He was depressed.
Ken would find himself in love with love at an early age, trading in one crush for another as school years passed by. Sex addict. However, his puppy love left him puppy crushed and he was never much of a hit with the opposite sex. Loser. Love was his only drug. Drug addict. His only currency, and he had none of it. Broke.
He had high test scores but never put forth any effort and got terrible grades. Underachiever, lazy. It wasn’t until he actually got to Washington State that he finally decided that it was time to start trying, and that’s where he finally found his passion for writing. This loser addict finally had some hope.
Readers like hope.
A Light At The End Of The Tunnel, And Other Metaphors
His article would have many analogies. Like an article, that had many analogies.
Could this article spread it’s metaphor wings and fly though? Would it be able to push out of it’s mother’s womb and birth itself into the world? Could the long-form essay make it rain words of wisdom onto a world of sorrow, washing away the ignorance of Kenneth that had been bestowed by years of this article not existing?
It could! It did. Enough of that. This article had already been through the rigors of many articles like it that had come before. There was only one thing left that it needed, one final piece to this puzzle. Oh look, another metaphor or something. I guess there was room for one more, like an analogy would have room for one more comparison. What this article needed to end though was a twist. The moment that makes you say “huh” or “woah” or “well I’ll be.”
The twist, as always, would be the identity of the writer.
The identity of the writer, the subject of Kenneth, was actually me the whole time.
Let me help you pick your mind up.
I love your writing style. I can picture you through all of this. Also it’s funny, sad, and hopeful all at the same time. Keep it up:)
Thanks, Desi.