“Hello, can I speak to Alfred?”
“yes hold on a minute…Alfted?!?!”
“hello?”
“hi Alfred do you want to come over today?”
“Sure! At your house?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I was thinking back to when I lived in California when my mom was really sick in the head. It was 1960 when Alfred came over. The day that Alfred came over my house practically changed the way I looked at
life. It was about 7:00 pm when he came over and the house still smelt like
stale alcohol and strong cigarettes from my mom smoking all day. I went to school
today and it was the worst day ever because I didn’t get to take anybody’s lunch
so when I came home I was ravenous. Of course my mom gave me the daily routine
of some kind of horrible torture so I didn’t get to eat then either. I was in my
room(the garage) when I heard the ding dong of my doorbell.
“Coming!” I said as I walked through my poor little house. When Alfred was in my
house he said it smelt awful. I hurried him up to my room so my mom wouldn’t see
or hear us. I wasn’t really supposed to have friends over but I would sneak in a
friend rarely.
There was an awkward silence as we just sat there in my room staring at the garage door. “…So how’s life?”
“It really stinks!” and then he started rambling about how his life was pathetic
because his friend chose drunk people over him and how Alfred thought that he
was his best friend. Finally when I got him to calm down, he asked me how my
life was. I almost yelled, “you think your life is bad, my life isn’t a walk in
the park either. I have to deal with a drunk mother and starvation every single
day. At least you have boxing. I have absolutely nothing!”
Once both of us calmed down a little bit I talked about how I had to actually
steal lunches from other kids to survive. I also told him how the nurse had to
do a private physical everyday when I walked into school. I told him how I
always lied and said that my life was fine and made up excuses of why I had a
different bruise or a cut. I told him how I got stabbed by my mother and how she
had another baby and how dad left us even when he was my only hope. Then it was
his turn to tell me about his life. I was thinking wow. His life isn’t very good either.
He started with how he felt his best friend was ignoring him and how he felt
neglected. I learned that he got beat up by the town bully(Major). Then I realized that
in order to survive we would have to stick together.
“Want anything to eat?” I asked Alfred.
“Sure. What do you have?”
“Just meat.” I said with a sigh. So I got him some steak and we both sat in the garage and ate it ravenously. We decided that we must see each other close to every day and never break apart no matter what happens. After that day I always remembered that Alfred’s life was significantly different from mine but just as bad. Whenever mom poisoned me with that liquid, I thought what kind of torture is Alfred doing right now? And from that day on I would never forget about my best friend.
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2 comments:
After reading Rose’s short story about Alfred and “herself”, I felt very sympathetic towards the two main characters after hearing a bit about their lives. I remember then talking about what they have to go through, the abuse and hardships of their lives. The story made me want to know the real, separate stories of each of the characters.
The characters seemed real and natural in this story, because the way they thought and spoke, cautiously at first and then quite openly later on, seemed like the way two friends living through harsh lives of abuse and such would talk to one another after realizing their similarities. The story could have been improved if there was more dialogue and less narration about Alfred’s life, though.
“Then it was his turn to tell me about his life. I was thinking wow. His life isn’t very good either.” This line stands out to me because it really shows how one character is beginning to understand the other’s life and how much they really do have in common that they can relate to about each other.
The only things that needed to be fixed about this story were minor typos and/or misspellings, and once when she used “smelt” instead of “smelled”.
Next time, the writing piece might be improved if the writing, mixing a character’s thoughts with narration, flowed better. At some points, where the narrator’s thoughts mixed with the narrators story-telling, the writing didn’t quite flow.
emariani
after reading this short story i felt sorry for both Alfred and Rose. On the whole i thought it was prety good . I could realy feel her pain and sadness about her moms behavier.
the conversation flow could have been a little better but i liked that it felt authentic."It was about 7:00 pm when he came over and the house still smelt like
stale alcohol and strong cigarettes from my mom smoking all day".I liked this because i thought it was descriptive. i thought some of the stuff u said was contridicting because at the begging u barley had enough food for your self and then at the end u offersd Alfred steak.
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