The Fredösphere

An alarm went off in my head when I read the following story by my two kids. The Maharincess (now 8) started it off, then gave her brother (Der Drübermensch, 10) permission to add something of his own. Here's the first few sentences of the story. Figuring out where the girl leaves off and the boy picks up is left as an exercise for the reader:

Once there was a princess in a castle. Her name was Lexi. She was 15. Her favorite toy was Pollys. Lexi's best friend was Snowy, her cat. she wished she had a friend, a real friend. She was never happy aways sad.

One day Lexi fond a friend, her name was Nancy she was so nice Lexi asked if Nancy could have a sleepover at there castle. Her mother said "yes."

When Nancy came in she gasped and said "you live in a castle!"

"Yes." said Lexi. "I'm a princess."

They had a great tea party with apple tea. In bed they told secrets. The next morning Nancy had to leave.

Lexi played with her cat and Pollys for the rest of the day.

The next day Nancy and Lexi saw this really cute boy. His name was Jacob. Then Lexi ran home to rite a letter to him. It said, "dear Jacob, I just fell in love with you. I'm a princess. I will ride my bike on Saturday you will to. Love Lexi."

So, on Saturday, Jacob told Lexi a secret. He was a member of Team Dogatron, and was on a special mission. He needed to find the Lost Sapphire that was under the ocean before the evil Team Catomatic found it. He asked her to come with her. Then Snowy started talking, which was a surprise since Snowy had never talked before. He said that he used to be a member of Team Catomatic, but when he heard that they were evil, he secretly quit, and Team Catomatic had been looking for him.

The alarm in my head was the feeling I had seen this somewhere before. In a moment, I remembered: it was a materpiece called The Writing Assignment, ostensibly the work of two students in a college writing class, working tag-team style, so that the woman writes the odd-numbered paragraphs and the man writes the even-numbered ones. It begins like this:

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

. . .and after that, it only gets better and better. Go thither and read it now!

Labels: Creativity, Fiction, fun