A True Story - pipTalk Forums

How to Join	Member's Area	Private Library	Search	Sanctuary		Login
Main Forums	Discussion	Tech Talk	Mature Content	Archives	A home without a wall, Our haven without ends, A circle we all call Our Family of Friends!

fractal007
Senior Member

since 2000-06-01

Posts 1958

0 posted 2006-04-02 12:31 PM

Introduction

This is a true story about a fellow by the name of Steven Rubic.  Now Steven Rubic (let's just settle on the name Steve, shall we?) was a fine young Christian high school student.  That is not to say that Steve attended a Christian high school.  No, far from it.  Rather, Steve attended a rough-and-tumble secular school where he was raised in the real world.

He watched everyone around him enjoying the intellectual liberation of popular culture.  They could sit and watch television whenever they wanted to, and when their parents told them to mow the lawn they could reply with exerpts from the lyrics of one of the latest free-thinking and clearly un-biased metal bands.

Steve wanted desperately to be like them.  But instead he was confined to a dull world without television.  All he had was the Bible, and his father's study full of books.  Now in all his life (Steve was, after all, only 17 years old) he'd never thought to crack open a single volume in his father's library.  Truly, my friends, he was that bored and he was that stubborn!  Yes, Steve was hardly the kind of person one would expect to be involved in such a strange and true story as this one.  But, since the real world is such a dismal and harsh place, we are forced to work with this sorry little boy (I know he was seventeen, but I think he was a tad immature, for reasons that will, should you choose to read onward, be made quite apparent).

One day, as Steve sat on the bus minding his own business while being taunted by the other children (they weren't much more mature either, I'm afraid) a truly fabulous idea entered his mind.  If you can't beat them, someone had once said, join them.  Stepping off the bus, Steve was struck by yet another impressive idea.  He would consult his father for advice on how to attain coolness.  Yes, Steve's father had said on many an occassion that he was a cultured old fellow.  He knew how to fit in with any crowd.

"I feel people, you see," Dad once said (you don't mind, do you, if I just outright call him Dad; it will make this history come even more alive for you), I can get into every nook an crany of your psyche."

Steve didn't quite know what Dad meant.  But that didn't matter.  All that did matter was that Dad was a talker and a good one.

"Dad?" Steve called as he entered the house after brushing some chunks of thrown clay -- the last remnants of his daily ordeal on the bus -- out of his hair.  There was no answer.

"Dad?"

Steve almost forgot to take his shoes off.  In fact he did forget just enough to leave a slight mark on the gray carpet in the living room.  Mother wouldn't like that too much.

"Oh dad!" Steve said as he entered his father's study.  He found the man leaning over a text composed by the great Tom Clancy.

"Son!" Dad said, with a smile on his face, "What can I do you -- uh I mean -- do for you?"

"Well I'm kind of having a hard time with the kids at school.  You see, I want to be cool like them, but I just can't do it.  We need a TV.  That will help to show me all the hip and happening ways to act."

"Nonsense!"  Dad stood up and picked out a book from the shelf.  He leafed through some of the pages and then set it back where it had been.  "You see," he began, "being cool is all about being able to pay lip service."

"What's lip service?"

Dad smirked and said, "Well lip service is words without any substance.  You just have to sound like you're cool and then you'll be cool.  You just have to say you like Britney Spears and Marylin Manson and you'll be cool."

"Who are Britney Spears and Marylin Manson, philosophers?"

"Sort of," Dad said.  "They have a lot of influence.  They sing songs and everybody just goes along with what they say."

"Wow!"

Dad handed Steve a book and said, "Now go and read a chapter a day from this."

It was a prescription for a medicine Steve could hardly understand.  The book was filled with words about memes and genes and Darwin and religion.  It was the first time Dad had ever told Steve to read something.

Over the next few weeks Steve slowly assimilated the information.  He learned special catch phrases that would earn him instant coolness.  He learned to say "God is dead" on command.  He could hold a dour and stern face, looking down his nose on his parents.  "But you don't have to mean it," Dad said.

Every night, Steve would come home at about four thirty and Dad would get Steve to practice his stern defiance.

"Go to your room!" Dad said.

"Up yours!" Steve said.  It was a wonderfully Pavlovian system.  "Go to your room" meant that Steve had to say "Up yours", while "Where did you learn your manners" was a signal for Steve to say "manners are for simple herd animals!"

Dad told Steve that that last one came from a guy called Knee She.

Steve had many wonderful and self-discovering encounters with the children at school on account of his father's advice.  Maybe some other time I'll tell you about his adventures.  But right now I'm dead-tired and I need to go to bed.  Steve can wait.  Reading can wait.  School can wait.  It's time to watch a bit of Leno and be off to bed!

Any idiot can see that the result is true.
-- argumentum ad idiotum
Me!

Allysa

Senior Member

since 1999-11-09

Posts 1952
In an upside-down garden

1 posted 2006-04-26 02:01 PM

It's interesting, but I felt you could have done more. For example, everything that you have written hear has a tone of being very "matter of fact". First there was Steve, this is how Steve was, this is how the world was, and so on. I think this would be even more interesting if you stepped back a little bit and worked on the flow.

Just my thoughts.

the_girl_next_door
Senior Member

since 2006-02-26

Posts 591
USA

2 posted 2006-05-06 10:58 PM

I loved it.. I agree.. there could be so much more but overall. this was a great start to a wonderful story..

I think I'm beginning to really like your work.. post more soon..

(I'd like to know more about steve)

~Heather

Desire nothing except desirelessness. Hope for nothing except to rise above all hopes.
Want nothing & you will have everything.

	⇧ top of page ⇧
All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format.