Clowy the Little Fish: A Fish Tale by Beanie

Here is a story that Beanie wrote this afternoon (on Sunday, March 6, 2011). She asked me whether or not she could publish it, so I told her how about on my blog? I confess that the story makes me a bit teary.

Clowy the Little Fish

In Trickle Berry Field at the edge of the world there was a pond. In the pond lived pretty little turtles, spotted happy frogs, and pretty little red fish. The water was clean, the seaweed was green and none of the little fish were mean.

Until one late afternoon in April in 2006, a little blue fish was born in a patch of brown sticks.

All the fish laughed when she went to the park. They would say look at Little Blue whose last name is Kark. She is blue and we are all red. We can’t let her play or sleep in our beds. She makes us go crazy and we don’t have sweet little thoughts in our heads.

The little blue fish would always say my name is not Blue, my name is Clowy and that kept on happening until one day Clowy moved away.

Suddenly the fish all felt sad so they decided to tell Clowy sorry we made you mad. So they wrote a letter to her and Clowy wrote back and said it’s okay. Come over to my house soon and have a snack.

So since then the pond has been peaceful and there are many kinds of fish swimming happily and that’s their wish.

***

I should add that the inspiration for this fish tale is a game that I gave Beanie for her 7th birthday - Rory's Story Cubes - which is the gift Beanie plans to give her friends for their 7th birthdays, too. (That means you, too, Miss American Girl, turning 7 next week.)

It turns out to be a good game to incorporate little brothers who are not quite 4 years old and not all that enthused about playing by rules. Bubbie is a story teller who likes to induce complications in a plot, prefacing each new development with the phrase: "Just then..."

So exactly like it was

Did you attend any heady institution of higher education during the 1980s (which in my opinion ended in 1991) and major in English? If so, then this bit (lampooning specifically Brown) might seem familiar:

Semiotics 211 was limited to ten students. Of those ten, eight had taken Introduction to Semiotic Theory. This was visually apparent at the first class meeting. Lounging around the seminar table, when Madeleine came into the room from the wintry weather outside, were eight people in black T-shirts and ripped black jeans. A few had razored off the necks or sleeves of their T-shirts. There was something creepy about one guy's face - it was like a baby's face that had hideously aged - and it took Madeleine full minute to realize that he'd shaved off his eyebrows. Everyone in the room was so spectral-looking that Madeleine's natural healthiness seemed suspect, like a vote for Reagan.

From a short story in the June 7th issue of The New Yorker, "Extreme Solitude" by Jeffrey Eugenides. Whom I heart.