I Found Pirate-Themed Fiction I Wrote In Second Grade, So You'd Better Believe I'm Sharing It · 12:35am Aug 7th, 2022
So! Been a while since we talked. That's fine, though; as a wise man once said, "An ideal male friendship is someone who lives in a different city, and three times a year, you text them to talk about how the Bears are doing." That's more or less the stage my relationship with pony is, these days; be sort of around, read a bit here and there, and drop in with a funny blog every now and then. And I gotta say, I do love that kind of friendship.
But on to the "funny blog every now and then" part of this blog! As you'll recall if you read OMPR religiously back in the day--or, if you read my most recent post before this one--I was a terrible, terrible author when I was in fourth grade. No surprise; kids are dumb, why should I be any exception?
But... was I a better writer in second grade?
I was not.
And so we have this writing assignment, dredged from the pile of old school papers, art, and other garbage-that's-hard-to-actually-throw-out that my parents have decided doesn't really need to live with them until the day they die. Eleven incredibly short pages of swashbuckling action/adventure goodness, coming your way!
*****
PIRATES
By Christopher, age 7
Once upon a time there were three pirates. They rode in a pirate ship.
Page one, and... it's fine, so far? Not sure why a mere 14 words of actual story merited their own page, but that's what I went with. Anyway, very telly open, and I'm not sure that second sentence is telling us a lot we couldn't surmise based on context, but to this point, solid B+ authorship.
One was named Blackbeard. One was named Gummy Bear. The last one was named Tiger Bear.
Classic pirate names all, nothing to say here.
They found a lot of treasure. And they were all mean and nasty, especially Blackbeard.
I feel like that first sentence may have skipped over the story part of the story. You know, the part with the conflict, rising action, and eventual success? Also, I've made an executive decision to spell everything correctly in this post, for ease of reading, but I want to give a shout-out to second-grade me for taking a real go at spelling "especially," and, after what I can only assume was literally seconds of contemplation, coming up with "ehtspehshehlhi." So close!
One had a black beard. Another had a grey beard, and another had a white beard.
I wonder which one had the black beard? Or any of the beards, for that matter? Oh well, probably not important.
They had a war. They had a parrot, and the parrot helped them fight.
And just like that, after four pages of wheel spinning, we hit this absolute banger. Our three ambiguously bearded friends aren't just buccaneers--they're privateers, out on the forefront of the... War of 1812? "Tiger Bear" sounds like a post-colonial name, let's go with that.
And even three decades on, I am immediately in love with the tactical parrot. Biden may have a bomb that chops you with swords, but nothing beats a well-utilized macaw of death.
One day their ship sank. When they got underwater, they started to dig for another treasure. They started to die.
Gotta appreciate these pirates' commitment to their schtick. Lose one treasure? Go out and dig up another! Oxygen can wait!
On the downside, oxygen cannot actually wait.
Then they were caught by a fishermen.
Some critics might decry this as an unconvincing deus ex machina, but I would counter that...
...Um...
...Actually, I've got nothing.
The pirates took the fisherman's ship. They took his treasure.
Now this, on the other hand, was very cleverly foreshadowed back on page three, where we discovered that, "they were all mean and nasty." And now, that bit of seeding pays off with a delicious twist, in which the poor (actually rich I guess, if he's lugging around a bunch of loot on his fishing boat?) fisherman (between his gender being specified, and the beard bits earlier, this story sadly doesn't look like it has any hope of passing the Bechdel Test) is rewarded for his timely rescue by immediately being robbed. It's basically The Red Wedding of the Caribbean, is what I'm trying to say.
Then they found a cave that had a skull, and they buried the treasure in the cave.
Finding a pre-skulled cave is one of the more low-key difficult parts of stashing your treasure. You don't want to be schlub who brings a brand-new skull to your treasure cave; you need that thing to have provenance.
They threw the fisherman into the water. And they built the fisherman's ship bigger.
Luckily, the fisherman was immediately rescued by a fisherman.
They counted all their money. The parrot died. And they lived happily ever after.
The End
Okay, honestly, it was that penultimate sentence that convinced me that I had to type this up and share it with some other writer/reader types. Gotta throw one last twist in, right?
But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes on a thematic level. When the pirates were at war, they needed Blitzkrieg Tweety. But now, having acquired their treasure, their motive to ply their deadly trade has dissolved. Polly-Wanna-Homicide's passing is a way to show us, through the changing of the story's cast, how events have moved our crew from combat footing into comparatively peaceful bean-counting. Presumably, "happily ever after" involves the three pirates shaving their various-colored beards and finding jobs in finance.
*****
Another tale for the ages. If I come across something from kindergarten that I can actually decipher someday, I'll probably put it up here. But in the meantime, feel free to submit this story in my name to any major awards that you think it qualifies for. Goodness knows, it might be the best thing I ever wrote.
Absolutely gripping from start to finish. Poor Parrot, I shall shed many tears for you.
Darn it, now I feel compelled to share the barely cohesive narrative I wrote in grade school.
stellar XD
It didn't say how the parrot died. Or when, I guess. In a blaze of glory? Or because he couldn't bear to live in a world where the pirates no longer needed to menace the high seas? I'm right there with you, buddy.
It's only a month until National Talk Like a Pirate Day.
I remember in 2nd grade when we were assigned to write stories (and one of the departments actually turned them into 'books') that everyone was writing stories that were about 10–11 pages long, and there I was writing one at 18 pages. If I remember correctly it was about me getting kidnapped and eventually rescued by police, then returned to my parents.
I guess I was always destined to be a writer in some capacity. Thank you, MLP, for bringing that out again.
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DO IT
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While young!Chris didn't specify, I assume that the parrot died of one of the following causes: getting stabbed by an evil pirate (because that's the obvious answer), getting eaten by a cat (ditto), excess testosterone (science-y word +manly!), old age (because after all, who could kill such an inimitable badass?), or he killed himself so he could become a skeleton pirate (the plainly correct answer). That said, I wouldn't want to pigeonhole my younger self; for all I know, he was the star of a lunar spin-off in my fevered imagination.
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Always good to see gentlepersons of such fine caliber around these here parts.
Genius!
Well, this was a hilarious thing and a half to wake up to! Thanks for a good laugh.
Sadly, I don’t think I have any creative writings of mine that old lying around; the oldest ones are from when I’d hit double digits, and knew just enough about story structure and such that my ‘attempts’ at a narrative lacked the cute freewheeling ‘anything goes’ nature of the above. Nope, they were just bad stories, largely lacking in humour, accidental or otherwise. Oh well, easy come, easy go.
My mind is going some very dark places about why and how that parrot died, especially in the light of the sentences that come before and after. People will be making investigative documentaries about that bird in days to come.
Well, I don't know why you never had this professionally published. Doesn't make any sense to me. The story's clearly flawless.
OK, how did I miss this the first go-around? An innocent young boy's first naive forays into the complex and demanding world of creative fiction. Let's mock the shit out of him! 😈
The illustrator never showed up?
Typos, I'm guessing. "Gummy Beard" and "Tiger Beard" would've made so much more sense.
Clearly that's Blackbeard's first name, because "Gummy" and "Tiger" were already taken. Captain Ehtspehshehlhi Blackbeard. And his first mate, Rumpelstiltskin Jones.
Incidentally, this being an exotic fairy tale story would explain so much.
Tut tut, Chris. It was important enough to mention in the story right after the treasure-finding. Clearly, Tiger Beard had the white beard because you get white tigers, Gummy Beard had the black beard because that's the colour of liquorice, the spiritual cousin of gummy bears, and Blackbeard had the grey beard because he hadn't been washing it.
To be fair, it'd make sense if it was this parrot:
y.yarn.co/259eea55-a8fb-4065-9f14-10e0a9e196b9_text.gif
The fishermen were feeling a bit plural at the time, but a quick smack of the head and he became singular again.
Hmmm, that sounds mighty suspicious. I notice the parrot has disappeared around this point too...
And how exactly did your seven-year-old self foresee this? Either you had access to a time machine, or you're a hell of a lot younger than you're letting on.
Arrrrrrrrr Realtors! Private Pirate Paradises up for reasonable prices! Come to Arrrrrrrrr Realtors to have your cave valuated, afore some son o' a gun steals it! Skulls a guarantee, or that's cuttin' our own throats (well, some bastard's throat, anyway)! Arrrrrrrrr, matey!
(Why not? There's Admiral Insurance).
Who was also inexplicably rich, and got robbed and thrown into the sea. Luckily, the second fisherman was immediately rescued by a third fisherman...
All according to plan.
This is the greatest work of fiction I have ever read. I initially questioned how the fisherman would be strong enough to pull up three pirates and presumably a parrot, but then I realized such fantastical elements are part of the story's hidden genius. Truly a work of art, I applaud younger you for the masterpiece.
Jokes aside I laughed so hard reading this, thank you for the chuckle.