Juvenalia

When Julie Had Her Best Ride: a short story I illustrated and dictated to my mom when I was too little to write the words myself

Today, while cleaning out papers in my childhood home and wading through dust and memories, I came across this story.

Lower your expectations for the illustrations, dear reader: the salad is pretty, but my visual imagination completely ran out and then I just drew all those airplane seats. I think this might have happened either during or soon after a long plane ride.

Still, I'm amused to see that even then, I liked to get out of doing the dishes, and I had a sweet tooth, and I wanted to make something creative that would bring people joy (oh, and also have people praise me and hire me).

When Julie Had Her Best Ride

Julie was eating supper at the supper table with her mommy. When Julie’s mother decided to do the dishes all by herself that night Julie decided to start a project. Every day she worked on it and she wanted it to be a surprise.

Julie took the project with her when they were going on the trip. Every day Julie worked on the surprise for her mama. They rode and they rode.

Her mother went to the plane table and she decided to make a salad. There were lettuce leaves, carrot circles, and blueberries.

This is what the surprise looked like. It’s a giraffe, just like one that you make out of paper. It was made out of cardboard, a long shampoo bottle with the cap bended for the neck, and the head was made out of a root beer bottle, not glass, plastic, and the horns were made out of lollipop sticks and the ears were made out of sugar canes.

Julie’s pet kitty’s name was Priscilla. Her mother’s name was Kimberly. And the next time she decided to name her giraffe, what she decided to name her giraffe was Bartholomew!

Julie was still riding in the plane when her mother called her. “Julie, would you like to have a treat today?” “Yes, what is it?” “I’ll bring it to you in a minute.” Her mother brought out a picture of a lollipop and the real lollipop, itself, that was in the picture.

When the doorbell of our little room rang and it was my grandpa. He said “how are you doing?” I said “I’m fine. How are you?” “I’m fine.” He said, “Hello.” My momma said, “Hello, I haven’t seen you for so long, Jimmy.” That was my grandpa’s name, Jimmy.

After my grandpa and my mom had settled down and had a drink of water and I began to take out my surprise for my mama. The surprise was made for my mother’s birthday that was that day. I carefully wrapped it up in sawdust and carefully brang it out. If I tiptoed and it breaked all the paint would spatter out all over the floor of my room. She quickly put another coat of paper on over the sawdust paper, and she did not want anybody to know what it was and she tiptoed so quietly that her momma was a little worried. But she didn’t care. The only thing she cared about at that time was the present she was going to give to her mommy.

When Julie came into the living room where her momma was sitting with Julie’s grandpa, when her momma was opening the present that Julie’s grandpa gave her, and Julie was just coming in, and when Julie’s mother saw the wrapped thing, she said, “Come now, Julie, I will open yours first.” “Careful now, mother, it is a fragile present.” “Oh honey, I don’t care,” said Julie’s mother to her as she carefully unwrapped the beautiful present. Grandpa said into Momma’s ear, “I wish that little girl was mine, for I think she made the present all by herself.” Julie’s mother said “Julie, you did a good job on this, I think I will hire you to do more of that for my job.” “Well Momma, it took 3 days to make it. I started it even before we went on the trip.”

And when Julie’s mother took it to office the next day in a new land they lived happily ever after! The End.