Childhood Stories: The Monk Battle

This entry is part of a series of my childhood stories.

I feel old, and kinda creepy

This is the first story I could find on my hard drive.  The file was last modified on April 22, 1991, meaning that I wrote this before Miley Cyrus was born.    The date would seem to indicate that this was written in the latter part of the school year, but I thought I started writing before Christmas.  I might have deleted some of my earlier work; in fact I seem to recall cleaning some things off the hard drive in the fourth-grade because my Doom mods were taking up too much space.  Whoops!  It’s also possible that I modified this story at a later date, although one could ask what revisions were made; I obviously didn’t fix the spelling.  In any case, this seems to be the first thing I wrote on a computer that still exists.         

                      The Monk Battle

                      by Dan O'Dwyer

    Once upon a time  some pople where  pigging out.  intill one day a

    wizard came to the land.  Althou he was a bad wizard who made

    tarer in the place, but his brother was a good wizard.

    Then is when the monk battle started.  They fought on rocks

    but, there were lots of holes in the ground.  Some of the holes

    were volcanos.  There were clifs, mountains, rivers, motes, and

    bridges,and reuins.  And the monks baddled for millions

    of years.  People got destroyed, I'm not going to tell

    how (you don't want to no how).  Anyway, the wizards

    had a BIG FIGHT and they all retreated because they got tired

    and hungrey.  The bad wizard made a  maze so good gys could not

    get in the casel.Not a good idea because he never put

    a brain in the beasts in the maze.He sent all of his

    men out with a lader he didn't want to waste his migic.

    The bad was winning intil the good used magic. The

    brother went in maze the other brother pland for him

    to get knocked dead, but he was a wizard, so he survived.

    Then they fought and the good brother won.  And the bad

    army melted.        THE END

This story was written for extra credit in Mrs. Lynn’s 2^nd grade class, as are many of the other stories in this collection.  Like many of the other stories I wrote for Mrs. Lynn’s class, this story is eerily similar to an illustration from Martin Hanford’s “Where’s Waldo?” series.  I would also like to point out that William Shakespeare only wrote two stories that were not based on history or legend.  I guess that makes me a pretentious dick, and a plagiarist.  Oh well, it wasn’t really my fault.  I got a Waldo book for Christmas in the first grade, and I would spend literally hours soaking in every nuance of the insanely detailed illustrations.  I guess I could’ve watched more TV, but we didn’t have cable because my parents were cheap.

Note bridge, river, rocks, holes in ground, and monks

My original copy, ruined by cookie stained hands

Now, the two wizard brothers were probably inspired by the 1977 animated film “Wizards,” which I remember being fucking awesome.  The reason I didn’t tell the reader how people got destroyed was…laziness.  Definitely laziness.  The armies getting “tired and hungrey” was no doubt inspired by the two biggest problems in my 8 year-old life.  Twenty years later you can add sobriety to the list. 

After the bad guys go into the maze with a “lader” the story gets a little choppy choppier.  You can still tell what happened, but there are absolutely no details.  This was probably because I’d already hit the minimum limit for the extra credit and decided to bail.  So the good wizard didn’t get knocked dead, and he defeated his evil brother (somehow.)  Then the bad army melted, which I would contend to this day is a pretty sweet ending.*

Not hot

*I was trying to find some babes to spruce up this article, so I searched for “sexy Waldo” expecting a bounty of hot chicks dressed as my favorite literary character in a low-cut candy cane striped sweater.  No such luck, apparently the only girls that dress as Waldo are really fucking nerdy.  I did find a sexy Waldo costume available for purchase.  I don’t know how sexy it is. I mean, it’s certainly a costume, I guess.  If you’re trying to dress as your Aunt for Halloween I guess it might work, provided you’re trying to have sex with your Uncle.  On the other hand, if you’re trying to get a nerd boyfriend, just dress as Princess Leia from Return of the Jedi.  

Now that's more like it.