Childhood Stories: The Deep Sea Battle

Danny O'D age 8

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

Ahh a sequel, (to The Monk Battle) I bet you were all waiting with baited breath.  This story like the one before was written for extra credit in Mrs. Lynn’s second grade class.  Specifically it was written on May 1, 1991.  This story was also inspired by an illustration from The Great Waldo Search; however it has far less to do with the original illustration and bears little in common with the source material save for the fact that they both take place under the sea.  It is also shorter than the first story, because a paragraph at the time was defined as being ten sentences long and a paragraph was the minimum I had to write to gain the extra credit.  I could’ve written more…IF I WAS A SUCKER! Daaammnn!

Note the lack of any sort of battle.  I seem to be moving away from plagarism.

  THE DEEP SEA BATTLE

                      by Dan O'Dwyer

Once upon a time, in an ocean by where the monk battel was.  There where

a lot of things under the sea.  And the things that lived on land

where going to do plan X.  Who would know about good old plan X ?

The water things would(I would  write a Dum-Dee-Dum-Dum thing but,

I can't write music).  So the battel came around the sea.  No whon

could get in but,the person who was in power of the mane controll

broke a nail.  And scremed so loud she broke the controll.

                                              EEEEEEEEEEEE

TTTTTTTTT    HH       HH    EE

    T                  HH       HH    EE

    T                  HH       HH    EEEEEEEEEEEE

    T                  HHHHHHH   EE

    T                  HH       HH    EE

    T                  HH       HH    EEEEEEEEEEEE

    T                  HH       HH

                  END

Rereading this story now, the plotline is a little (read: a lot) incoherent.  In retrospect I should have written a few more sentences explaining what the hell was going on, but that would have diverted valuable cartoon watching time.  What is plan X?  How would it help the land creatures fight the sea creatures? 

As the author I wish I could shed some light on the subject, but I undoubtedly forgot before I was old enough to grow hair in “funny places.”  There’s also a strong possibility that I never actually had the details of Plan X figured out; however I can guarantee that if I did have it figured out it undoubtedly involved ninjas, M.C. Hammer, surfers, dinosaurs or some combination thereof.

Plan X?

This is also one of the only stories I’ve ever read that contained music within the narrative, which I think is a nice touch. Unlike the songs in the Lord of the Rings novels which were just fucking stupid.  The “music” in this short story is also superior to the music in the LOTR because it’s short, relevant to the story, and not about shoving an elf penis up a hobbit’s ass. 

Typical woman

The joke that women freak out when they break a nail seems a little sexist in today’s PC culture.  I have since seen the error of my ways and I would like to apologize for this stereotype.  Women don’t need to break a nail to flip out; they’ll flip out for any or no reason because they are insane.  Glad I could clear that up, but seriously she broke a nail! Get it?  Ho ho ho! I slay me.

The end of the story is spelled out quite literally in giant letters, although the reader can’t be quite sure exactly what happened in the story at least they know that the story came to a definite (and sexist) conclusion.  I do remember that writing the word “THE” took more time and planning than writing the actual story itself, leading me to give up on writing the word “END” in a similar fashion and instead simply typing the word out.

I wish I could tell you things have gotten a lot better since then, but I wrote this commentary on The Deep Sea Battle a few years ago.  Lazy, lazy, lazy. Granted I had a busy week at work, and I’ve got a cold.  It took a herculean effort just to post this.  I’ll have something brand new for next week.

Sorry for falling BEHIND!  I don't want to BUM you out! Also Jessica Alba has a nice ass.

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.

Childhood Stories

A young writer and his brother, note the diaper

My blog is pretty young, but I’ve already gotten over 800 hits. (If you’re reading this thank you.)   As you may or may not know I’ve been involved with the comedy group Big Dog Eat Child for almost 8 years now, as a writer and a performer.  I started writing, creatively at least, when I was 8 years old.  Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed doing as long as I can remember, provided I could write creatively.  I never liked English class, except for the one or two assignments a year where they let me write about something other than my goddamn summer vacation.  The exception was the second grade.  I had Mrs. Lynn as a teacher, and she let me write creatively for extra credit.  To this day I remember her as the best teacher I ever had. 

Stony Creek, where I spent my formative years

Unlike most kids in 1992, my dad was a network engineer and I typed my assignments.  I have most of the stories I wrote to this day, and I’m going to start posting them on this blog.  It won’t always be pretty.  Some stories are better than others, and some are downright awful, but at least they’re all short.  All stories will be presented in their original misspelled glory.  I will provide commentary into my 8 year old self’s creative process, such as it was.  I mean, I’ve gone back and read all of these stories, and even I can’t always tell what I was the fuck I was trying to say. 

The first story posted will be “The Monk Battle” from April 22^nd, 1992.  Newer stories will be added in chronological order whenever possible.  I hope you get to see how my writing process progressed over the years; that is assuming my style has progressed over the last 18 years.  Over time I may add things that were written more recently, however it is doubtful that some of the stuff I wrote in high school will ever be less than soul destroyingly embarrassing.  (As a side note: One time my wife, back when she was my girlfriend, was going through the files on my computer and some of the ones written in Junior High with names like “diary” were password protected.  I’d like to take a moment and thank my fourteen-year-old self for thinking so far ahead.)    

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