I first started
writing stories when I was in the
second grade, eight years old.
One summer morning
Rags went for a walk. It
was a sleepy morning and everyone was
asleep. But not
Rags. He was on his
way to school.
But when he got
there the door was not open.
He was surprised because it was 10:00
o'clock. "I'll open
the door. What, I
can't open the door! Well,
I'll go to the back door. What,
the back door isn't open!"
Rags said to himself as he tried to get into
the school.
Then all of a
sudden Rags heard a noise.
It came from the school.
But who could be in the school? Rags went to a window. It was open.
But Rags had shut and locked that window the day before,
and his teacher
had locked the door.
Then all of a
sudden Rags saw a man with a
mask. The man was
taking all of the
paper and putting it into a bag.
Rags
was afraid because the man looked like a counterfeiter who Rags
had read about
in the morning paper. But
then Rags
remembered the space patrol pledge. It
said, "I will uphold law and order."
but then the
counterfeiter got into a car.
When the car started Rags jumped onto the
back of it. And
when the car stopped and
the man got out of it, Rags jumped on him.
The man fell and hit a stone which knocked him out.
And then Rags took
the counterfeiter into a
building nearby. He
went to the phone
and called the police. But
before the
police came, Rags looked in a room that he had not seen before.
Rags saw someone
in there. He saw a
scientist. The
scientist was sleep on a chair.
Rags walked into the room.
There were all kinds of tubs in the
room. Then Rags saw
a big pan that said,
"Sleeping Solution." Rags
looked
in the pan. There
was a little
bit of the solution in the pan.
Then the
scientist began to move. As
soon as Rags
saw him moving, Rags picked up a stick and hit him with it.
Then the police
came and took away the scientist
and the counterfeiter. And
Rags now
knows why everyone was asleep that morning.
It was because the solution put everyone to sleep and
rags is a tiger
and the solution couldn't put tigers to sleep.
And from that day on no one was late for school. And everyone was
happy.
My most creative
second-grade story I wrote while waiting at my mother's office.
She worked as a secretary for the superintendent of
schools, and my
school was next door. So after school I had to wait there until
she
could drive me home. Often
I would draw
maps of imaginary countries and islands and continents and
imagine stories that
would take place there. One
day, after
reading "Just So Stories" by Rudyard Kipling, I decided to write
a
story like that. I
remembered having
noticed that the parakeet at my grandparents' house had purple
cheeks. So I wrote
"How the Parakeet
Got Purple Cheeks".
One cool day in
Africa a parakeet was flying
around.
Then the parakeet saw a ship in
the distance. So
the parakeet went to
see it because the parakeet had never seen a ship before.
And so he got on the ship and the ship went
out to sea. But the
parakeet had not
gotten out of the ship yet.
And while
the ship was sailing the parakeet was looking around. When the ship was
about 20 miles out at sea
the parakeet was ready to get out.
So
the parakeet got on deck but it was hailing and the parakeet had
to go below or
he would be killed.
So he went below,
but he didn't know
that the ship was
going to Alaska.
Then after about an
hour the parakeet went on deck.
The hail
had stopped. But it was snowing outside so he went back below
and the captain
saw him and put him in a cage.
The
captain taught the parakeet to talk, and then after a month the
ship
landed. The captain
and his crew got out
and the parakeet was left alone.
The
parakeet saw the key on the table.
And
he saw a string in his cage.
So he made
a lasso out of the string and threw it at the table. And the string caught
the key and he
pulled. The key
came to him and he put
it in the lock and got out of the cage.
And he flew by a snow mountain.
But the mountain started to fall and then snow broke one
of the
parakeet's wings and he fell.
But an
Eskimo boy came along and saw him.
The
Eskimo took the parakeet to his home and patched his wing and
after a week the
parakeet could fly.
So the parakeet flew
to where the ship had been.
The parakeet
saw the ship in the distance.
So he flew
to the ship and went below.
The ship went back to Africa and the parakeet got out. And when his friends saw him they would say, "Where did you get purple cheeks?" And he wouldn't say a thing because he didn't know. But you do.
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