Captain Pike
09-08-2009, 08:28 PM
Not only did I write this story, I even voted for myself! There. I've said it. I still feel like a spoiled little kid. Reading it over, it seemed foaming with wordiness, I should've spoken in natural language, instead of trying to be a big shot smarty-pants. After all, I'm from the US, we don't have "mates" here.
Also, I should've just said "weed", instead of that silly cannabis. Was that it? I really liked the story, I'm bracing myself, really, bring it on -- please. Especially all you PUBLISHED authors out there.
Here it is, as in the last contest, "A Lesson in Humility":
-- -- -- -- --
I was walking by the university library with two of my mates on a crisp, late autumn morning when I noticed a man approaching from the other direction, hunched against the cold and set upon his destination, wearing a jacket which looked very much like one that had been missing from my wardrobe for several weeks. Instead of a cap, he sported a tangled mass of unwashed black hair. As he drew closer, I became certain he was wearing my coat.
I remembered having noticed him in the background of a sordid house of ill repute I had visited several weeks back for the purposes of procuring some cannabis from a purveyor of that sort of thing. My impression at that time, while cursory, was that he might have been a "townie", or a stranded bum, having wound up there, at the end of a spree, lacking the wherewithal to move on. This is how it sometimes is in a university town. A bunch of fellows may all get together in paying what can be a fairly sizable rent for a house in the town. During the course of the year the actual tenants may change and they are all apt to have guests from time to time so that the odd face around the bathroom may not be that odd at all.
'Ah ha!', I thought, 'that scoundrel stole my coat!'. The truth was, I may have looked for the jacket briefly a couple of times and couldn't think when it was that I last wore it. It was a white and blue checked "CPO" style coat, it may have had one or more stripes of black in its pattern as well. Possibly a bit behind the fashions of the time, my mother had proudly made a gift of it with the distinction that it matched the blue of my eyes. It did fit quite nicely, having pockets at the right angle and position for the hands. In fact, I had broken through the inner linings of these pockets so that items placed in them could be moved arbitrarily deep or around the back, effectively hiding them from all but the most persistent of searches. So the jacket had been stolen, or more likely, left on a coat rack in a university building on a day that had turned out much warmer than it had started. The jacket may likely have hung for several days before the supposed purloining. Equally possible was that the garment had been shed during a night of debauchery. This was during a relatively wild period of my youth during which, on more than one occasion, and utter stranger, calling me by name, had returned an article of my clothing, apparently removed during a previous evening.
Feeling young and adventurous and being in the company of a couple of my brutish buddies, I figured I'd have some fun and began in my toughest braggadocio, "hey, where'd you get that coat?!".
The supposed thief seemed truly surprised and stopped. "Well I,", he glanced down at the pavement and back up, "it's my roommate's." He had extremely dark blue eyes, having minute, coal-black fragments, compelling inky specks in the irises.
"No it isn't,", I stood up tall, glancing at my two pals, "that's my jacket!". He was definitely on the spot. I had him and he knew it. I had intended to play the tough guy, and it was all unfolding as I planned, but, it just didn't feel quite right. "See that button?", I pointed to a button larger than the others about midway down the coat, "my mother sewed that on." It was like a scripted movie, and I was the guy on the white horse. Still, somehow, it didn't feel the way I had hoped. I mean, I had him cold, in broad daylight, in the middle of a busy intersection with students all round. "Are you going to give me my jacket...", I said slowly, thinking, 'a person ought to be able to play this role once in his life, right?' "Or", I continued self righteously, "am I going to have to take it off you?!" All I needed was a thin cigar and a cowboy hat -- my buddies were shifting on their feet, grinning, probably more from embarrassment than anything else.
Oddly, the guy had an honest face, a face you would trust. He muttered an apology, and looked down with embarrassment and began removing the coat. "Why don't you tell me where you live, and I'll...", it was really cold that morning, even in spite of what had to be a humiliating showdown, he tried to bargain with me.
"Yeah, right!", I demanded and he gave me the jacket. I hadn't planned for this part, and didn't really know what to do. I took the coat, rather in a huff, and stomped off, high and mighty, with my cronies. Somehow, I felt quite sure he would return the jacket if I would allow him to wear at the rest of the day. But the wheels of arrogance are mighty and the timber of intolerance, stiff and inflexible. We talked about it all the way to class. We talked about how lucky he had been to have made the right choice. Various alternate outcomes were discussed to our great amusement. The truth was, he had provided a satisfying little bit of drama, only, there was something phony in the whole scenario. For one thing, once the day warmed up, I had to carry around two extra articles of clothing. Further, while my mother had given me the thing, it wasn't among my favorites -- I hardly ever wore it anymore. I kept picturing the guys honest face, preparing to continue on in the cold for the rest of the day. After all, he wasn't living in the dormitory with a closet full of autumn outerwear, like me. This man's utter lack of hostility (or fear) amid this boisterous and public attack on his character was completely unanticipated and melted any anger I tried to muster. This guy was going to be cold for a good part of the day. 'To hell with him', I justified to myself, it was my coat, after all, my mother had truly sewn on that replacement button.
I couldn't seem to shake it off. Was I actually willing to enter into fisticuffs in front of the library with all my peers watching? Were the three of us going to beat this fellow up in public if he hadn't surrendered the jacket? The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it became. At the time, when I saw him approaching, the scene I acted out seemed completely justified, just like on TV, or from a watered down Clint Eastwood movie. It was completely out of character for me, on the other hand. It was, a duel, after some fashion; a gunfight in the dusty streets of Tombstone -- how ridiculous! I was no fighter. Plus, there were three of us and only one of him. The whole thing made me feel uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, that, many months later, I became interested in taking some kind of self-defense course. I ought to be able to back up my dramatic threats with some sort of kung fu or something, hadn't I?
A year went by. Soon after the spring semester started, there it was -- just the thing: a judo self-defense class being taught in the evenings, three nights a week in the gym. Oddly, in addition to breaking boards and protecting oneself from the attack of muggers, the class also offered meditation, relaxation and some kind of spiritual fitness angle as well. "Go Ju Roo", was the style that this course would be following. Wasn't that something!? Style. The flyer, taped to the window in the cafeteria, showed a pretty girl with long hair and a Chinese guy going at it with their robes and black belts on. Her hair was neatly tied back and one of her legs was jutting forward, having just kicked the Chinese guy backward, *** over tea kettle, pigtails flailing. It looked pretty interesting.
I showed up early for class the first night, several people were sitting on mats or were just standing around. I was greeted by a young woman wearing a white outfit having a black belt tight around the waist. She explained she was the teaching assistant for the class and handed me notes for the first lesson. This was great, something that promised to be a departure from the typical curriculum of science and literature. I was surprised when I began to read the introduction which also told a bit about the instructor. He was a doctoral physics candidate and I noticed on the bottom of the very first page there were mathematical formulas. I flipped the handout upside down as if some explanation would be printed on the reverse. Looking about the room, I seemed to have the right material so I read on.
"The energy of a moving particle is proportional to the mass times the square of the velocity." This was just my luck, I had somehow gotten into a physics class that was disguised as self-defense. Reading on however, I began to get the point. Since the force or energy of a punch or a kick depended on the mass (the weight of the fist or foot) multiplied by the speed, SQUARED, the speed was more important. That is, the squaring of the speed of the fist, meaning we multiply the speed by itself, meant that how fast you punched was more important than how big and heavy your fist was. This guy was an interesting character, a physics graduate student teaching judo -- this might be interesting. It was intriguing how this teacher had applied something like physics and mathematics to the art of self-defense.
Quite a few more people had filtered in by now and it was almost 7 o'clock, so I settled in on a couple of mats. I have never been comfortable sitting on the floor -- probably not flexible enough, I always want for something to lean back against. A pretty girl with long, wavy, dirty-blonde hair plunked herself down, "indian-style" next to me, her legs crossed like Buddha. She looked over, giving me the once over, punctuated by a curt, polite smile which seemed to say, "you're kind of stuffy, aren't you?" I was wearing a light blue button-down oxford shirt along with, dark blue, non-denim pants -- all my jeans wanted the laundry. My arms were back, holding myself up in a sitting position, I felt awkward and uncomfortable. The pretty girl's back was curved perfectly, her posture was natural and comfortable, she flipped her hair in my direction. Her jeans were quite faded and her paisley patterned, gauzy top didn't quite cover the top of her pants in the back, revealing a long sliver of her backside.
The professor had come into the room and was arranging his notes on a table in front of the class. He was a young man, casually dressed in blue exercise clothing having two white stripes up the sides at the out-seams. He turned and began writing on the chalkboard. I glanced at the pretty girl who looked back, apparently somewhat irritated, she pulled her blouse down in the back, as if I were some sort of pervert. I rolled my eyes and looked at the chalkboard -- he had written the following on the chalkboard.
Let k.e. = Kinetic Energy, or Force;
then,
k.e. = 1/2mv2
The teacher scanned the room as he began to speak. Our eyes met and he gave me a quick, professional yet friendly nod -- immediately I recognized him as the man who had stolen my coat.
Also, I should've just said "weed", instead of that silly cannabis. Was that it? I really liked the story, I'm bracing myself, really, bring it on -- please. Especially all you PUBLISHED authors out there.
Here it is, as in the last contest, "A Lesson in Humility":
-- -- -- -- --
I was walking by the university library with two of my mates on a crisp, late autumn morning when I noticed a man approaching from the other direction, hunched against the cold and set upon his destination, wearing a jacket which looked very much like one that had been missing from my wardrobe for several weeks. Instead of a cap, he sported a tangled mass of unwashed black hair. As he drew closer, I became certain he was wearing my coat.
I remembered having noticed him in the background of a sordid house of ill repute I had visited several weeks back for the purposes of procuring some cannabis from a purveyor of that sort of thing. My impression at that time, while cursory, was that he might have been a "townie", or a stranded bum, having wound up there, at the end of a spree, lacking the wherewithal to move on. This is how it sometimes is in a university town. A bunch of fellows may all get together in paying what can be a fairly sizable rent for a house in the town. During the course of the year the actual tenants may change and they are all apt to have guests from time to time so that the odd face around the bathroom may not be that odd at all.
'Ah ha!', I thought, 'that scoundrel stole my coat!'. The truth was, I may have looked for the jacket briefly a couple of times and couldn't think when it was that I last wore it. It was a white and blue checked "CPO" style coat, it may have had one or more stripes of black in its pattern as well. Possibly a bit behind the fashions of the time, my mother had proudly made a gift of it with the distinction that it matched the blue of my eyes. It did fit quite nicely, having pockets at the right angle and position for the hands. In fact, I had broken through the inner linings of these pockets so that items placed in them could be moved arbitrarily deep or around the back, effectively hiding them from all but the most persistent of searches. So the jacket had been stolen, or more likely, left on a coat rack in a university building on a day that had turned out much warmer than it had started. The jacket may likely have hung for several days before the supposed purloining. Equally possible was that the garment had been shed during a night of debauchery. This was during a relatively wild period of my youth during which, on more than one occasion, and utter stranger, calling me by name, had returned an article of my clothing, apparently removed during a previous evening.
Feeling young and adventurous and being in the company of a couple of my brutish buddies, I figured I'd have some fun and began in my toughest braggadocio, "hey, where'd you get that coat?!".
The supposed thief seemed truly surprised and stopped. "Well I,", he glanced down at the pavement and back up, "it's my roommate's." He had extremely dark blue eyes, having minute, coal-black fragments, compelling inky specks in the irises.
"No it isn't,", I stood up tall, glancing at my two pals, "that's my jacket!". He was definitely on the spot. I had him and he knew it. I had intended to play the tough guy, and it was all unfolding as I planned, but, it just didn't feel quite right. "See that button?", I pointed to a button larger than the others about midway down the coat, "my mother sewed that on." It was like a scripted movie, and I was the guy on the white horse. Still, somehow, it didn't feel the way I had hoped. I mean, I had him cold, in broad daylight, in the middle of a busy intersection with students all round. "Are you going to give me my jacket...", I said slowly, thinking, 'a person ought to be able to play this role once in his life, right?' "Or", I continued self righteously, "am I going to have to take it off you?!" All I needed was a thin cigar and a cowboy hat -- my buddies were shifting on their feet, grinning, probably more from embarrassment than anything else.
Oddly, the guy had an honest face, a face you would trust. He muttered an apology, and looked down with embarrassment and began removing the coat. "Why don't you tell me where you live, and I'll...", it was really cold that morning, even in spite of what had to be a humiliating showdown, he tried to bargain with me.
"Yeah, right!", I demanded and he gave me the jacket. I hadn't planned for this part, and didn't really know what to do. I took the coat, rather in a huff, and stomped off, high and mighty, with my cronies. Somehow, I felt quite sure he would return the jacket if I would allow him to wear at the rest of the day. But the wheels of arrogance are mighty and the timber of intolerance, stiff and inflexible. We talked about it all the way to class. We talked about how lucky he had been to have made the right choice. Various alternate outcomes were discussed to our great amusement. The truth was, he had provided a satisfying little bit of drama, only, there was something phony in the whole scenario. For one thing, once the day warmed up, I had to carry around two extra articles of clothing. Further, while my mother had given me the thing, it wasn't among my favorites -- I hardly ever wore it anymore. I kept picturing the guys honest face, preparing to continue on in the cold for the rest of the day. After all, he wasn't living in the dormitory with a closet full of autumn outerwear, like me. This man's utter lack of hostility (or fear) amid this boisterous and public attack on his character was completely unanticipated and melted any anger I tried to muster. This guy was going to be cold for a good part of the day. 'To hell with him', I justified to myself, it was my coat, after all, my mother had truly sewn on that replacement button.
I couldn't seem to shake it off. Was I actually willing to enter into fisticuffs in front of the library with all my peers watching? Were the three of us going to beat this fellow up in public if he hadn't surrendered the jacket? The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it became. At the time, when I saw him approaching, the scene I acted out seemed completely justified, just like on TV, or from a watered down Clint Eastwood movie. It was completely out of character for me, on the other hand. It was, a duel, after some fashion; a gunfight in the dusty streets of Tombstone -- how ridiculous! I was no fighter. Plus, there were three of us and only one of him. The whole thing made me feel uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, that, many months later, I became interested in taking some kind of self-defense course. I ought to be able to back up my dramatic threats with some sort of kung fu or something, hadn't I?
A year went by. Soon after the spring semester started, there it was -- just the thing: a judo self-defense class being taught in the evenings, three nights a week in the gym. Oddly, in addition to breaking boards and protecting oneself from the attack of muggers, the class also offered meditation, relaxation and some kind of spiritual fitness angle as well. "Go Ju Roo", was the style that this course would be following. Wasn't that something!? Style. The flyer, taped to the window in the cafeteria, showed a pretty girl with long hair and a Chinese guy going at it with their robes and black belts on. Her hair was neatly tied back and one of her legs was jutting forward, having just kicked the Chinese guy backward, *** over tea kettle, pigtails flailing. It looked pretty interesting.
I showed up early for class the first night, several people were sitting on mats or were just standing around. I was greeted by a young woman wearing a white outfit having a black belt tight around the waist. She explained she was the teaching assistant for the class and handed me notes for the first lesson. This was great, something that promised to be a departure from the typical curriculum of science and literature. I was surprised when I began to read the introduction which also told a bit about the instructor. He was a doctoral physics candidate and I noticed on the bottom of the very first page there were mathematical formulas. I flipped the handout upside down as if some explanation would be printed on the reverse. Looking about the room, I seemed to have the right material so I read on.
"The energy of a moving particle is proportional to the mass times the square of the velocity." This was just my luck, I had somehow gotten into a physics class that was disguised as self-defense. Reading on however, I began to get the point. Since the force or energy of a punch or a kick depended on the mass (the weight of the fist or foot) multiplied by the speed, SQUARED, the speed was more important. That is, the squaring of the speed of the fist, meaning we multiply the speed by itself, meant that how fast you punched was more important than how big and heavy your fist was. This guy was an interesting character, a physics graduate student teaching judo -- this might be interesting. It was intriguing how this teacher had applied something like physics and mathematics to the art of self-defense.
Quite a few more people had filtered in by now and it was almost 7 o'clock, so I settled in on a couple of mats. I have never been comfortable sitting on the floor -- probably not flexible enough, I always want for something to lean back against. A pretty girl with long, wavy, dirty-blonde hair plunked herself down, "indian-style" next to me, her legs crossed like Buddha. She looked over, giving me the once over, punctuated by a curt, polite smile which seemed to say, "you're kind of stuffy, aren't you?" I was wearing a light blue button-down oxford shirt along with, dark blue, non-denim pants -- all my jeans wanted the laundry. My arms were back, holding myself up in a sitting position, I felt awkward and uncomfortable. The pretty girl's back was curved perfectly, her posture was natural and comfortable, she flipped her hair in my direction. Her jeans were quite faded and her paisley patterned, gauzy top didn't quite cover the top of her pants in the back, revealing a long sliver of her backside.
The professor had come into the room and was arranging his notes on a table in front of the class. He was a young man, casually dressed in blue exercise clothing having two white stripes up the sides at the out-seams. He turned and began writing on the chalkboard. I glanced at the pretty girl who looked back, apparently somewhat irritated, she pulled her blouse down in the back, as if I were some sort of pervert. I rolled my eyes and looked at the chalkboard -- he had written the following on the chalkboard.
Let k.e. = Kinetic Energy, or Force;
then,
k.e. = 1/2mv2
The teacher scanned the room as he began to speak. Our eyes met and he gave me a quick, professional yet friendly nod -- immediately I recognized him as the man who had stolen my coat.