Big

So I haven't accomplished much today except self loathing for not getting any homework done and lying around the house today watching old Lifetime movies with no pants on. I suppose the greatest thing that did come of today was when I finally convinced myself to go do some reading at the library and was hit by the inspirational writing bug. Sadly, not in an academic sense, but it did inspire this short story. And since this is my two-week deadline anyways to submit a short story according to the terms of my New Years Resolution, I suppose I made it just in time.

This story was in part inspired by a short children's book "Le Petit Prince" that we're currently reading in my French class. In addition I also went and found supporting images I liked on google to supplement the story which helped foster along the creative process, but I've added credit where credit is due with the links underneath the photos. Ran across a lot of really awesome artists in the process of "gillustrating" [making up words here, just flow with it] my piece so you should really take a little bit of time to check them out as they have some fantastic pieces 

Anyways, channeling my inner child I suppose with this one, but I hope that you enjoy it.

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"Big"
by Sydney Odell

My teacher says I need to be more concise. She says my sentences are too long and my words are too big. “All great writers can say what they need to in ten words or less,” she says.  But I am already losing. I cannot make my thoughts fit into the tiny space between the periods. Keep practicing, she assures me, and one day you will be such a great writer! I do not know how to tell her that I do not want to write small. I cannot fit the small words into my big mouth. They do not make sense, they are too blunt. Like a knife, they cut at my deeper meaning.  They drown out my voice, lodging themselves at the threshold of my esophagus. “No one says esophagus, Daniel. It is your throat” I hear her say. She does not mind that this brevity is consuming me. I think I will choke on these small words.

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One day she decides she will rid me of my superfluous words. I sit down next to her at the table and she begins to teach me simplicity. The cat is black, she writes. Next to the sentence she draws a small picture of a cat. Here, she points to the drawing, my meaning is very simple and clear. Silently I think to myself that the cat is not black. It is ebony, charcoal, slate—the color of dark shadowy clouds on a stormy night. When I tell this to my teacher, she is upset. Daniel, if I say the cat is black then the cat is black! I do not know why telling the truth has upset her, but I do not argue using any big words. I swallow them in one gulp, allowing them to fill me up whole. She says that I make things unnecessarily complicated, that I must learn to condense. I nod and agree, but I do not really see what she means. The cat is not black.

lost this one and literally cannot find it again

Her second picture is of a giraffe. The giraffe is tall, she points out. She thinks she has won, she sees the description so quickly. I wonder if I can find the right words to match her lie. I look hard at the picture of the giraffe, its slender neck reaching high into the vast unknown. The giraffe is elongated, I venture a guess. The hiccup of my big word escapes from the depths of my overwhelmed stomach and I know she is displeased.  No Daniel, she sighs, the giraffe is tall—just tall. I do not think I like these lessons.

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Next she draws a picture of a dog.  It has a protruding round belly with thick pointed hair standing at a point, as if the dog is not really a dog at all but rather a porcupine in disguise. The dog is fat, she says. But the dog is not fat—it is obese, corpulent, bulging. The dog is as plump as a potbellied pig after its morning slop. Describe the dog Daniel, she orders. 

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I know what she wants me to say but my lips remain frozen. The dog is fat, the dog is fat, the dog is fat. I cannot wrap my mind around this three letter word: FAT.  I try to think in small thoughts with small words so she will understand, but they do not come out. All I can hear are big words swimming around in my head with their big meanings, like a shark about to attack its vulnerable prey. But she cannot see these menacing sharks, and so I take the pencil and begin to draw.

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She does not say anything, just starts at my drawing in silence. I think I have been too clear, that I have said too much without saying anything at all. My big words and big ideas she does not understand, and that is alright. She cannot fully see that I have silenced her with a small picture saying a thousand big words that she will never be able to condense. That her small words do not fit into my large gaping jaws. I have consumed her.