An Unnamed Short Story by RagTag

[aragtaghooligan]

I wrote this story in February 2014

When I was younger there was a man I called uncle who always insisted he was a pirate. I say now that I never believed him, but, every time I say that, I am lying. I believed him with my whole heart. I don’t remember much about that man. He is definitely not technically related to me. He must have been a friend of my parents. I can’t even remember his name, but I remember that he had a glass eye that he could take out but he never would do so in front of me, even though I begged him to. Oh how that eye used to transfix my poor ignorant child mind. The only other thing I remember about this man is that he was an excellent story teller. I must have shelved away most of the stories he told me in the same forgotten and lost file of my brain as the one in which I stored his name, but there is one story that somehow got misplaced into another folder which inadvertently get’s opened from time to time.

This is how that story goes:

Once upon a time there was a town very much like the one that we live in except that it was smaller and that the people in this village all had the same goal, unlike here where no one can ever seem to agree, even about something simple like which is the best breakfast cereal. That goal was to make a song that could always be heard from all around the village. People would wear tap shoes all day long and everyone walked in an odd jaunty way so as to keep the rhythm of the song. When a child passed by a fence he or she would slap the bars of the iron gate for added percussion. Pencils tapped on tables, dogs barked in tune, people would stand and wait to slam their car door until just the right moment, and someone, somewhere in the town, was always singing. His or her friends would join in with harmonies, du waps, whistling, and hums, but there was only ever one person singing the main song and it was never the same person for more than a few minutes. No one said when they would sing and when they would sleep and when they would be busy brushing their teeth, there was no big schedule, but somehow it always seemed to work out just right that just as one singer felt the need to go do something else another person would suddenly feel the need to sing.

There lived in this town a lovely little boy named Oliver who was eleven years old and had never sung the song, EVER. You see, Oliver HATED the song more than I have ever hated anything ever before in my life (even more than you hate spinach). Oliver hated the song, and he hated the people who sang it. He did not see a point in it all. He was always jabbering on about the need for a point. “Darling” his mother would say at breakfast “your brother is trying to sing. Please dear won’t you bang your spoon in time with him?” “I don’t want rhythm mother!” the boy would yell in fury “I don’t want music! I don’t want beauty! All I want in this whole wide world is for you all to wake up and realize that you don’t make sense! WHY are you singing? There is no point!”

One day poor ole Oliver had finally had enough, so do you know what he did? He RAN away. It was hard at first to kiss his baby sister goodbye and think of how he’d never see his brother again as he tripped upon his stupid toy drum, but he would do ANYTHING to get away from that song! Oh how he longed for a beautiful silent place where no one ever sang and everything made sense.

So now what do you think happened to Oliver when he left the village of song? Do you think that he immediate went back because he missed his family or because the silence drove him crazy or do you think he climbed up to a silent mountain where no noise is ever made and lives there still cherishing the silence and looking up at the stars?

Well if you think any of those things, then I regret to inform you that you are wrong because it just so happens that the world he discovered was not silent at all and he never could escape from the song yet he stayed in his new city for quite some time. He heard it everywhere: in the screech of a rusty door hinge and the squeak of an old swing. He heard it in the honking car horns and the laughing children. It got to the place where he could even see the song in the twinkling stars which had an oh so familiar rhythm and the smiling mailman who seemed to breathe out the song from somewhere deep within him.

He could not escape the song and at first that drove him mad. There was a time when he wanted to yell at the top of his lungs every time he encountered it, but that soon passed because before he even realized it was happening he was feeling this odd surge of joy every time he recognized the song. And then one day he suddenly realized that he had been singing the song out loud for quite some time. That is the day that he decided to go back to the home of his childhood.

Well he was so excited to go back that he just danced right into the town singing at the top of his lungs until he suddenly realized that no one else was making music and for one small moment his voice faltered and the song started to die out. Then as he glanced around and noticed that everyone was trudging about their business in the most dejected sort of way something deep within him told him not to stop. He later found out that no one in the town had sung the song once in the last 10 years since he had left. Apparently it had started out slowly enough with one or two people voicing the opinion that the runaway might have had a point, but then before anyone really knew what was happening the whole town had given up their song. Until the day when Oliver returned a grown man and he stood in the middle of the town and, for reasons he couldn’t quite comprehend, he kept on singing that song. A few people yelled at him to shut up and a couple kids ran over and threw rocks at him, but he kept singing. Then his mother came out of a store and stopped dead in her tracks. She knew immediately that it was him and for a few short minutes she was so shocked she could not move, but then she ran to him and she held his hand and he switched to humming and she took up the song. They walked together down the road towards their house and by the time they finally made it home someone else was singing and a small child was banging out a rhythm on her neighbour's fence while her brother teased her for it and her grandmother looked on and whispered thanks that the song was being sung once more.

[Miss Friendship]

That's a beautiful story, ragtag!

*missed the part about drums*

[Emma]

Amazing. You are very creative!

[Tarol]

Wow! I was transfixed by the whole thing. You write in a unique style...like a storyteller...and it draws you write (xD) into the story. It seemed like a deep story that had an even deeper story...it seemed like a story about growing up, the way teenagers feel about many things their family or friends do that bothers them. It seems like a story about God's grace or presence...which is everywhere, and if you look hard enough, you'll find it everywhere. I think you could have changed the story, so that the town stopped singing because Oliver wasn't there to join in on singing...and have a "body of Christ" moral at the end...but you didn't. Overall, I really loved it. It could use a little grammar check in one or two places, but who's noticing?

[aragtaghooligan]

hahaha thanks guys. Thanks for the input Ox

[HomeschoolCowgirl]

It's beautiful RagTag!