Benny the Rock Saves the Day

I have the most amazing creative writing instructor I have ever had. She makes it so fun to go to class, participate in the activities and to actually do the reading.

(They are novels and not textbooks though, so it didn't take much persuasion)

The first day of class we did the normal beginning of the quarter hoopla before getting to the good stuff and then took a break. When we came back she had a large, well worn, brown paper bag on the front table. Before addressing the bag she had us put our desks into a circle. Then, to get into the mood of creativity and writing she read Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak to us.

(Flash backs to kindergarten and preschool anyone?)

I pretty much loved it.

Then she started talking about short stories. Not just any short stories, but SHORT stories. They are all stories that consist of usually six words or less. If you have never read any of these, you are missing out. They can be so visual and so changing. As we discussed them in class they meant different things to different people. I had heard a lot of these before, but I had never written any of my own. Here are some of my favorites as well as two that I wrote.

Ernest Hemingway wrote probably my favorite one which reads, 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'

‘It’s behind you! Hurry before it’ –Rockne S. O’Bannon

‘Kirby had never eaten toes before.’ –Kevin Smith

‘Epitaph: He shouldn’t have fed it.’ –Brian Herbert

‘I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss…?’ –Neil Gaiman

‘He wondered if anyone had survived.’ -Caty

‘Intense pain. Burning. Make it stop.’ -Caty


If you liked these, you can check out more here.

Now, my attention span can be…well, sometimes it has ADD and I can’t focus on things for very long. Leaving that paper bag on the table…couldn’t handle it. I really wanted to know what was in the bag. However, it wasn’t until after story time and short stories that she asked for a raise of hands with regards to people possessing junk drawers in their home. That’s where the paper bag comes in. She had emptied her junk drawer into that bag earlier that morning. She had each of us randomly select an object out of the bag and write a short story (one page) about how that object saved the day or the world.

I pulled a small, speckled rock with a little figure drawn onto it in purple marker out of the crumpled paper bag.

I would now like to share my short story with you.

Benny the Rock Saves the Day
By Caty P.

Benny always felt a little lopsided. He couldn’t roll or skip like all of the other rocks his age. He was so small that he thought he would never find anything in life that he was really good at. His mom always told him he was special and would someday find his purpose in life, but sometimes he really just wasn’t sure she wasn’t lying to him because she was his mom.

One day, Benny had been rolling crookedly through the park and minding his own business because the other rocks would not let him skip and sink with them, when all of the sudden something sent him flying through the air only to skid across the ground before finally coming to a tumultuous and upside down stop. Benny had only just begun to get his bearings when it happened again, only this time with more force. This time he hit so hard part of him chipped. Benny was terrified. This was really not how he imagined himself dying.

However, instead of death greeting him when he slid to a stop however, he was clutched in the grasp of something that was hard and yet slightly squishy all at the same time. He was placed in a concave area of this hard and squishy thing that he had still not identified before he was launched high into the air. He rolled and tumbled there for what felt like hours as he watched his short life flash before his eyes. He was once again sure this would be the time he would die, but he landed gently back into the squishy hard basket and was then placed on top of a piece of wood.

It was a table. Benny had never been on the top of a table before, but he had seen many of them from below. It made him feel nervous and yet excited all at the same time.

The girl was pulling things out of what Benny thought had to be a small, traveling cave. She had a lot of things hiding in that small cave. Most of the things were thin but very large.

Benny didn’t recognize the paper because he had seen it before, but because of the stories. There were always stories about paper and scissors, but mostly paper because it could be so dangerous. Most of the stories scared him. They were usually told around the campfires and gardens at night while they were supposed to be resting, which seemed to make them all the more ominous.

Paper and rocks were not and never had been friends. Paper often towers over rocks and will always win in a fight, or so Benny had been told.

It was then that the wind picked up. The girl began to scramble to catch her papers as they scattered into the wind. It was then that she picked Benny up again and placed him on top of the stack of papers. At first Benny was afraid. He didn’t want to be near the papers because he didn’t want them to beat him up. How embarrassed would he be if he was taken down by a piece of paper like the stories said would happen.

It was then however that the wind picked up again. Benny waited to be tumbled to the side. All the paper did however, was flutter lightly in the breeze. They couldn’t move any more than that. Benny had stopped them from flying away and from harming him.

Benny, the smallest of all the rocks he knew, had beaten the paper. He couldn’t wait to tell all of his friends what a day he had had.