Novel

CHAPTER ONE

by   lk

It’s 7:00 a.m. in a Sunday morning.

You woke up so early today because you slept so early last night. You are putting up your new Vans shirt that mama bought you yesterday and getting ready to go out. You are a skater boy. You love Vans so much and mama knows that very well! You are going to the plant hospital since your little spider plant is too ill. You are very sad as your spider plant looks like dying. You believe you need to take it to see the doctor as soon as possible to save its life.

The JanSport Big Student backpack is on your back while you are walking through the city park with the little spider plant in your hand. You said hello to Mrs. White who was walking her big dog in the park.

Mrs. White is a heavy lady who lived near your home. She had already retired for 10 years. Every day she walks her dog Shrimp in the city park for exactly an hour. She knows everybody in the neighborhood very well because she is so nice. She always invites people to her home to eat the food that she has learned to cook in every Monday night’s cooking class. She is always cooking too much that every time she has to eat all the extra food since she never estimates correctly the number of the guests and she believes food that is not fresh tastes ugly.

Shrimp is extremely overweight and moves very slowly - as slowly as Mrs. White. Mrs. White loves the word “shrimp” very much so she named her dog Shrimp even though it’s not a shrimp. Every time she is asked about why she named her dog Shrimp, she will be very excited and proud to tell people how much she loves this word. Shrimp is fully covered with long fuzzy hair. Mrs. White never takes it to the dog barber’s shop since it was born 3 years ago. Now it’s hair is falling all the way down to the floor. Whenever it walks, nobody can see it’s feet because the hair is too long. It moves like a big white caterpillar on the floor.

Every morning, there are more than five retired people in the park walking their dogs. All of them know each other every well. Even their dogs know each other very well.

After saying hello to Mrs. White and Shrimp, you keep walking.

You have to take the subway to the plant hospital since it’s 5 miles away from your house. The Little Purple Train is coming while you are on the escalator. People began to run as soon as they recognize the train’s approaching.

You thought,

“Oh! No! I am not gonna run! Let me wait for the next train!”

You believe running fast enough to catch up with this train will make your legs tired and your mind uncomfortable. You hate that. You prefer to wait for the next train. While you are waiting, you are very happy to sit on the lounge and turn on the mp3 to listen to the newest album of The Strikers - your favorite skate punk band! You have just bought their music from iTunes yesterday when grandpapa gave 20 dollars to you after he received his monthly pension 2 days ago because he loves you so much!

Grandpapa love you so much because you are a very nice child who is doing very well in school and has fuzzy hair. He loves to touch your hair because it’s so soft. Every New Year’s Day grandpapa gives each of his grandchildren 100 dollars. But besides that he will take you to another room and give you another 100 dollars secretly because he loves you even more.

You arrived the Poo-Poo Plant Hospital in 30 minutes. Oh! Your spider plant is so ill that it needs some surgeries in the stems and the roots. You are very happy because your spider plant won’t die and the remaining 10 dollars that grandpapa gave you can perfectly cover the surgery charge.

“Oh! Nice!” You said to yourself, “Really nice!”

The surgery will last for about an hour. You have to wait outside the surgery room. A nice National Geographic magazine is waiting for you on the sofa to be read.

“I love this!”You screamed out.

For a whole year, your favorite magazine has been the National Geographic. You love the pictures in it. They are so beautiful. You swore to yourself that you will visit those places some day in the future. Five minutes after opening your favorite magazine, you fell asleep on the couch.

When you woke up, you saw a little fat dog awkwardly chasing its own tail in front of you. It was so funny. This is Mr. Smith’s dog Slide. Slide is a fat dog with short hair. Even thought Slide doesn’t have much hair on its surface, it’s still very soft because it’s too fat. Its muscles are hidden far below the fat skin. Whenever Slide is walking, you cannot stop laughing loudly since it’s so funny that its body is shaking so heavily, making it looks like a round fur ball.

Mr. Smith is a short man with white hair on his head. He won the third place in the Big Eater Prize two years ago and the prize for the winner was a dog. He has since kept the dog till today and named it Slide.