Understanding the assignment

My mother's moving houses soon, and she's been cleaning out the attic, which means she's been shipping me boxes of old stuff from when I was a kid. Yearbooks, comics, football cards, photos, etc. You know the drill. It's really fun looking through all of these old things, but kind of a burden to have to make the decision myself on what to keep. I live in a NYC apartment, so space is a premium.

But one thing I think I should keep is this project i did for my high school English class. We read a bunch of short stories, and we had to write up a short essay on each. So what I did was create a newspaper on my dad's computer, using clip art and some kind of early design software (this was 1993).

That horse! So lifelike! "TIMES" (of what?)

I won't go through the whole thing, but I thought I'd highlight a couple of the article in this newspaper.

First, here's a story about a sailor who dies of fever. I have no idea what short story this is or who wrote it or anything really about what happens in it.

It's funny how much the style of Night Vale is in this writing from 31 years ago. The joke quote from the doctor taking a left turn at the end and the dark button at the end.

And here's one more. Again, I have no idea what story this is or who wrote it, but you can see some of the Night Vale-esque humor in the writing, which is probably coming from me reading too much of my granddad's collection of Dave Barry books.

Like an asshole, I gave myself quite a byline. Also, like the other story, I had photos facing OFF the page, because while I wanted to be a journalist, I certainly didn't know anything about layout.

The tidbit here that cracked me up was the mom saying that she guess her son got betting tips from his rocking horse.

I remember being really proud of this assignment, but I got a B on it. My teacher, Mrs. Tidwell, told me that while she appreciated my creativity in both writing and design, I didn't really demonstrate a comprehension of the stories.

She's not wrong, because knowing me in high school, there's no way I read any of these short stories.

Anyway, hope y'all enjoy this junk, and if anyone knows who authored the short stories I covered here, please let me know. They feel very Hemingway to me, but I don't know. I've never read Hemingway.

Jeffrey Cranor