Unfinished Business

Back when I was submitting content to One Typed Page, I never had a really solid idea of what exactly I was going to write about. That’s not to say that I had no idea as all, I knew if I was going to write about a particular topic or if I was going to attempt to write a short story and what that story might generally be about , but that was about as much as I knew upon inserting a fresh  piece of paper into my typewriter.

The successes, or rather the pages that I managed to complete, were the pages that I sent off to be published on OTP. There were also failures that were left behind. As I was cleaning out my basket of my typing supplies (my various stationery designs, my fountain pens, letters that I still need to respond to, etc.), I came across one such failure.  Looking it over, I thought that it might make for a somewhat entertaining interactive piece.

What I mean by this is that I would like to know where you the readers of this blog might take things as far as this unfinished story goes. I am retyping this in a narrow column format below to make it a bit easier to read. Please let me know what you foresee happening for Ruth & Ronnie. Maybe I’ll take one of the submitted ideas and use it to finish out their tale.

Had Ruth not dared him to, Ronnie never would have flung the smelly bag of dog crap into Mr. Johnson’s car.  But the last thing that Ronnie wanted  to happen was to be shown up by Ruth. Ruth Foster was essentially one of the guys. Not only did most of Ronnie’s buddies like her, but she was the fastest kid in school, and she never backed down from a dare. Ronnie had long imagined that this was because Ruth could likely outrun any trouble that she might find herself in. Ronnie on the other hand wasn’t all that fast, but the guys liked him in part because he wasn’t a snitch.

When they were caught by surprise in the act of letting the air out of the tires on Mr. Watseka ‘ s riding lawnmower, Ronnie was the only one who dldn’t manage to escape. As Ronnie wasn’t about to spill the beans on his pals, he alone bore the brunt of the  punishment handed down by his parents.  Which was to wash Mr. Watseka’s car, along with his riding lawnmower, and his garbage cans just for good measure. From that point onward, the gang all knew that  they could trust Ronnie.

The truth was, Ruth liked Ronnie. The two of them walked home from school together every day as they both lived on the same block. Ruth liked that Ronnie would always ask if she needed any help with carrying her things, even though she never did. Ruth was fairly certain that she was actually stronger than Ronnie, but she never said anything as she dldn’t want to upset him. The funny thing was, Ruth dldn’t have any idea why she dared Ronnie to toss the bag into Mr. Johnson’s brown Pontiac. What was clear is that she had underestimated Ronnle’s resolve.

So there you have it, that is as far as I got before I figured out that it was highly unlikely  that I was going to finish this story before my one typed page ended. (I was never a fan of sending more than just one typed page at a time to a site titled “One Typed Page”.) So I ended things there and stuffed the unfinished page/story into my “Typing Basket”, forgetting all about Ruth & Ronnie until just the other day.

If I get some suggestions from you all, maybe we can finish  the tale of these two. (I can see a number of things that I would write differently, as was often the case with my OTP submissions.)  I’m not so much interested in trying to improve upon what I’ve already written (no doubt there is plenty to improve upon), I just thought it might be fun to figure out where things might go next.

AFTERTHOUGHTS: Just as with this blog, my primary motivation behind contributing content to One Type Page was that it gave me yet another chance to make use of the many typewriters that I’ve accumulated. Much like playing guitar, I find typing to be a very good form of stress relief. Just as I’ve hoped that through continued playing, the music I create will improve with time, so goes my hope that my writing will improve as I continue to type. However, be it my guitar playing or my typing, I’m having a good time regardless of how much my music or my writing improves (or not).