While rooting through my old school junk (so old it pre-dates the internet, compact discs and tipping more than 15%) I found a story called CLAWS that I wrote using my Smith Corona portable typewriter. I typed it out on small-sized paper to make it look like a paperback. Maybe I had a dream of binding or stapling it all together when done to further enhance the illusion. I dreamed big back then.
CLAWS was inspired by Jaws and more importantly, by the 1976 Jaws ripoff, Grizzly. Basically it was a monster movie as written by an 11 year old. I considered myself pretty good at spelling but apparently I was not so good at hitting keys on a typewriter. This would be reinforced twenty years later when Mavis Beacon caused me to curl up on the floor in a fetal position, vowing to never touch anther typing program ever again.
What I’m saying is there are a lot of typos, even just on the first page included below. This is what happens when your spelling checker is an actual dictionary and your delete key is waiting for you 15 years in the future. I give myself props for getting “its” right, though.
Reading it over, I’m struck by the staccato, Hemingway-like prose, sentences delivered like quick machine gun bursts.
The year was 1956.
It was an April morning.
It was a savage animal.
But would this stop the beast? No.
Too bad so many of the sentences appear to be in random order. Or maybe I was making a statement on the unpredictable nature of nature.
It’s like watching someone throw clay then realize that “throw clay” is an expression, you don’t literally throw it, so they go pick up the clay bits from the other side of the room, come back to the pottery table and then fashion together something that has all the required elements of whatever it is they’re making (probably an ashtray), but with everything about it just slightly wrong because let’s face it, they already threw the clay across the room, they’re probably not destined to make great art here.
But man, did I ever know how to end a first page. How it fought to live in man’s civilization? You have to read on to find out what happens. I picture CLAWS trying to fit in at boarding school. “He keeps mauling the other students,” Miss Pennington said. “It’s just not proper.”
