A Story

It has been a long time since I posted a Wooffer story. I post this one because it was a favorite of Dick's and I like it myself.


THE 45TH ARMORED BRIGADE REUNION (AN ARMADILLO PARTY)

Mildred and Claudie lived under an old blue car that had been there since before time began. They had built their first home there years ago. At first, it was just a tunnel and a single compartment but every year they had added to it until, today, it had no less than ten rooms. All the compartments ran off the main hallway, and there were many nooks of cozy attraction and comfort. The hallways were adorned with pictures of their long and happy life together and shelves of Mildred’s many artistic accomplishments over the years. The shelves also held trophies that Claudie had won and awards their children had received.
In one little nook, there was a library of all the stories they enjoyed and, in another, two chairs by a fireplace where they enjoyed their tea every morning time. In another, Claudie’s Armored Division Trophies and keepsakes could be seen. It was a very comfortable and happy place.
Mildred and Claudie had been very busy for a week. Mildred swept and dusted and Claudie polished all the root supports and cross supports until they gleamed. They washed the rugs, and dusted the drapery. They shopped for the best worms, beetles and white grubs they could find. They cleaned out the grub cellar and put in new leaves to keep the grubs fresh. This took some time because they had to put down a layer of brown leaves then add a layer of grubs and another layer of leaves. Then they added a layer of worms and another layer of leaves and, finally, a layer of beetles until it was full.
Although Mildred and Claudie were very tired when they finally went to bed, they talked far into the night of old times and the people they hoped to see at the party.
Early the next morning, Claudie went off to rent the fireflies and Mildred started preparing the table and the food. First, she spread the table with a beautiful tablecloth that her mother had given them as a wedding present. It was white with little embroidered flowers in blue and yellow with a lacy edge. Next, she got the grubs and worms and beetles from the cellar and washed them all very well and put them on clean towels to dry. Finally, she went out to the garden and picked some flowers and arranged them in blue vases on the table. She was smiling and humming a little tune to herself as she got out her best dishes and crystal glasses and set the table all around with the name of each guest beside their plates.
When Claudie returned with the fireflies, Mildred had just finished cooking the delicious sauce for the worms.
Together, they arranged the fireflies on the overhead roots that Claudie had polished so well and placed napkins next to each plate. Then, they put each kind of beetle in separate beetle dishes, arranged the grubs on a big platter and poured the sauce over the worms in a large bowl. Finally, they filled the crystal glasses with sparkling spring water and placed a large pitcher at one end of the table.
At last, everything was finished, except for Mildred and Claudie! They had to get themselves ready to greet their guest.
They polished all the bands on their armor and cleaned their claws and brushed their teeth. They did look very nice as the guests arrived — very nice indeed!
Soon, all the invited guest had arrived and exclaimed over and over again how nice the table looked, and how delicious everything smelled. They said how everybody had not changed since the last reunion and other such nice things to hear as these before they all found their name by their plate and sat down to eat.
As a rule, armadillos are a quiet lot and very polite and, because they are very keen on proper etiquette and table manners, the party was going on without a lot of trouble. Each guest held his pinky claw out while selecting a juicy grub and twirled the worms around their pointer claw before eating it, and when they ate a beetle, they discreetly spit the legs into their napkins. They sipped their sparkling spring water and had conversations of the most genteel kind.
Mildred and Claudie mingled and talked and offered more of everything as the fireflies blazed overhead.
It was at that moment that … the door burst open and in blustered Willy ’Dillo and his new wife Nilly. Everyone gasped! It was a heart stopper, I can tell you!
Willy ‘Dillo had been over the road a lot of times and had finally made his home in Lester’s Field — a wild, uncivilized country. There he had met and wooed Nilly until she had agreed to become Mrs. ’Dillo. They were finally wed and pronounced Willy and Nilly ‘Dillo about a year ago. They were as alike as two peas could be! They never said anything but that it was in a SHOUT. They were both as loud as loud could be. They had NOT been invited to the 45th Armored Division Party so, when they burst into the room, it was a surprise to everyone, especially to Claudie and Mildred. Mildred almost rolled into a ball.
Willy was shouting, “I NOTICED YOUR FIREFLIES AND SMELLED THE FOOD, SO WE CAME TO JOIN THE PARTY!”
Nilly was already on the table eating grubs out of Mildred’s best dishes, and Willy went for the worm bowl and started SLURPING worms. In no time they were up to the beetle dishes and grabbed great paws full of beetles and chewed them WITH THEIR MOUTHS OPEN, and then SPIT THE LEGS ON THE FLOOR!
Mildred was feeling a little faint. All the invited guests were giving Willy and Nilly their best beady-eyed glare.
Willy and Nilly kept on talking with their mouths full at the top of their lungs, paying no attention to the other guests at all, who were sitting there in, what is known as, astounded silence.
Finally, Claudie had had enough! He grabbed Willy and Nilly by their first bands and shoved them out the door, quietly saying, “And, stay out!” He shut the door behind them.
Willy and Nilly had just gotten up and dusted themselves off with a lot of commotion and noise and were shouting to each other about how rudely they were shown the door when Wooffer came around the front fender of the old blue car. With the loudest Armadillo shriek you have ever heard, Nilly took off running toward the road. Willy was close behind and Wooffer was right on their tails. He chased them to the road and they were over it in a flash and back in Lester’s Field.
Wooffer was not allowed to cross the road, so he watched them run until they were out of sight and came back home.
Inside, Mildred and Claudie were putting on the old music and everyone was dancing and singing the old songs and having a fine time. The party was a huge success.

Love,
Betty

4/10/2010

Betty..

Great story..


Love Joe

Betty,

Perhaps this one could be posted in our new "House and Garden" section.

Ann

Betty,

I read this three times. I feel you have a complete book in these few pages.
I would love to see this with cartoon characters in bright colors on a soft colored background.
This is a great read for both adults, and children.

I feel this is your nitch.

These ARE nice stories, but they're already in a book, her Wooffer book.

Maybe Wooffer II needs to come out?

I don't know you all are so worried about rights and the contract. Realistically, what would happen if you re-titled your work and sold it elsewhere? I bet a big, fat nothing.

Betty has the talent to produce other work just as great as this.

Thank you all for your words of encouragement. I wonder if I have another book like Wooffer in me. Sometimes it seems unreal that the stories in Wooffer were written by me. It was a different time and Wooffer and I have grown old together. This little quote says it all.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West

I have been writing little bits of stories.

I have set the memoir to one side for the moment. I cannot see the value in it.


Love,
Betty

Dear Alice,
I do not think that stories by people who survived are any good at all to those who suffer abuse. They are not the one's who read them. If they do, it is long after the abuse took place. Perhaps it validates that they were not the only one, but, as far as changing anything, I do not think it happens. Most books on a person's personal abuse experience are written long after the fact and is,for them, an unloading. My sister was here for a week. She unloaded. I hope it helped her. I listened for a week. I hope it helped her to put all the crap behind her.

The people who help abused children, listen with more than their ears.

Love,
Betty

Quote :

I do not think that stories by people who survived are any good at all to those who suffer abuse.

Don't be so sure.
I remember reading an article in the LA Times Magazine by a girl who was sexually abused by her father, and later that same week a piece by Andrew Vaachs.

It was like opening up a window in my head. I wasn't sexually abused, but as Vaachs said, "The real crime of abuse is diminishing somebody as a person."

The girl in the Times talked about when she first started talking about what was happening. Her sisters were scandalized and furious with her, and denied everything. I learned that is not uncommon...that the kid who first mentions the abuse is shunned by their siblings. Suddenly a lot of things made sense.

I followed that up a little more and started getting the picture, and sort of re-writing my own personal history in way that started making a lot more sense to me.

Not long after that a very weird pattern started in my life: I had an unbroken series of about 8 girlfriends who were all incest victims. Some became sort of serial rapees. Two were abused by older family members who had also abused their mothers, who'd kept silent and reacted with fury when they brought the abuse to their attention.

Well, without spinning off into my own history, let me just say that writing about child abuse of any flavor might be a big help to those who read it, the ones who need it most.

Dear Lin,
You are right about the real crime being the deminishing of a person. When I think back on it, that is what it was. That, and the feeling that everyone else knew you were less than they in some unexplained way that you had no control over.

If I could write it like that, I would go on with it. I do not want to write it as just another story of abuse. I will think on what you have said. It is important about the reaction of the siblings, too.

Love,
Betty