Sunday, September 9, 2018

A Literary Blast from the Past

While cleaning out papers, I ran across a short story that was written by my daughters and nieces. Evidently, the girls got together one day, typed up a story, and printed it on a dot matrix printer. (Man! Hasn't technology improved!?!?) The girls each signed the story once it was printed, some at the end of specific paragraphs, leading me to believe that they were the author of the paragraph that they signed. Some of the paragraphs don't have a specific author, so maybe the girls will remember who wrote what. What's even stranger is, I signed it! I guess I was in on the writing session... who knows! Although Alisha didn't sign the paper, I can't imagine her not being in on this so I'm giving her credit as well.


Because I'm not adept at using Ron's scanner, I took a pic of the original and have re-typed it below. I tried to stay true to their original grammar, punctuation, and spelling; but, today's computers make it hard to misspell words. Enjoy!

The Family Reunion
In the summer of 1993, the family of Bob and Shirley Porter gathered together for a family reunion. Their four children had families of their own, living all over the world because of job assignments. It was the first time in over five years that all of the children and grandchildren had been in one place together. (author unknown)
Little did they know that this summer would be known as the Summer of the Great Swamp Monster.  The monster had big long eyes sticking out of its head hanging on long anteneas and its face was all pinched in except for its mouth which stuck out real far so it could eat little kids next door. (Amanda Porter)
The Porter kids were known to be little brats so when the swamp monster heard about the family gathering next door, he figured it would be a great place to eat all the bratty little kids. (Sarah Porter)
After the kids had eaten dinner, the swamp monster thought it would be a great time to eat them because they would be fat a juicy. The kids would be going into the pool and their parents wouldn't be watching them. (Sarah Porter)
All of the kids were in the pool and one of them thought she heard something so she went to tell her favorite cousin.  "I think someone is looking over the fence at us." Her cousin loked but didn't see a thing. She said it was a wild imagination. (author unknown)
Suddenly the monster dived into the pool and caught the cousins by their swim suits and then began to rip out their hair because it would give the monster indigestion. (Jessica Porter)
Soon the parents came out and the swamp monster didn't have time to eat them all so he threw them into his own yard. (author unknown)
Then the children were all screaming, the parents were all crying, and the swamp monster was trying to escape with the children. Then the hero's arrived. (either Rebecca or Leslie Searls)
First to the rescue was Sheena the Bold with her golden hair flowing in the wind. Next cam Kiki the Quick with his swift, strong body. Following Kiki was O.W. the Wonder Cat; everyone wonders what he's good at. Finally, the four schnauzers arrived, singing and howling at the top of their voices with their voice coach, Sugar the Sweet trailing behind.  Jack the Nimble Two by Four, Tara the Troubling Bella, Molly the Motherly Mutt, and Missy the Messy. (Gwen Searls, although I don't remember this! And who the heck is Missy??)
The swamp monster was overcome by all of the overpowering love and devotion shown by the animal heroes so he dropped the cousins and ran for the hills never to be seen again. (either Rebecca or Leslie Searls)

I was going to add a picture of the girls, taken at the age this was written; unfortunately,  I've already given most of my photos to my kids. Maybe at some time in the future, I can get either Rebecca or Leslie to loan me some. In the mean time, I took the liberty of getting screen shot pics from their Facebook pages. Here are the authors of the short story, The Family Reunion. Beautiful inside and out.

Amanda Porter Elmer

Sarah Porter Harward

Alisha Porter

Jessica Porter Lehman

Rebecca Searls Castello

Leslie Searls Gutierrez