Post by Robin on Feb 27, 2006 16:02:15 GMT -8
The name's not so hot, but I like the story. So if you have any suggestions for the title, feel free to throw those in, too.
I liked the ghosts of the characters I saw in this, so I may make it into a longer story if people like this idea.
In this edit, I just tried to add some stuff that made it obvious that the narrator included herself in her chastising of the lack of significance in Marty's roadside shrine. If it didn't work, I'll just edit it some more. No biggie.
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I remember that Marty always liked Semisonic. I think everybody remembered, at least a little, that day at the funeral. Hell, Victor Huffman even brought his guitar to the funeral and played ‘Made to Last.’ It was his tribute to Marty. Victor’s whole world was music - he couldn’t think of anything else in the world that was greater or more honorable than music. Come to think of it, neither can I. I think that Victor could have chosen a better song to play. He didn’t know Marty that well, but I think that even he should have known that Marty’s favorite song was ‘Sunshine and Chocolate.’
But then again, maybe he didn’t know that. I mean, nobody thought to bring his Semisonic CDs that day when we made a shrine on the side of the road where he had been hit by a car. They all brought things like flowers and little notes that said ‘I love you Marty’ and ‘I’ll never forget you Marty.’ Oh, it was all very kind, but none of it was planned out at all. It’s like we all just woke up the day before the shrine was to be made and shouted that we had to find something to put there, quick. The only thing that was really Marty there was his picture, and even that had none of the energy that Marty had. It was just a dorky little school picture, with his hair all slicked back and a really fake “say cheese!” smile on his face. It didn’t make me angry with them or myself; it didn’t make me want to punch anybody, but it saddened me. I felt like these kids should have known better; his parents should have known better; I should have known better. We should have planned things out more, made the shrine more meaningful, but we didn’t. But I think maybe Marty would have liked it better that way. He never was one for organization or planning, or matching things.
That’s why I put the note there.
It was nothing original. Hell, it wasn’t even anything I wrote myself. It was a line from a Semisonic song, but I know it meant a lot to him. He’d go around writing it on all his binders and notes, and all the papers he didn’t have to turn in. He even had it written, in very small letters, on the side of one of his shoes. But I knew it was important to him, because he didn’t seem to want anybody to know about it: nobody who writes something that small can want others to know about it. And since we were burning the shrine after we said a few prayers over it, I figured that it would be very…Marty to write it on a little scrap of notebook paper and put it on the shrine before it burned.
So I did it. I ripped a corner off of piece of notebook paper, and wrote “until I get to kiss you again, I wish you sunshine and chocolate every day.” And when it came my turn to put something on the shrine, I put down the mandatory bunch of flowers and the piece of notebook paper down. It looked very dull and ragged in comparison to the rest of the stuff on the shrine, and I was satisfied. It was a very Marty thing to do. Marty liked mixing the old and the new. He’d often come to school wearing jeans looking so new and dark that it was almost painful, paired with a shirt that looked about to bust in places because of mere age, and grounded by a pair of ratty old Converse shoes with brand new laces in them.
I was one of the last to put items on the shrine. Not five minutes after my little ragged piece of paper had been placed on the shrine, we had finished our moment of silence and had doused the whole thing in kerosene. Sid Boyle lit a match and was so slow about the thing that the match guttered and burned his fingers, and so Fred Bell, looking tall and awkward in a suit that was too short at the arm and leg for him, snatched the matchbook from him and lit the thing on fire himself. Nobody oohed or ahhed as the shrine, and Marty’s picture, lit on fire. And I tried to watch the thing go up in flames, but I couldn’t. My little paper hadn’t caught fire. It was a windy day, and the paper was light, and so when a gust blew by, it flew off the shrine and was caught in the breeze. I watched it flutter away in the wind, a corner singed, and smiled as it left eyeshot. The paper was like Dan Wilson: it never even got to go down, down in flames.
Marty would have liked that.
I liked the ghosts of the characters I saw in this, so I may make it into a longer story if people like this idea.
In this edit, I just tried to add some stuff that made it obvious that the narrator included herself in her chastising of the lack of significance in Marty's roadside shrine. If it didn't work, I'll just edit it some more. No biggie.
---------
I remember that Marty always liked Semisonic. I think everybody remembered, at least a little, that day at the funeral. Hell, Victor Huffman even brought his guitar to the funeral and played ‘Made to Last.’ It was his tribute to Marty. Victor’s whole world was music - he couldn’t think of anything else in the world that was greater or more honorable than music. Come to think of it, neither can I. I think that Victor could have chosen a better song to play. He didn’t know Marty that well, but I think that even he should have known that Marty’s favorite song was ‘Sunshine and Chocolate.’
But then again, maybe he didn’t know that. I mean, nobody thought to bring his Semisonic CDs that day when we made a shrine on the side of the road where he had been hit by a car. They all brought things like flowers and little notes that said ‘I love you Marty’ and ‘I’ll never forget you Marty.’ Oh, it was all very kind, but none of it was planned out at all. It’s like we all just woke up the day before the shrine was to be made and shouted that we had to find something to put there, quick. The only thing that was really Marty there was his picture, and even that had none of the energy that Marty had. It was just a dorky little school picture, with his hair all slicked back and a really fake “say cheese!” smile on his face. It didn’t make me angry with them or myself; it didn’t make me want to punch anybody, but it saddened me. I felt like these kids should have known better; his parents should have known better; I should have known better. We should have planned things out more, made the shrine more meaningful, but we didn’t. But I think maybe Marty would have liked it better that way. He never was one for organization or planning, or matching things.
That’s why I put the note there.
It was nothing original. Hell, it wasn’t even anything I wrote myself. It was a line from a Semisonic song, but I know it meant a lot to him. He’d go around writing it on all his binders and notes, and all the papers he didn’t have to turn in. He even had it written, in very small letters, on the side of one of his shoes. But I knew it was important to him, because he didn’t seem to want anybody to know about it: nobody who writes something that small can want others to know about it. And since we were burning the shrine after we said a few prayers over it, I figured that it would be very…Marty to write it on a little scrap of notebook paper and put it on the shrine before it burned.
So I did it. I ripped a corner off of piece of notebook paper, and wrote “until I get to kiss you again, I wish you sunshine and chocolate every day.” And when it came my turn to put something on the shrine, I put down the mandatory bunch of flowers and the piece of notebook paper down. It looked very dull and ragged in comparison to the rest of the stuff on the shrine, and I was satisfied. It was a very Marty thing to do. Marty liked mixing the old and the new. He’d often come to school wearing jeans looking so new and dark that it was almost painful, paired with a shirt that looked about to bust in places because of mere age, and grounded by a pair of ratty old Converse shoes with brand new laces in them.
I was one of the last to put items on the shrine. Not five minutes after my little ragged piece of paper had been placed on the shrine, we had finished our moment of silence and had doused the whole thing in kerosene. Sid Boyle lit a match and was so slow about the thing that the match guttered and burned his fingers, and so Fred Bell, looking tall and awkward in a suit that was too short at the arm and leg for him, snatched the matchbook from him and lit the thing on fire himself. Nobody oohed or ahhed as the shrine, and Marty’s picture, lit on fire. And I tried to watch the thing go up in flames, but I couldn’t. My little paper hadn’t caught fire. It was a windy day, and the paper was light, and so when a gust blew by, it flew off the shrine and was caught in the breeze. I watched it flutter away in the wind, a corner singed, and smiled as it left eyeshot. The paper was like Dan Wilson: it never even got to go down, down in flames.
Marty would have liked that.
