Thursday at Meadow Park with Dale

Well, I just got back from speaking to the sixth graders of Meadow Park Middle School in Beaverton, Oregon. I have to say, it’s been a while since I’ve encountered such an attentive, enthusiastic, and respectful bunch! I spoke at their morning assembly, playing the Heck song on my trusty, rusty guitar, inflicting my feeble PowerPoint skillz upon them, reading a chapter, then ending with a new creative writing exercise I may incorporate into “my act.” I picked five brave students to join me on stage and write a couple of sentences on notecards I had prepared. The notecards began and ended with sentences I had written, in this case, detailing the horrors of a rabid monkey outbreak at their school. The ending sentence of one card was the beginning of the next, so that—when finished—we had all created a story! After going through a box of my nifty new Heck cards and singing some autographs, I was interviewed by Meadow Park’s film and video club. Perhaps, if I’m not too embarrassed at the sight of myself first thing in the morning embarking upon a series of unfortunate tangents, I may post the video. Again, thanks to the students, distinguished faculty, and not-so distinguished faculty that made this appearance possible!

Here is the story we wrote at Meadow Park:

“Someone capture those monkeys before they sling pop everywhere!” shrieked Mrs. Hattendorf as she ran down the hall. As the monkeys ran down the hall they were making a titanic size ball of poop. Then Mr. Whitten came into view playing “We Will Rock You” on the flute to stop the monkeys. But then he was engulfed in the titanic size ball of poop.

But no one had seen Mr. Whitten for hours. No one.

No one cared, but hey thought he went to Heck. And they thought he turned crazy. The Devil made Mr. Cookson his assistant.

The mad gleam in Mr. Cookson’s eyes ignited the fear of the students trapped in the janitor’s closet. Ripping us out of the closet to Ms. Williams. Then Ms. Williams tied us to a chair and force-fed us.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten stewed monkey meat!” Ms. Williams said, licking her lips.

Ms. Williams jumped off the walls and said that she loved the stew. Then Ms. Williams walked down the hall with her clacking high heels, just as Mr. Doyle had corralled all of the rabid monkeys into Ms. Valentine’s office. But was it a case of too little, too late?

Then the monkeys ran rampaging out of the office, after breaking up the office into smashed pieces.

“Where would these monkeys go when they die, anyway?” asked Mrs. Hattendorf to no one in particular, before shrieking “Someone capture those monkeys before they sling poop everywhere!” as she ran down the hall.