Expansion

Alright, I wasn't planning on doing this but I really love this poem so I kind of want to try something new (after only one post). I know I said I would basically try to condense our stories into poems, and after doing the first half of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" I feel like my brain wants to fall out of my ear because it isn't a small under-taking when you are adding in line breaks and deciding what to leave in or take out…

So this time, just for fun I want to expand a poem that I happen to love from our reading in Pod 4.
Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay".

So I am going to take the lines from this incredibly short poem and stretch them out into a story. Mostly I would just like to keep the same idea behind the poem that the most beautiful things in the world are fleeting and we catch them for only moments before they vanish and we understand how precious those things were in the first place. Also I can't remember the last time I wrote just for fun. points if you can pick out any lines from the poem.

Nothing Gold Can Stay (A short story)

I was only 11 when I learned the value of a dollar. I had spent the summer out of school tagging along with a few older neighborhood kids to the corner store. I didn't have any money of my own. At that point my parents hadn't implemented the chore chart and I hadn't yet asked for my allowance of $7.50 a week. 

It was on one of those hotter than hell July days, where it's so humid even the dog (who is usually off marking everything his putrid yellow stream will reach) won't get up from the spot he's dug in the shade and risk the glaring sun. He'd rather die there wallowing in the cool dirt, tongue lolling, eyes darting around for any signs of bored kids on summer vacation carrying plastic bags or spray cans. Anyways, it was on one of those hot, sticky, wet, Indiana July days when the bigger kids decided to go to the corner store again just to cool off in the air-conditioning for a few minutes. We'd all been kicked out a week ago because we were coming in everyday they said, and we didn't ever buy anything, they pointed out, and we could either buy something or leave.

Someone brought this up, and the question was asked as to weather or not anybody had any money. But one of us had a little money. David Heckner had gotten money for his birthday a month or so back and he still had a $5 left. Then one of the other kids, his name was Billy Shaw, got the idea in his head that Dave was going to use that $5 as a decoy. We'd all go in like always, and when the man behind the counter got all over our asses about not buying anything Dave would strut up, pull out his $5, and slap it on the counter. In the meantime, we would all scatter in groups of 2 (there were 5 of us that day) and while no one was looking we would take something from the store. It was agreed that each person would take one thing and we all spit shook and swore that whosoever didn't take nothin' would get beat the hell up by everyone else, right hand to God. 

As you can imagine we got down to the store and walked in and it pretty much played out like a tick in the very beginning. Dave walked up, slapped his money on the counter and we spread out like we were looking for something in particular. I headed off alone towards the far back of the store because I was the only kid without a partner and I didn't want to get caught. As I passed the refrigerated coke cases, I stopped for a second to size up the Nature's First all-natural juice in a green bottle. I didn't think I could get it out of the case without being seen so I passed it up. Rold-gold pretzels stared at me from the shelf to my right as I moved quickly, trying to catch glimpses of my friends to see where everyone was. There was a bathroom 10 feet in front of me that I could maybe run into if I got in a tough spot. I stopped in front of the beef-jerky section, turned around to see if there were any employees watching from the front of the store and paused a split second before I quickly stuffed a long skinny stick of processed seasoned meat down the front of my T-shirt. I didn't even see her come out of the bathroom that was now behind me, and that was probably because I thought the hardest part was over so I didn't bother to look back. When I did look around and realize she was standing right behind me, I turned a sickening hue of green and tried to hold my composure. 

It was obvious that my mom had seen me by the way her face was contorted into a mixture of fury and incredulity at the situation.

Clearly she had left work early, but only so an hour, and on her way stopped for gas and cigarettes. I immediately wished the floor would swallow me up and never let me free again. At least until I could figure how to talk my way out of this mess. Of course the floor didn't oblige and I found myself at home grounded for the next month and I wasn't allowed in the corner store again because I had embarrassed myself my mom said. By the Fall though she had relented and as leaf subsides to leaf she found new things to be upset at my older brother about so it wasn't such a big deal for me to go back to the corner store with my friends (as long as I left out that they were going too). 

Now whenever I'm in a gas station I still think of that day and how quickly Eden sank to grief when mom wouldn't let me back out to play with my friends for a whole month. I was heart-broken and mad and ashamed back then. Now, I'd give anything to take off this suit and tie and to trade in my Subaru sedan for my old dirt bike and Chuck Taylors. Life is sort of funny beautiful that way, you remember the silly, crazy things you did at the beginning and lose the boring stuff in the middle. So dawn goes down to day and here I am mid-life realizing as I check out with my pretzels how short-lived that summer really was. I never knew how quickly things would change after that summer I was 11. I didn't understand it at the time, but nothing gold can stay.

Ultimately this ended up longer than I thought and it isn't that easy to just work lines back into a poem without changing the tense so that is sort of interesting to find out. It isn't too terribly bad to work a story into a poem… hope someone was entertained by this and not bored to tears. It is completely fictional… okay see ya later everyone! New blog post tomorrow!!!!