KristyWes

Q Q Q Q Q Q

My slow-moving, on-going project to go through & clean out old emails has turned up a few writing samples of mine from my temping days in 2002 (motto: when life was simple, yet boring). I had forgotten about most of these bits of poems and prose (and probably rightly so), but through the miracle of a little thing called Hotmail, they have been restored to me. Here's the start to a short story I never finished, about a boy named Quentin.

The impetus for the story was a challenge from my friend Kyle to write something using as many Q-words as possible. I believe the eventual intent was to turn Quentin's story into an allegory for the book of Ecclesiastes (also known as "Qoheleth"), but that never happened. And probably rightly so.

There once was a guy named Quentin. He was your Average Joe, except that his name was Quentin. Not Joe. Quentin lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he worked in a steel factory. He worked at the factory's snack bar, where he served french fries. Every Friday they had fish sandwiches. Quentin was in charge of the mayonaise supplies on Fridays. Steel workers love mayonaise on their fish sandwiches. Extra mayonaise packets cost a quarter.

One blustery, brisk autumn day, Quentin started on his mile-long walk to work. As the leaves swirled around his ankles, Quentin began to question the meaning of life. The meaning of his life, in particular. Was there meaning? Would anyone notice if he wasn't there? What should he do career-wise? Relationship-wise? Fashion-wise? In the midst of his quagmire, Quentin stumbled and fell into a septic tank.

Splash! "Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!" thought Quentin. He had never fallen into a septic tank before. He wondered (as perhaps you are wondering) why a septic tank would be laying open next to a sidewalk on a residential street. He splashed around for a bit, gathering his thoughts, and plotting his next course of action.

Suddenly he looked up into the sky, surprisingly blue and pristine above the funk-nasty brown muck that he was currently swimming in. A flock of quails (unusual in Scranton) flew overhead, and Quentin knew without a doubt that these quails were off to bigger and better things. "Fort Lauderdale, I reckon," reckoned Quentin.