Showdown At Super 8
based (loosely) on true events
(with apologies to JPD and Super 8)
The International House of Pancakes was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In a college-town like
It was nearing 10pm and the parking lot was its usual half-full. A couple of students pulled in, ready to devour a some Belgian waffles when lights began dancing before them. They watched as a
Across from the IHOP was a Super 8. This, in laymen’s terms, translates to “motel for the desperate.” There was nothing super about this particular Super 8. But something was apparently brewing there tonight. The officer in the patrol car skidded to a stop, left his lights flashing and took off running towards the rear of the motel. The students, still sitting in their car, looked at one another wearily. This sort of thing didn’t happen often. Do they stay in the car and watch the events unfold? Or do they traipse into the restaurant and demand waffles?
“Stay,” they said simultaneously, answering the unspoken question. Waffles would have to wait. Not a moment later another patrol car joined the first, its driver sprinting off to find the other.
The scene was eerily quiet for a moment. Only the flashing of the patrol cars’ lights interrupted the peace of the evening. Suddenly sirens began sounding from the left and right. Fire trucks were descending upon the motel from both directions. Within the next few minutes a dozen more squad cars arrived, along with three ambulances and 2 more fire trucks. The students turned the car back on and tuned into the always trusty local AM radio news station. The events happening before their very eyes were quickly turning into the big news of the night. After waiting a few minutes, the DJ repeated what everyone had been waiting to hear.
“There is a hostage situation now occurring at the Super 8 motel.” The students gazed into the flashing lights, stunned. This kind of thing just didn’t happen around here. They were certain this had just been an over-reaction to someone’s cat being caught up a tree. They were gravely mistaken. Apparently Bubba had finally crossed the line. No, really.
Bubba Monroe (pronounced MUN-row) had gotten tired of it. He loved his wife but it was finally tim0ed they both admitted that she was just after his money; and his trailer – it being one of those classy new double-wides and all. He had never really minded that she was a gold-digger. He knew she loved him all the same. That is until he found her shacked up with some chump from her bowling team. He had walked in on them after she had rented a room in his name at the Super 8.
Bubba, being the enraged husband he was, stormed out to his truck and grabbed his shotgun from its hiding location behind the seat. It wasn’t loaded, but no one would find that out until the next morning. The clerk had merely seen an angry man stomping up to one of the rooms with a gun in his hand. The cops were immediately called and now there was a major hostage situation right across the street from the IHOP.
So the students sat, watching and listening as it all unfolded before them. Unfortunately there was no trained hostage negotiator within the Jonesboro Police Department. Instead there was Rick. He was the night secretary down at the station. He was known for his level-head so he was handed the job of talking a now blubbering Bubba out of the motel room without firing the unloaded weapon at any of the room’s occupants. Bubba lasted a solid thirty minutes before he came out, crying like a baby. He had even tried making a few outrageous demands – a new pickup, a new wife, a new gun – but none were successful. It was later said that he cried all the way to the station.
Within the hour all of the noise and the lights had faded. The last squad car had driven away. The two college students turned off the car and sat in silence for a moment. Crime had been committed. Guns raised. Officers dispatched. What were they supposed to do now? In the end, there was only one thing left to do.
Waffles.
THE END
Books are such trouble-makers. Parents get into such an uproar about what their children read. In the past several years there has been multiple series of books come out marketed to the teen/young adult age group. They're mostly fantasy novels with a touch of magic or somesuch. It seems that many parents hear whispers of "unnatural" things in the books and they flip out, banning their children from reading them. Banning a book that you've never read is a good way to anger me.
I thoroughly support a parent's decision to monitor what their child reads. But banning books? Will you burn them next? First try turning off their TV and sorting through their DVD collection. In a book, an author can describe a fight scene but it's up to the reader to provide the pictures. TV and movies remove that step and shove blood and guts on the screen. It doesn't have to be that way with a book.
These people are banning books they've never read! They're judging them by their covers and their critics. I was under the impression that we were supposed to be teaching kids to think for themselves. Apparently not. It bothers me greatly that parents get so wound up about a book with magic or vampires in it and yet they haven't taken a look at the lyrics to their kids favorite emo bands - most of which are thinly veiled metaphors for self-harming, self-hate and suicide.
We are living in a society of instant gratification. We have our 3 minute songs that whine about our lives. We have our 2 hour movies where the hero almost always gets the girl and the bad guy gets his just desserts. Am I saying that books are lands of peace and rainbows? Heck, no! Books are filled with everything imaginable. Love, hate, peace, war, sex, drugs, foul language and morbidly depressed robots.
But books nurture imagination and creative thinking. They expand your vocabulary. Ask any professional teacher and they'll tell you: good readers make good learners. If someone is worried about the influence reaching their children's generation, books aren't the first place to look. Heard some mixed reviews about a book they want to read? Read it and decide for yourself. Don't have time to read a whole novel? Skim it. It doesn't take long. Please monitor what your children listen to, watch and read, but I beg of you to make up your own mind about a book. Don't listen to what "they" say about it. It might even be wise to talk to your kid!
And remember this: there's a lot of teen/young adult fiction out there that I don't like. Some of it I do, but most of it isn't my style. There are even some that I just can't stand. That being said, I may not personally like what they read but I will defend to the death their right to read it.
- standing on my soapbox
Ah. November. National Novel Writing Month.
This thought horrifies. It's still hard to believe that at one point I sat down and wrote a novel in a month. It can be done. I didn't really sleep much, but it happened.
Now here we are again. November. Apparently there's some sort of election going on. And some vampire movie is coming out. Whatever.
This is a whole freaking month dedicated to the craft of novel-writing. That means that if I go a day without getting something written on the novel, I feel like a jerk. A big, uninspired and uninspiring jerk. Ugh.
This is not going to be easy.
One of the rules for NaNoWriMo is that you have to start a whole new novel. No, "Well, I wrote a chapter or two of this thing last year...". Nope. Can't have that. But I just don't have the heart to write a whole new novel. My brain is swimming with stuff for this one. I'm scared to see what would happen if I swapped my trains of thought now. So what am I going to do?
Trudge on.
That's all I really can do. I'm hoping that all of the novel-talk will keep me going. Keep me typing. Let me tell you, folks. You want to know what the hardest thing about writing a novel is? The next word.
So, I'm just dedicating the month of November to the next word. In the end, that's really all I've got.
- Sarah
