It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night...and I should have canceled.

It is 3:46 a.m. on November 1st, and I am sitting in my husband's recliner unable to sleep. I finally realize I should have canceled.  Everyone else canceled, but I had practiced TAILY PO! a hundred times! The weather was just too bad, but I had worked too hard on the decorations. No one will come, but who wants to hear scary stories on the Saturday after Halloween. Besides, I had eyeballs, and a scary beaver, and ME-TIE-DOUGH-TY-WALKER!  

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents ~ and nobody came. I turned on the scary music at 5:45 p.m.  My branch manager and I lit forty tealight candles in baby food jars at 5:50, and the witching hour began at 6:00 p.m. To say that the rain fell in torrents is a mild understatement. I waited until 6:30 before I blew out the forty candles. At 6:45, I began climbing up and down the ladder for the hundredth time to take down decorations, and the storm that had hammered central Mississippi was moving east. By closing time at 8:00 p.m., the remnants of the dark and stormy night were history, as were any signs of a Halloween library program. I should have canceled; that simple.

But for some reason ~ it is now 4:00 a.m. ~ and I have been up most of the night questioning every decision I have ever made in my life. Where did I take a wrong turn? Why do I do what I do? Have I missed a sister life that should have been mine? Why do I save cats, go postal when I see dogs tied to trees, endeavor to get kids to come to the library, and write stories about a life that, in the wee hours of this early morning, seems scant and meager.

Yes...I did save a black kitten on Halloween.  Well, actually, I didn't save him (or her, God forbid); a man passing by in a truck saw me lying down in a witch's costume on the wet ground underneath the vehicle with the library shelver holding an umbrella over my head, and he stopped to see if we needed help.  When I explained to him that a small kitten was trapped underneath the vehicle, he proceeded to lie down on the wet ground while I held the umbrella over his head. After several attempts, he retrieved the kitten.

Did I mention that this entire situation occurred just one hour before the storytelling program was supposed to begin? A local farmer had brought me a bushel of peanuts that needed to be loaded into the trunk of my car; so while I was standing in the rain ~ somewhere between waiting for the peanuts to be loaded and the farmer fumbling through his overall pockets to make change for a twenty ~ I heard the kitten meow.

When I saw the four white paws of the little black kitten, I knew exactly what had happened.  One of the feral momma cats at our house has a litter of kittens, and this kitten is the one we call Paws. Somehow the kitten climbed into the body of my car and survived the ride with me to work.  Also, did I mention that I live thirty miles from my job?  How on earth was he still alive? Big Sigh...I knew I had to try and get him back home to his mother.  Ohhhh...my life!

So, the passerby (I didn't even get his name), the shelver, and I were all dripping wet; but, the kitten was safe, and I was trying to find a cardboard box in which to place the kitten, until it was time for both of us to go home.  By this time, the shelver was fully committed to the process.  We found a box and a tablecloth.  We placed the kitten in the box, folded the box top so he had air to breathe, and placed a book on top so he didn't escape during the program.  Within minutes, the traumatized kitten was sound asleep.

I quickly ran to the bathroom and tried to hand dry my soaked hair with less than hour to spare before the program started.  Now, the rain was coming down in sheets, I had a sleeping kitten in my office, and my clothes looked like they belonged on a clothesline.

And, nobody came. I should have canceled.

It was a dark and stormy night...Where exactly did that line originate?  The introductory clause is part of the opening sentence of the 1830 novel Paul Clifford written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. According to my online research (mostly Wikipedia), the phrase is considered to be purple prose ~ a type of florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing.  The phrase has been described as the literary poster child for bad story starters, and yet it ranks #22 on the best first lines from novels.

So I looked up purple prose. After reading an article entitled Purple Prose: What It Is and How To Avoid It located on the website, The Advanced Edit, I learned that this type of writing is self-indulgent, clouds the meaning behind your writing, doesn't flatter the writer, turns off the reader, and in all its flowery craziness, is an example of vivid imagery gone awry.

Wow. This morning I am most definitely purple prose. My melodramatic style, in all its flowery craziness, is self-indulgent, to say the least. I know at times, my purple prose turns off the people around me. My purple prose doesn't always flatter me and often clouds the meaning of what should really matter in my life. I am a perfect example of vivid imagery gone awry. Oddly enough, I have never learned how to avoid it.

It was a dark and stormy night, and I should have canceled. Period. End of story.

...WELL, NOT QUITE:  Like grandmother, like mother, like son...the little black kitten is a child to Linus, who turned out to be a Lucy, Jr., the daughter of Lucy, who had a similar experience a year ago ~ Blog Archive, August 2012.

Ode to the life of purple prose...

Dianne ; )