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Things Unremarkable, Piece 1

This is the first of what I’m hoping will be a series of short stories.

Before anyone asks— none of what I’ll be writing will be autobiographical or allegorical to my own life. These are just ideas of fiction drifting in my own head, and they will be manifested here.

Feel free to repost, reblog, share, whatever— please remember to give credit.

Enjoy.

Loomis was a smart boy. Smarter than his parents, probably. His parents would love to dispel that notion, though. His vocation wouldn’t necessarily put him at the top of anyone’s list of great people, they thought. It’s such a childish fantasy, they thought. He’ll grow out of this phase, they thought.

“I want to become a video game designer,” Loomis told his parents on a rainy car ride to Harrisburg one summer day. Laura, Loomis’ mother, immediately diffused this.

“Oh, honey, sure you do,” she said. “I wanted to be a horse trainer when I was your age, because I loooooved ponies.”

“Right, Mom,” said Loomis. “You are a horse trainer.”

“Well,” said Laura, “I’m lucky. Not everybody is lucky.”

“I’m not lucky?” retorted Loomis.

Radio silence. Allan, Loomis’ father, was driving. He adjusted the radio so he could pick up a better station. He settled on a station playing a Pink Floyd song. He had no say in the conversation. He knew it had no bearing on either of their lives at large.

“I’m pretty lucky,” Loomis said after half a minute.

“I hope… you are,” replied Laura. She could not seem to add anything else. She still thought it was a fool’s quest for her son to pursue a career in the art of Mario and Link, but it would be hypocritical for her to tell her son it was ridiculous to pursue a childhood folly.

To be fair, Laura did go to school for something serious in between— real estate. She could make loads of money selling houses, she thought. Then the housing bubble burst, and she ran from that calling faster than Sonic the Hedgehog could run from the cops.

Those weird video game similes were showing up in her head again. She keeps thinking there’s no future in video games. They’re just pixels made to blow stuff up. All the good ones have been done. The stuff out there now is too complicated. The entire concept of video games will probably die out in a good 15 years because of whatever the hell phones will be capable of.

She was afraid Loomis might turn to drugs. She’s always feared this. But now she is certain that video game design will turn him to drugs. I mean, she thought, how else would they have come up with Angry Birds? Why are the pigs green? Why are there birds that explode? Why can’t the birds just fly instead of having to use a slingshot? The birds were weak and stupid.

Loomis, however, was not weak or stupid. Laura could find solace in that. But he was also headstrong and stubborn. He was one of the only 10-year-olds that Laura knew could take on his mother is a serious debate about things like foreign policy and economics.

Loomis was not just a strong, smart child. Loomis was scary. Scary to his parents, scary to his teachers. He could be President, right? No, thought Laura. He’d rather create games in which astronauts blow each other up with giant bongs in order to take over Canada. Or something.

continued later