I’ve been trying to get motivated to write some short stories.  Here’s story number 1 for December:

My name is August because I was borned in August.  I am almost nine and my birthday is next week, but my brother says that I can’t say I’m nine until my birthday.  But I’m almost nine.

I am supposed to write a story for class but not a made-up story.  I must describe a time when I witnessed a random act of kindness.  Which I think sounds like a crime show.  But then I remembered when I was little and we lived in a house where Mom was a witness for Jesus, and everyone says he is nice and definitely would not do a crime.  Except he got nailed to a tree and it seems like THAT ought to be a crime, in my opinion.

So here is my story: One time I was at a park with my brother.  His name is Hank, and DO NOT call him Hankie or he will punch your arm.  (Except he won’t punch our Mom, but she just calls him Hankie sometimes for teasing.)  We were at the good park with all the climbing stuff, just my brother and me. There’s some bushes at that park, not by the street but on the other side by the alley.  And we saw a dog there, by the bushes.

This dog was real skinny, and patchy black because some of his fur was kind of missing which maked him look even more skinny.  Hank said, “I think that dog is lost.” And he pulled off some of his peanut butter sandwich, like the size of a chicken nugget, and went over by the dog.

That dog looked scared but Hank makes friends with animals all the time.  So he just waited a minute, and sure enough the dog came right to him and ate his piece of sandwich and then tried to sniff his pockets for more, but Hank had left his sandwich on the bench with me.

So after Hank petted the dog for a minute, he said it was a boy dog, and I said what’s his name, and he said, maybe Comet?  He didn’t really know, though. But we called him Comet and I let Hank take the strap off my purse to make a leash, which was blue.  I only had seashells in my purse, so that was fine.

What kind of dog was Comet, you may ask.  He was a terrier-shepherd mix. Hank figured that out because he researched LOST DOGS and all the ones that looked like Comet were terrier-shepherd mix dogs.  At first I thought Hank said terror-shepherd, ha! But if you didn’t know it, a terrier is a kind of dog. At our old house, they said Jesus was a shepherd, but I guess dogs can be shepherds too.  Which makes sense because dogs are really nice, even though my old babysitter got bit by a dog. But Mom says she got bit by Jesus when we lived in that old dumb house, so there you go.

Ok, so this story is a long one!!  But here is my random act of kindess example: because Hank actually did find the real owners for Comet, whose names are Jason and Angie.  And they were so happy to get him back that they were crying when they came and got him from Hank in our parking lot.  Not like babies bawling, but like adults cry where they scrunch up their faces and get squeaky voices and have to blow their nose.  They had a blue Outback which I remember because Comet rode in the back. Plus Comet was so happy to see them and tried to lick their faces off and did the Crazy Wiggle Dance, but like times a thousand.

So I was a witness for my brother being real kind for that whole thing.  And also it turned out that Comet’s name was actually Corbet. But that’s pretty close.