Thursday, October 30, 2014

Memories cannot be abandoned

  Edited by Yujie Zai

  The two brothers worked diligently to clean up the one-door garage that was connected to their childhood home. They joked with each other, ribbing on how one brother's military issued haircut left him practically bald and the other about how his foray into puberty had begun with facial hair growing only on the left side of his face.

  They worked fast, filling numerous garbage bags with old speakers, radios, newspapers, rusted garden tools, car parts, toys and various knick-knacks. They were brutal in their attempt to clean up the garage and did not intend on salvaging anything. Rats had settled into the garage over the last winter, and their father was too old and frail to take on the task himself, so they had taken matters into their own hands.

  An old man in his sixties with curly gray hair and a slow painful gait exited the front of the house and made a beeline for the boys. He became increasingly agitated as he saw what the boys were doing and picked up his pace, finally bellowing out, "Now sons, what are you doing here? I need all this stuff." He bent down slowly and started trying to empty out the garbage bags and return the hodgepodge items back into the garage.

  Already anticipating their father's outrage, the eldest son said, "Dad, you don't need any of this crap, we're trying to clean it out, for your health, it's full of junk and so is the house. We are trying to help." The father continued to struggle to empty out the bags. In between breaths, he huffed out," This isn't junk, I'm saving these speakers for your wedding party, these papers here are from the 40's, I can't get rid of them." The youngest son snapped "Dad! You're a hoarder. This is all junk and we can't even walk around in here! Who knows what’s living in here?" The father stuttered in shock at his child's outburst before continuing to make up excuses as to why he needed every single thing in the garage

  The two brothers gave up, setting down the items in their hands. They had been through this before, and they knew there was nothing they could do to stop their father. He was too attached to everything in the house, because he had bought it with their mother right before she died. They walked out, leaving their old man to his possessions, and went their separate ways.

12 comments:

  1. I like the new title. The writing was so good in this story, I bet it made it hard to edit.

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  2. The title is perfect for this story. It really expresses how the father feels. You fixed the only errors that I saw. Great job editing!

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  3. Yujie, I also like your headline change! Farai's original one was great too. You both were really creative. I agree that the original story would have been hard to edit. Nice job with it!

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  4. I like the subtle changes you made as it would be hard to deeply edit the original. Again, great new title.

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  5. I like the changes that you made to the story and the headline. You did a great job editing a very good story. Nice job.

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  6. Great edits! Like everyone else, I think your title is an improvement!

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  7. I know this story was hard to edit, but the changes you made were small and improved the story as a whole. I like the new title, but I think its a little elusive, I wasn't sure what the story would be about. Otherwise, great edit!

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  8. Great job! I really like the headline change. Although the changes were small they really made a subtle change to the story.

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  9. I imagine this one was tough to edit, but your changes worked well with the story. Good job.

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  10. The headline was a nice change. The edits were small, but well done.

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  11. The story didn't really need much editing to begin with so I didn't notice very many things that you changed, but what you did change was some of the errors I noticed in the original so good job at catching those. I like the headline change but it doesn't really read like a headline. I think you should add another verb in there or switch it up a little bit. If this story was for a magazine or a book I think it would be find but if it was for a newspaper or something I would like the headline to be a little different, but thats just my opinion. Other than that I thought the story was great!

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  12. The edits you have made help the story and I like the title as well. Nice job.

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