Story Time

I'm gonna be out of town for the rest of the week (going down to San Antonio for my wife's job interview), so this'll be the last post of the week for me. A few weeks ago, I posted a story that I said was my second favorite kids' story I'd written (well, maybe tied for 2nd). I thought I'd post my favorite one today... definitely a departure from the norm for me (perhaps why I like it so much).

Nina

It was three days after Tuesday that my sister was born. She weighed four thousand pounds, by the way – I expected her to be bigger, but momma was very happy.

Momma was too worried about her pregnancy to think much about those brown surface whales we spotted on Tuesday, but they were all I could think about. I followed them for a day and a half, trying to talk to them. Now, I’ve met all types of whales in my life – gray ones, right ones, fin ones, humpback ones, even killer ones (though momma says they’re not really whales, but dolphins) – and I’ve never seen any as strange as those brown ones.

First off, other than being brown and surface whales, they were shaped kind of funny. They looked like a whale under the water (except for being brown), but above water they had flat backs and sharp edges; I thought maybe they were sharks or inverted cousins of the humpbacks, but momma says they aren’t.  

The momma brown whale was longer than momma (and it’s hard to be longer than momma), but her children were shorter than me. The momma brown whale also had more fins than her children, which I thought was weird, but momma told me not to stare. Well, I don’t know about momma, but when I see something that strange, I can’t help looking.

Not only did the brown momma have five fins and no flippers, she had white wings like a seagull’s surrounding each fin. Her children had three fins and smaller wings. Wouldn’t you stare if you saw a whale with wings? I thought so.

I kept expecting those brown whales to fly and that’s why I followed them for as long as I did. No other point in following them since they never said a word back to me.

What good are wings if you can’t fly? I asked them this several times and you know what they said?

Nothing. They never said a word. They didn’t even splash me away or look over their shoulder and snort. Momma says she’s seen brown whales before and they’re all like that – stiff-backed and silent.

Maybe they’re upset about the featherless birds climbing around their backs. All day long, these large, straight-backed birds climbed all over their bodies, sometimes even up their fins! I asked momma if I could have one of the featherless birds on my back and she said I was being silly. Well, I thought maybe if I had a featherless bird, too, then maybe the brown whales would talk to me.

I hope I see another brown whale soon. Then I’ll ask them if I can borrow one of their birds. And I’ll ask to borrow one for my baby sister, too. I think she’d like the brown whales even if they don’t talk.

Even though they never said a word, I’ll never forget those brown surface whales. As I watched them go, I told them my name. They didn’t respond, but they didn’t need to. Somehow they’d written their names on the sides of their bodies.

The mother brown whale was called Santa Maria. The larger of her two children was called Pinta. And the smallest brown whale, whom I got to name my baby sister after because I liked the name so much, was Nina.