John Gerner - Creativa

A Night Out Of Time

(This was a creativity exercise given in my lyric writing class. The assignment was to write for twenty minutes without stopping on the topic "A Night Out of Time".)

It was a night out of time. Maybe the sun set at the hour it was supposed to. Maybe the moon showed its correct segment. Maybe the Milky Way found it's way to the right part of the sky. But it was still a night out of time. Perhaps only for me, or perhaps only for me and the fifteen year old girl I spent it with. Oh I forgot to tell you that I was only seventeen at the time. This is not a kinky story of a man's lust for teenage sex. Well, not this story at least.

Where was I? Oh yes, it was a night out of time because of Lanie, that's her name or was her name when I knew her. Oh I know what you're thinking (probably not, but humor me). "Oh god, I've got to listen to this guy's story about how he got lucky the first time. Don't they ever let it rest?" Well, you're wrong, I didn't get lucky that night, or actually any other night. I mean I was lucky to have been with her that night, but I didn't "get lucky". But now I'm dawdling (what a silly word that is, "dawdling", is someone who dawdles a "dawd"?)

Wait, hold it. I am going off on a tangent again (another silly term, does someone ever go off on a cotangent, or an arc or sine?). Okay, okay, I am straying off the subject ("Lassie come home, we won't call you a 'stray' again). Hold it (hold what?). Stop! I'm not addressing the subject at hand (okay I will, what's the address? Is it in Oxnard? What's the zip code?).

I am starting a new paragraph now in an attempt to end the above irrelevant (or irrelephant) discussion. The topic was a "night out of time" (you see, I put it in quotations to make it look important and profound). Yes, as I was saying this particular night occurred in December 1975 (gee, if I'd waited a month, it would have occurred in the Bicentennial. But now that I think about it, and thinking is a dangerous tool, so what if it occurred in 1975).

This is not good. I've written a whole bunch of words (bushels of words, even) and I haven't told you any background information about that night (quiet everyone, the chief's going to give us the background information on the suspect). Okay, okay, those words are a bit stiff (what do flimsy words look like?) but the point (you're not supposed to point dummy) is that the reader (that's you, we'll cue you when you have a speaking part) wants to know a little bit (ouch, what big teeth he has) about this particular night, like where did it occur (nights are everywhere, didn't they have them where you're from, son) and what happened (maybe nothing happened and that's why you're dawdling, you dawd).

I mean (and so cruel too) that everyone who's taken (hey, give it back, didn't your mamma ever teach you anything) a journalism course (not fine but course) knows that a story (or multiple stories if you're in Manhattan) is supposed to include "who, what, where, and why" (gee, and they all start with the same letter too. I wonder if the person who made them up, thought them up as a group. "Yes," he said, "all the words that involve some form of identification will start with the letter 'w' so that some witty college professor in some ivy-covered, they're never parsnip-covered, building who's dying to get tenure will think of them when he's writing his tenth article for a no-name vanity magazine which nobody reads except the authors and the editor's mother").

Whoa! (easy, now Trigger). This has nothing to do with the subject I was given! (oh, oh I'm underlining the words, and putting an exclamation point at the end. Yes folks, this is serious). Thank God This Is Not A College Final (or else I wouldn't have the sheepskin that's printed in Latin and hangs over the toaster oven to prove that once, yes once, I could write something totally unlike this).