Just Off the Coast of Jamaica
This is the first of (hopefully) many reproductions of stories I wrote when I was a child. Nothing, not even my deplorable grammar, has been changed. This one is from 1994.
Just Off the Coast of Jamaica: An Almost-Pointless Story About Nothing
Once upon a time there was a small village just off the coast of Jamaica. Now this village is gone, but is that the point of the story? No.
So this village had three main buildings: a church, a little general store, and a laundromat. Well they had to wash their clothes too, ya know!
One day this guy named Michaelangelo came to this village. He said, and I quote, “Does anybody have some pizza?” Of course, no one did, since this village didn’t come equipped with a pizzeria.
So now this village was famous personless. That is, until Kermit the Frog came along. You all know Kermit, right? Good. Now Miss Piggy was mad because he wouldn’t take her to Jamaica, so he came rather tattered-clothedly. He asked, and I quote, “Can anyone show me the way to Jim Hensen’s Studios?” Someone could (they were all terribly mad at her), because she had been there on a tour once.
Then Dorothy came. She wanted to know, and for the last time (hopefully) I quote, “Can anyone show me the way to Oz?”
“Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” a suspiciously small person replied.
So now again this village was famous personless. That is, until Little Bo Peep came along. “Like, has anyone, like, seen my sheep? I, like, seem to have, like, lost them.”
“Leave them alone, and they’ll come home, bringing their tails behind them,” an old woman on a goose told her.
Everyone turned to look at her (the old woman). Meanwhile, Little Bo Peep, like, left.
Now this village was really sad. They couldn’t keep a single famous person. All of a sudden, drums were heard. Yeah. Big whoop and all that other stuff. Then a parade of Famous People walked by. How did they know? There was a sign that said, and I read (quote?), “Famous People Parade.”
“Hey,” Fred Flintstone said. “You haven’t seen Michaelangelo, Kermit the Frog, Dorothy, or Little Bo Peep, have you?”
“Ooohh!” the villagers groaned dramatically.
“Oh well,” Fred said (hey, that rhymes!). “We’ll keep looking. Come on, guys!”
So to this day that village just off the coast of Jamaica still can’t keep a single famous person. This is partly because the village is gone now, but is that the point of the story? No.
The End
(of the story)
This story is pretty clearly a satirical critique of small-town America’s obsession with celebrity. It is highly probable that, as an 8-year-old, I realized the growing consumer culture of celebrity, evidenced by the way each “famous person” is dispensed with almost as soon as he appears. Further, by electing to feature “famous people” of various media and time periods and realities, I was clearly suggesting that the idea of celebrity can be attached to any iconic entity, living, dead, or non-living. Because of my excessive use of “and I quote,” as well as a complete disregard for chronology, exposition, and logical storytelling, however, I will award this paper a B-
