The Early Years: Rabbit’s Journal

A couple of weeks ago I posted a scan of an old story I wrote for school when I was a kid of somewhere between six and ten (depending on who you believe).  That turned out to be pretty popular, so I requested more scans from my suppliers of embarrassing material from my younger days (i.e., my parents).  Behold:  Rabbit’s Journal.

When I used to go to my grandparents’ house, I would spend a lot of time in the sewing room downstairs, where they had a typewriter.  (A typewriter, for those who don’t know, is sort of like a computer, except the keyboard is connected directly to the printer and there’s no screen or hard drive.)  This typewriter had the magical ability to type in black or red ink, which I put to good use.

Who is Rabbit, you ask?  He was one of my stuffed animals, of course.  (Anyone who’s been reading Dennis’s Diary of Destruction will not be surprised at this early example of anthropomorphism, I’m sure.)  And where is Rabbit now, you ask?  Why, he’s on the shelf behind me, LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU!

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But don’t worry.  Rabbit doesn’t write horrible messages in blood anymore.

Much.

20 thoughts on “The Early Years: Rabbit’s Journal

  1. this typewriter of which you speak….did it “crash” ever? did it ever “freeze up?” and were you constantly having to run updates on it?

    Jim says: Not that I can recall … it must have been running Linux.

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  2. Awww How adorable and creative. I love the 8:01 and a half…your typewriter must not have had a 1/2 key. What an imagination you had! Oh how well I remember trying to do term papers on typewriters…eeekkkk!

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  3. LOL! James you crack me up. I also have a stuffed animal that I was given by my great uncle when I was 2 years old. I took it with me when I backpacked through Europe in college. He has been everywhere! Not quite sure where he is now though. I think packed away since the move.

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  4. Finally, a proper use for the red ribbon! Horrible messages in blood should have been reason enough for you to be removed from the sewing room, or at least for your grandparents to hide the scissors.

    This really requires Edward Gorey-style illustrations for the full effect.

    Jim says: Unfortunately, I’m known to be unable to draw illustrations. That’s why I never managed to break into the comic book field … 😦

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  5. How does a 10 year old know the 1910 term regarding getting one’s ears “boxed”?

    I learned it as a child by watching a horribly traumatic documentary about Thomas Edison – they say his boss did it to him and it’s to partially account for his deafness.

    Regardless, you had a violent childhood, didn’t you? 😉

    Jim says: I think I learned it from the same place … and possibly also from “Little Rascals” shorts.

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  6. The sudden shocking injection of red ink, and horrible messages also springing out of nowhere… this is probably a pretty accurate recording of the inside of every little kid’s head. Only, most of us learn how to repress it in order to become politely-normal zombies. Maybe the only secret to being a writer (?) is that of resisting zombie-dom…

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