Free to Read: "A Spork for Harold"
You sure missed out on my brilliance, U of C. :p
A long, long time ago (the fall of 2003), I was a high school senior whose heart was set on attending the University of Chicago. Unfortunately, the following April I received the ‘thin envelope’ in the mail. My dreams were crushed.
Sigh.
But, thanks to my mom who reminded me about everything that’s to follow, I wrote an amusing story as part of my University of Chicago applicaiton. Here was the prompt:
Write a story, play, or dialogue that meets all of the following requirements.
1. You must begin with the sentence, 'Many years later, he remembered his first experience with ice.'
2. All five senses--sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell--have to figure in the plot.
3. You have to mention the University of Chicago, but, please, no accounts of an erstwhile high school student applying to the University--this is fiction, not autobiography.
4. These items must be included: a new pair of socks, a historical landmark, a spork (the combination spoon and fork frequently seen among airline flatware), a domesticated animal, and the complete works of William Shakespeare. Have fun, and try to keep your brilliance and wit to three pages max.
So, without further ado, I present “A Spork for Harold.”
A Spork for Harold
by
Thomas Broderick
Many years later, he remembered his first experience with ice. Now, Harold Jamison had had a coke with ice, seen snow, and had even been pounded by hail. But what Harold considered his first experience with ice was far beyond a few frozen cubes or flakes.
He had been twenty at the time, a half-century younger than his present age. It was morning, morning only in technical terms since the sun had been up for three months when Harold had his experience. It was a cold day, a light description of the ice desert of Antarctica. Harold felt the wind burning the small portion of his exposed face. The sixteen dogs were pulling the reigns hard, making the progress across the frozen continent ahead of schedule. He checked his GPS unit, only a few more miles to go.
For a moment Harold wondered how he had gotten into his present situation. It had all started six months prior when Harold was just a mild-mannered University of Chicago student. For the fall semester of his sophomore year he had signed up for an archeology class taught by the infamous professor Durick. Now Durick was not nuts, even though everyone said he was. Durick had been the head of the archaeology department for twenty years when Harold was a sophomore. After all those years he had become a little eccentric.
Harold could not remember the reason why he had volunteered for the expedition to Antarctica. The goal was to find the copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare that had been carried by Robert Scott on his failed expedition to the South Pole in 1912.
“How dumb would you have to be,” Harold said to himself, “to take a book that big with you on an expedition?” He shrugged; maybe finding the book would make him a little more popular at base camp back at the South Pole. Harold shuttered, remembering the hour he had spent with his tongue stuck to the South Pole. He sighed, it would be the tenth historical landmark that he had been dared to lick in his life. Oh well.
After a few more minutes of silent sledding, he saw it. On the horizon was a small brown dot. “Mush!” Harold called out at the top of his lungs. He pulled the reigns hard as he came upon the rotting burlap tent. Harold stepped off the sled and pulled off his goggles, feeling his knees crack from long hours standing on the sled’s two footholds.
Harold smacked his chapped lips as he observed the scene. It surprised him that the tent was still standing after eighty years. The burlap was in bad shape. The weather had turned it into something resembling moldy Swiss cheese. Snow had drifted around the tent over the years, making the sides partially collapse.
Harold sighed, knowing for sure that before the day was out he would have to see a frozen dead guy. “Oh man,” he whispered under his breath before taking a swig of water from his canteen. Harold approached the front of the tent and kneeled. He slowly pulled back the flap, finding that it was dark inside the small space. With fumbling hands, he pulled a steel flashlight out of his coat.
With the light aiding him, Harold saw three figures lying in the tent. Harold gulped, trying to keep his breakfast down. He crawled in, only inches between himself and the corpses. He quickly looked around the cluttered tent, rummaging through the men’s personal effects. Harold came upon a wooden trunk with a rusted lock. He examined the lock; it was on its last legs. With the butt of his flashlight, Harold shattered the lock and the latch into a thousand rusted pieces. The trunk’s hood came off easily. There it was, between the socks and a metal box of Dr. Felix’s foot powder. Like Harold had predicted, the book was huge. He slowly lifted the artifact out of its lying place and took it outside the tent before gently fastening it to his sled.
Harold stretched in the sunlight and looked at his watch. He knew he had some time to inspect the area - the sun would be up for another two months. He crawled back into the tent with his flashlight. He cautiously approached the bodies, soon realizing that all three men had similar stains on the front of their shirts. It was not blood, but something else. Harold mentally scratched his head. His eyes traveled down to the men’s hands. Each man had a small food can in hand. He found a similar can on the ground and held it up to his flashlight. “Soup?” Harold asked out loud. He sniffed the can, nothing. He even ran his finger along the inside of the can and tasted the residue, nothing there either. “It wasn’t lead poisoning,” he commented, the sweet taste of lead missing from the metal.
“Why did they die then?” He asked out loud. While glancing around, he found the culprit of the men’s demise. Harold picked an object out of the snow, a small utensil. “A spork?” He asked out loud. All the pieces fell into place: the stains, the clutched food cans, and the deaths of the men.
Harold realized that when the men had been trying to eat with their sporks, the soup had been strained onto their shirts, dooming them to their frozen fate. Harold knew the theory was ridiculous. “They did bring that book with them though,” Harold said a moment later, his idea starting to make a little more sense. Harold shrugged, beginning to stand up to leave the tent.
It was a pity that Harold had not seen the slick of ice under his feet. As he stood up, he lost his footing and fell forward, right onto the body of Robert Scott.
The scream could be heard for miles.
As Harold ran out of the tent at full speed and onto the sled, he knew for sure that he would never forget his first experience with ice.