Imagine yourself as a dog who had suddenly developed the ability to verbalize . . . or a baby that could immediately acquire an adult vocabulary to have his or her demands met instantly. I used to do those “what-ifs” on a regular basis.
As a former newspaper editor and writer of a weekly personal column, to change things up a bit I would occasionally have a guest/ghost writer. Sometimes it was my infant son and other times it was our family pets. Later, someone I trained penned a personal column full of snarky comments from our office cat. It was wildly popular. We even created a Facebook page for this cat and built an ad campaign around finding Boots the Newscat at area businesses, buried in a clothing rack or some other inconspicuous place that cats might lurk.
So today’s writing challenge is right up my alley. Here’s a sample of writing from another person’s viewpoint (my infant son at the time) in response to the challenge, http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/writing-challenge-shoes/
It’s about time Mom let me take over her column again. I was about to demand equal time when she got lazy and let me have at the computer. It’s now my turn to give a kid’s point of view about all these complaints you’ve been hearing.
In the first place, parents are pretty dumb. And they don’t know how smart we are. As an active 15-month-old, I’ve been learning the greatest tricks. Tricks like climbing. I climb up on the couch and dive head-first into the playpen, and for some strange reason, my mom is always sucking in her breath. She’s going to give herself a chronic case of the hiccups.
She and Dad think it’s pretty neat when I learn these tricks. They just don’t want me to know that. Like the time I climbed up on the stool and then onto the bathroom counter and sat in the sink and ate soap. They thought it was so neat, they took my picture. But then they made me get down and haven’t let me get up there again.
That sink stopper is one of the neatest toys to put in your mouth. But Mom about throws up when she catches me doing that. She always says something like, “People spit in that sink you little idiot!” I wonder if I could call the hotline for verbal child abuse.
They laughed a lot at me the day I learned to take my jacket to them and push it at them to let them know I wanted outside. But do you think that works? They just laugh or try to ignore me and say, “Not now.” I’d like to know when “now” is over and “later” starts.
The few times they do let me out of prison, I go bananas. There’s so much to look at–birds, dogs, cars and trees. And there’s lots on the ground to taste. But all of a sudden, Mom is saying bad things about what she’ll do to the next dog she catches in our yard.
The thing I like the most about outside is this great, hard place that you can run on. But Mom says I need to learn just what “street” means and that it’s off limits to little kids. But I think she’s probably going to have to build a fence in our yard to keep me away from it. Then I’ll have a new trick to learn in seeing if I can climb over or under that!
New tricks for old dogs 