Ben White (@benwhitephotography) at Unsplash
Unbidden, unrehearsed, we supplied the next lines
Many years ago, on Opening Day of the then-new glass-and-steel Library in downtown Seattle, my husband and I happened to be on the scene together with literally THOUSANDS of enthusiastic people who were thronging the street outside the edifice (and my writer’s heart was gladdened to see so many readers who couldn’t wait to pour through the front doors…)
We got inside, with the rest of them and wandered around inspecting the place. We sat down to rest a moment, together with a bunch of other people who were all strangers to one another, on a chair which was part of a grouping of seats in the foyer.
One of the other people there was a young parent with a small child, and the child was having a picture book read to it, out loud. It might have been any picture book, but the words were familiar, familiar, familiar – and not just to me. So while the kid listened, rapt, those strangers at the group of seats began to smile and their heads began to swivel.
And the picture book came to,
If the area window was found ajar
And the basement looked like field of war,
If a tile or two came loose on the roof,
Which presently ceased to be waterproof,
If the drawers were pulled out from the bedroom chests,
And you couldn’t find one of your winter vests,
Or after supper one of the girls
Suddenly missed her Woolworth pearls.
Several of us, unbidden, unrehearsed, supplied the next two lines in a Greek chorus:
Then the family would say: “It’s that horrible cat!
It was Mungojerrie-or Rumpleteazer!”- And most of the time they left it at that.
That kid’s eyes, as they lifted off the book and onto us, were wide and awed. I suspect we made a lifelong convert to the world of books that day – because it was utter magic, how these people who didn’t know HER and apparently didn’t know ONE ANOTHER all knew how the next line went.
The grown-ups all smiled and nodded at each other across the space between the seats. Readers, all. THank you, Old Possum and all the Practical Cats.
And there’s more where that came from.
Jellicle cats are black and white
Jellicle cats are rather small…
Some time after that my own Jellicle left me. The cat I had left out of my matched pair of black-and-whites, was lost and bereft, her cries piteous in the night for a long time after.
It took me much longer. Even now, years later, there’s a hole in my life where Boboko used to live. I miss him, so badly – his goofiness, his playfulness, his loving nature, his imperious demands. Mungojerrie has gone to wreak his gentle Jellicle havoc someplace else while he waits for us all wherever it is that loved souls wait for those with whom they shared their earthly lives. And in time, maybe, I will learn to leave it at that.
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Wired asked writers to create 6-word SF stories.
His penis snapped off; he’s pregnant!
– Rudy Rucker
More from Wired HERE
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