week 4 story: The Favorite Child
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| Michael Jordan in the air about to dunk Source: Deviantart |
This is a story about a family with a dad name John and fours kids named Jack, Cody, Tanner, and Ryan. All the kids were around the same age with the ages ranging from 12 to 15 years old with Ryan being the oldest and jack being the youngest. In this group of brother the clear favorite to the father was Ryan. Ryan always did everything right, didn't cause any trouble, and always helped out around the house if he could. The other three brothers all were jealous of Ryan and wanted their father to make them his favorite. So in order to make this happen the three kids formed together and tried to set traps for Ryan to make him get in trouble making him not eh favorite anymore to his father. The first trap that the three kids set was by throwing away Ryan's paper to get him in trouble with school thus making their father very disappointed with Ryan. So the three kids went into Ryan's room, stole his essay that he just recently wrote and hit it from him. What they didn't know is that Ryan had already typed the essay up after writing it on paper so their plan had backfired. Ryan still turned in his assignment and he was still the favorite. This made the kids even angrier so they plotted another plan to get Ryan in trouble. The next plan they made up was to dirty up Ryan's room after he cleaned it so the father would get angry that he didn't do his chores. So the three kids went into Ryan's room and threw trash everywhere and ran out. Little did the kids know though was that there was actually a housecleaning service that was coming in that same day to deep clean the house so Ryan's room ended up being clean again before their father got home. After this plan had failed the kids grew even more angry. The three kids now knew they had to go to the extreme in order to get Ryan in trouble so they did the unspeakable. They took their fathers most prized possession which was a basketball autographed by the greatest player to ever play, Michael Jordan, and destroyed it. The three kids all brought the ball to their father and showed them what had happened blaming Ryan. The father absolutely furious immediately Ryan and started to blame and question why he would do such a thing. Ryan immediately knew that he was being blamed as he could see his brother in the back laughing. Ryan quickly told his father that it wasn't him and that he could prove it. Ryan had actually grabbed the autographed basketball earlier and replaced it with a fake because he had actually made a custom display box for it and quickly brought it out to show his father. His father was in shock and realized that his other three sons had lied to him and punished them severely. The brother plan had failed once again but this time they had learned their lesson and quit trying to get their older brother Ryan in trouble.
For my story I took the story "Saint Kentigern and the Robin" from "The Book of Saints and Friendly Beast" and retold it into a more modern story about three bothers the despised their fourth brother because he was the favorite of the family. So the three brothers set traps to get the fourth one in trouble but they all end up failing in the end.
Hey Devin,
ReplyDeleteNice story! i really liked how you told a story about a dad and his boys, it sounded so authentic and it reminds me of friends that i know that have brothers and are close to them in age just like this story and also have a close bond. I also like the image you used in the story because Michael Jordan is an iconic basketball player and seeing as their is apart of this story that contains an autograph basketball from him, if i were to have an autograph ball from him and my siblings mess with it i would be really upset. I wonder if after they realized they can't prank Ryan that maybe Ryan would be plotting to get them back? I also wonder if the father would have ever been more stricter towards Ryan had the kids told the dad about how he treats Ryan compared to the kids themselves. I feel like you should better structure the story because i feel like its clumped together and makes it feel like its harder to read. Overall, it was a great story to read it reminds the reader of the many occurrences of sibling rivalry in households of people who grew up with siblings.
Hi Devin,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you came up with reasonable things that siblings might do to get each other in trouble- I don't have any siblings, but I can definitely picture young boys going to such lengths to get someone else in trouble. I can relate to the dad's reaction to losing his autographed ball- I had a souvenir from a concert I went to (about a quarter of the printed setlist- it got torn to bits when the band tossed it into the crowd), and I barely managed to stop my mom from throwing out what looked to her like a piece of crumpled paper with some song titles written on it. I can't imagine how upset I would have been if I hadn't stopped her.
I think there are a few ways you could improve your story. First and foremost, your story would be much more readable if you included paragraph breaks- the block of text is a bit hard to read. I think you could also improve some of the sentences; you do have a couple run-on sentences, and there are a few bits that are a bit awkwardly worded. But overall, I enjoyed your story!
Hi Devin! I loved the almost magical feeling that Ryan could get away with anything, always having an out that kept him from getting in trouble. It reminded me of the Sandlot a little bit with the autographed ball getting destroyed. Although this time, thankfully it wasn't. How would Ryan have gotten out of the situation if he hadn't switched the basketballs? With how he got out of the other situations with luck, I'm curious how it would have worked that time. Maybe his dad turns the table on his brothers, saying he thought they might try and blame something on Ryan. In the end, at least their plan backfired and they weren't able to frame Ryan for anything. As mentioned earlier, it would help make it a little easier to read if the story was in paragraphs. I almost read the same line over again by accident. As a whole, though, it's definitely a good story!
ReplyDeleteHi Devin,
ReplyDeleteI thought your story was very entertaining. It is amazing to me how Ryan was always able to be one step ahead of his mischievous brothers, even though he was completely oblivious to their troublesome plans. I also liked that you modernized the story. It made me feel like I was watching a sitcom on TV, and every time the brothers' plans failed there would be audience laughter and then they would brainstorm what to do next. There were a couple grammar issues I noticed, like forgetting to capitalize the "j" in "Jack" towards the beginning and I think "not eh favorite" was supposed to be "not so favorite". I also wish that each time the younger brothers carried out a plan it was put into a separate paragraph so that the story was not all clumped together, but otherwise it was very well written and I enjoyed reading it!
Hey Devin. I like how your story retells "Saint Kentigern and the Robin" in a way that almost all families can relate to nowadays. The favorite child being envied and the siblings trying to bring him down a notch. To no avail. I was wondering, did you get the ideas for the characters from your own life or were they all made up? Also, what if you ended the story with Ryan's brothers finally accepting him as well as not trying to get him in trouble anymore?
ReplyDeleteDevin, this story translates over to one of the fears of the founding fathers of the United States: majority rule that infringes on the rights of the minority. With numbers come power, and it is easy to say that if more people form the majority group than the minority, they have more of a right to make decisions for the whole group. That creates a grey area for what things are inalienable to majority rule, what are going to be the universal rights, and what the country defines as a "majority". If, for example, 51% of a country voted for Candidate A and 49% voted for the only other candidate, is it right for almost half of the country to be deprived of that access to decision making power?
ReplyDeleteHey Devin!
ReplyDeleteI think this story was a really fun read. I also loved the image you chose! I have not read the original Saint Kentigern and the Robin but I really enjoyed your retelling. I myself have dealt with some sibling rivalry where my sisters have felt that I was the favorite and attempted to make me look bad. I can totally relate to this story. Good job!