Dilatory Dillan

I had to write a short story for NaNoWriMo at school. Yet again, I failed to finish the real NaNoWriMo. I even included some references to my life. Oh yeah, Lou’s mentioned in it, too.

My alarm clock went off at seven thirty in the morning and I knew it was time for me to go to school. I jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom. I changed my clothes, which I had forgotten to get ready the night before. I always forget to do stuff like that.

I ate a light breakfast of a bowl of ramen noodles and a glass of orange juice. Right before running out the door, I said bye to my mom. My mom works at a daycare but she can leave after I do because her school’s classes start at 8:15. At my school, class starts at 8:05, but it’s best to get there a few minutes before class because that means you don’t need to run up the stairs.

When I got to school, I had to swipe my ID card at a computer to get into the lunchroom. As I was walking away, some kid tried to walk out of the lunchroom through the door I used to come in. The lady who checks to see if have your ID card to swipe went a bit crazy and pulled on the girl’s bookbag and brought her into the lunchroom just to start yelling at her, saying, “You can’t just go that way! What do you think you were doing? If you don’t write your name legibly, I can’t give you a new ID card. Write your name the right way! Do it right now or else, I won’t let you go through here!” I’ve got no idea why she said things that had nothing to do with the girl trying to go through, according to the lady, the wrong door.

I just walked away and went to the table where my friends were sitting. One of my friends, Roger, said “Hey Dillan, guess what I found out?”

I asked, “Wait, let me guess. You found out that the things you see in your dreams are precognitive?”

Bob said, “No, it’s actually better than that.”

“What can be better than that?,” I asked.

“In my dreams, I sometimes meet a guy named Eugene and he tells me about things that have happened in the future. He also gave me a time traveling cookie,” said Roger.

“I see Eugene in my dreams, too. He gave me a special helmet,” said Bob.

“Okay, this is getting weird. You guys sure this isn’t just some weird thing you guys saw on TV?”

Both Roger and Bob said, “We’re not lying!”

The bell rung and we had to leave. I ran to my first class. I had two periods of Math A. As always, the class finished pretty fast. I guess the class always seems to go pretty fast because I actually like math.

Third period was English and that’s where I kept my coat. I didn’t want to have to wait till the end of the period to put away my coat, so I ran downstairs. I arrived just in time to put my coat away and not get marked late.

My teacher started to talk. She asked, “Well, I have a surprise for you guys.”

Eric, the class clown, called out, “Let me guess. We’re going on a trip to the zoo and we’re not gonna have any homework for the rest of the school year!”

Ms. Foster said, “No Eric, that’s not a surprise, that’s just a dream. Besides, you know that this school doesn’t let you go on trips. Who knows what might happen out there in the real world. We sure don’t!”

Everyone just said, “Oh man,” in unison.

“The surprise is that you guys have four weeks to finish a project on any novel you would like to work on. It can be a novel that you’ve read before or one that you will start reading.”

Ms. Foster explained to us that it would be more like a portfolio of small project-like assignments. We would be doing things like defining words from the novel, rewriting an excerpt, and even writing a poem about the novel.

I decided to read a book that I had heard about. I knew that the name of the author was Lou Tamposi, but I didn’t know what the name of the novel was.

The rest of the day went pretty fast.

It was a pretty good book. Some guy writes a story in it and he even goes to Africa. I finished it pretty fast. It wasn’t that big of a novel. It only had about fifty thousand words in it. Apparently, Lou Tamposi had written it for some novel writing competition called NaNoWriMo. I think it stands for National Novel Writing Month or something along those lines.

I decided to put off working on the project since I knew it would be easy to finish. I knew I’d have to start working on it at least a week before if I wanted to finish in time and get a good grade.

Over the next few weeks, I tried to do all my homework on time, however, I kept getting distracted by things, such as friends, new things to check out on the internet, and shows I watch on television.

This is how I always am. Almost all the time, I procrastinate so much, it almost turns out leading me towards trouble.

Over the weekend, I went over to Roger’s house because I needed to help him set up his new Fun Terminal. It was some new video game console he got for his birthday. It’s been two months since he got it, but all of us have been so busy with school, we couldn’t play. Bob was there, too.

The three of us played Warfare Hosting Ominous Ants, WHOA for short, all night long until Roger’s parents came in and said we had to go to to sleep. Roger slept on his bed, while I slept on the futon. Bob just slept on the floor with FeFe, Roger’s Dalmatian.

A few days later, it was time for me to start working on the project, but I decided to work on it the next day. I kept doing that each day of the week until the weekend. It seemed that I always had something else to do.

The next weekend, I just used my computer to do nothing truly productive than working on some photos I had taken. I also went around the neighborhood taking photos of random stuff. I didn’t feel like working on the project.

Then came the night before the project was due. I almost peed in my pants because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to finish it.

First, I had some coffee because I knew I’d have to stay awake for a very long time. Then, I told my parents not to worry if they saw my light on in the middle of the night. The probably didn’t expect me to have to stay up too late. I knew I’d probably have to stay up until around 1 or 2 in the morning.

Everything seemed to be turning slower and slower and time seemed to be moving really fast. It was soon so late that my eyes were beginning to glaze over. Luckily, I had had that cup of coffee, which kept me awake, as much as I hated to have had to do that.

I kept working at it. Sometimes, I had to force myself to work and not do something else, like just sit doing at my table and nothing but dozing off.

I ended up staying up till five in the morning. I had learned my lesson.

For some strange reason, I had received a 99 on the project. The only mistakes I made were some grammatical and formatting errors.