Thoughts on Some Juvenilia Writing from High School

I was thinking this morning about a series of short stories I worked on when I was in high school about my cousins and I. Actually, I'd been thinking about these stories a lot recently, now that the birthdays of two of my cousins just put us all at the ages I thought we were in the story. I'd been musing about how weird it was to be the age I wrote myself almost ten years ago. Let me give you some background though, because after looking back over those stories, saved on USB, I found that my memories were a little off:

The stories are about “Superteam,” a group of secret agents. The team was made up of my three male cousins, my sister, and myself. I was fifteen when I started writing these. Don't judge. According to the creation date recorded on my documents, I started “Episode 1: The Phantom Disc” on August 20 of my sophomore year of high school. But then I wrote a three-page short story about the same characters for a high school assignment that was apparently created just eight days later. I can't remember if I had actually thought up the idea for the story before the short story was assigned, or if I created “Superteam” solely for my paper and then continued to work on it after. My cousins and I pretended to be secret agents and played Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 all the time when we spent days at my grandmother's house in the summer. I remember talking to them about what they would want their superhero alter-egos to be. In fact, I know I had to have done that before the assignment was due because I remember being unsure if my youngest male cousin would be happy with his alter-ego name choice in the future. He was about five at the time and chose “Cute Kitty.” So I must have started creating the story before I wrote the paper for English II. You know, thinking back I can remember using a floppy disk—that's right, a FLOPPY DISK—to save these in the beginning. That seems so long ago. I also remember losing stories once or twice on those stupid floppy disks. Darn you, floppy disks! So it is likely that the stories were actually started before August of my sophomore year, but I'd had to retype them after losing some material.

The beginnings of the two stories started in sophomore  year differ a bit. The later stories I wrote, a couple over the next two years, match the beginning of the story that was technically started earlier. I think I probably went back to update and add to the one I created first after turning in the one for English II. The beginning of the later stories goes:

*names have been shortened to first initials

“Once upon a time, the way many exciting, fun-filled, and action-packed, stories start, five adventurers and their trusty pet monkey came together to form Superteam.

      The quintet of heroes included these: Ellye, a black belt in Taekwondo and an expert swordswoman, and [J] "The Snake", who was amazing with all things electronic and the only person to hack into the CIA mainframe (but that's another story). Also, there was [J2], The Samurai Ninja; a girl by the alias of H-Ventura, who could communicate with animals and had a pet spider monkey named Mufasa; and [S] "Cute Kitty", a boy with the agility of a cat and several other talents. These heroes were hired by the CIA to help with important secret missions.

      Our story begins on a particularly slow day in [Town], [State], on Ellye's farm, where the adventurers hung out when off duty...”

I realized some things looking back over these stories. First, at this time I did not know how to use a colon for lists, as I did it incorrectly in this instance as well as in the assignment for English class, even though there it is worded a little differently. Second, as I found when reading some of the other stories—this realization was a little sad actually—I am not now at the age I was in the stories. I'm older. I thought in the stories I made us (from youngest to oldest) 13, 16, 18, 23, and 23. I thought I did this because I wanted the youngest to be at least 13, and I thought the reason I remembered how old we were was because this year was the year when, between the cousins, three out of five are at significant ages (my oldest cousin and I are just at regular ol' twenty-three). But I was wrong. In one story I wrote that the oldest of us are 20, and in another 21. On a side note, here's how I explain our youth and abilities in one of the later stories through my oldest cousin's viewpoint:

“He and Ellye (short for Elizabeth) were both 21, [J2] was 16, [H]; 14, and [S]; 11. All were very capable for their ages, and some more so. All were trained in martial arts, some more than others, and all could take anyone who might attack them, if presented with the opportunity. But there was more beneath the surface, and only those hardened in noticing it would.

      [S], the little rascal, [J] reflected, was only 11, but more advanced that some of the long-time CIA members in their division. He was a nice kid, and would not use violence unless necessary, though it unfortunately was sometimes, but preferred to use his incredible wits to fight villains. His brain had been the deciding factor in many of their endeavors.

      [J2] was the rebel. Though the others had their own spells of striking out or ingeniously thinking up some no-way-this-is-gonna-work-but-somehow-it-does plan, he was by far the one who did it most.

      E, she was the tough one. Sometimes, the most insecure one. [J], being her cousin, knew that sometimes she doubted herself more than the others, but she was also the one who probably loved her job the most. Without this and writing, she would probably be nothing.

      [J] was the eyes and ears of the operation. He prided himself on being observant and cautious, using these abilities to get the job done at all costs. He had just turned 21, [. . .] and was basking in the happiness of being an adult.

      And then there was [H], previously just H. She’d set out on her own at 12, and gone off to do who knows what. Her parents and sister had been shocked, sad, but obviously confident in her, and just a few months ago, she had revealed that she had been [H] all along. She told of how the CIA had contacted her and then heard of her family and their special talents also. They’d watched them for a few months, and when they’d showed superior determination and skill, had also signed them on and put them with [H]. [H] had not fully explained everything that had happened in those months, but [J] attributed this to it only being found out about a couple months ago anyway. He figured in the next few, they would learn more.”

The funniest thing I think is that my sister asked that her story include the semi-running away and making it on her own for a couple years before we all became secret agents. Even at the time I was writing this, when she was only about eight or nine, I was pretty sure she wouldn't be one to do that and make it on her own at 12 years old. It is funny what eight-year-olds think about the future . . . and what fifteen-year-olds think about being a secret agent.

Sadly, I've already passed the age I projected a future self to. But I think that's why these stories still interest me, even though they are silly and not great examples of creative writing, which I so desperately wanted to make a career of for some time (okay, partly still wish I could make a career of). It was interesting to write about myself years in the future and wonder what my life would really be like at that age. Now that age has passed, and I'm not a secret agent. But that's okay, because third, I realized that these stories are ridiculous (an eleven-year-old secret agent?), but I don't care, because they were fun, I enjoyed writing them, and my cousins and sister even got in on giving me suggestions for their secret agent alter-egos. That's why in the version above, the opening includes my sister's “pet spider monkey named Mufasa” who sadly does not make an appearance in the story for my English class.

If you've now gotten a taste and want to read a silly--but perhaps worth a laugh--piece of juvenilia, here is the link to the Superteam story I wrote for English II.

P.S.: Thanks to the English teacher I had for that class, who is one of my favorite teachers of all time, and who always had fun creative writing assignments as well as critical ones later on. The Superteam story was written for an assignment in which we had to use a certain number of vocabulary terms in a three-page short story. Those words are highlighted in the story.