Colorizing the Classics

“Are you sure your mother’s coming Allykida?” Barb Batyler asked the young woman standing in front of the door to the Hoover Suite Conference room.

“Oh, yes”, replied Allykida, “She just popped upstairs to help Kitahoshi get the dinosaur doo off her shoes. It seems as though she’s stepped in it again. Mother wouldn’t miss this class for the world. It’s very select; there were only twelve seats and it’s only offered twice during the whole conference.”

“I know. My good friend Nancy Wills is the instructor. I hope she doesn’t call on me all the time just because she knows my name.” said Barb.

“Would she do that?” Ally asked.

“You never can tell with Nancy. She knows I’m a dominatrix for hire in my spare time and it never fails that she manages to introduce me that way; especially when it’s sure to raise the most eyebrows. She did it to me at her family reunion when she introduced me to her uncle the Monsignor. The man followed me around for hours. I was never sure if he wanted to convert me or hire me.” Barb shook her head at the memory.

“Good grief; that sounds horribly embarrassing”, said Allykida. “What did you do?”

“I managed to slip away when he was asked to say the blessing. I was afraid I was going to have to eat my dinner in the kids’ tree house. Fortunately, he was cornered by a trio of maiden aunts and I left before he caught up with me again.”

“Saved by Grace," said Ally.

“You can say that again’, Barb agreed. Why don’t we go in and sit down. That way we can make sure we’re all together. Are you sure your mom knows which room the class is in?”

“Oh, you know the mother creature”, said Allykida as she opened the door. “She had this whole place mapped out before we even unpacked the luggage. She got a map of the hotel from the concierge when we checked in. She went after it with a highlighter and had the class schedules all penned in before we went to dinner.”

“Well, you mother is a highly organized individual, Ally. Wow, get a load of this place’, Barb said as she stepped into the room. “I feel like I’m stepping into the boardroom of the Starship Enterprise.”

“Beam me up, Scotty”, giggled Ally. “The Queen of the Flying Purple Prose Monkeys has arrived!”

“You should feel right at home in this class”, said Barb. “Coloring the Classics is a popular class at USC.” As Ally and Barb sat down at the blue Lucite table, the door opened and Ruth Yeshanu stepped in followed by Kitahoshi.

“I’m not sitting next to you, Monkey Girl”, said Kitahoshi. “That wasn’t very nice of you to let me step in that. You could have warned me.”

Ally put her fingers in her ears, stuck out her tongue and made a face at Kitahoshi. “You deserved it. You ate the last blueberry muffin at breakfast.”

“I didn’t know it was the last one”, said Kita. “How was I supposed to know that? Say, these chairs are comfy”, she said as she sat down across the table from Ally. “I like this blue leather and this high back. We need some like this for our dorm room. I feel like a powerful executive sitting here.”

“Well, you don’t look like one”, Ally told her. “You still look like a royal subject of the Queen of the Purple Prose Monkeys.”

“It’s my turn to be Queen,” Kita complained. “You got to be Queen last week.” Ally made another face at her.

“Hello, everybody”, said Maryn as she walked in with BradyH. “I’ve brought the King of the BVD’s with me to get his collection colorized.” They took seats across from each other at the head of the table next to the video screen. Maryn and Brady were followed by Allen Parker, Capt. Canard, and PA Sockpuppet. Allen sat down next to Kitahoshi with Capt. Canard to his left. PA Sockpuppet took a seat next to Ruth on the other side of the table. At the last moment, the door opened and Aruna and Carole walked in. Carole was saying, “I like it; it’s purple enough, but it’s just a tad too spirally. I feel like I’m wearing a bowl of pasta on my head sometimes.” Carole had dyed her hair again. This time it was a deep royal purple. Pam elDragon followed Carole into the room. Every once in a while she would pull one of Carole’s purple curls and watch it stretch past her belt and bounce back up to touch her shoulders. It was like playing with purple slinkies.

As the class settled into their seats the instructor stepped out from behind the video screen and sat down at the head of the table. Brady and Maryn were to her left and right at the head of the table. Carole and Aruna were at the foot of the table facing her with their backs to the door.

“Greetings, class. I’m Nancy Wills and I’ll be your instructor/facilitator for the next two hours. Welcome to the future – your future. As we colorize the classics, I hope you’ll gain new insights into your writing as we examine the classics of the past.” Nancy pushed a button on the control panel under the edge of the table near her right hand. A holographic image of two sheets of paper appeared on the table top in front of each person.

“Each of you will see on the left a copy of a passage of work from a famous author. On the right, you’ll see what appears to be a blank sheet of paper.” Nancy handed a box to Brady. “I’m sending a box around the table. Each of you should take a stylus from the box. This stylus will allow you to write directly on the table top. Your words will be digitally stored on a CD that you can take home with you at the end of the conference. Please don’t write on the table top with anything other than the stylus. Hotel management insisted I stress this point. This is state of the art technology and this is one of the few conference centers in the world to offer this.”

“Our objective in this class is to take a passage from a novel that has withstood the test of time and make it your own. Hence the name ‘Colorize the Classics’. You can add to, subtract from, multiply or divide characters; keep nothing but the characters and the theme; in short, you may do anything you like to make the story your own. Just remember – sooner or later everyone breaks one of the universal constants. The only one you are not allowed to break is this: Don’t write on the table with anything other than the stylus.”

”Fantastic! This is so darn cool”, said Pam elDragon. “I am so glad I signed up for this.”

Alan Parker looked at his passage. The computer had assigned him, The Nun’s Story. “Psh’, he said, “I hate being a nun. I wanted to be a pirate!”

“Don’t feel bad, Alan. I got Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, said Aruna. “And I wanted to be a pirate, too!”

“At least you have room to colorize, Aruna. Hemingway wrote like he was drawing stick figures. There’s nary a spare adjective to be found in his work."

"I’ve drawn Faulkner’s The Unvanquished. What am I going to do with all those ellipses, adjectives, and semicolons? How am I supposed to imagine myself as a white male from the Southern United States? I’m a Canadian female and decades younger to boot. That old coot was dead 25 years before I was even born”, groused Kitahoshi.

Allykida laughed at her friend’s distress. “Ha ha, Kitahoshi. I got Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Better luck next time!” Kita flipped Ally the bird across the table and hoped Ruth and Barb didn’t notice.

“Who did you get, Maryn?’ Brady asked.

“Dickens; A Tale of Two Cities. I should be able to get something out of that. How about you? Who did you get, Brady?"

“The Count of Monte Cristo. I don’t remember who wrote it”, he said.

“Tap your stylus on the top of the page. See the little icon that looks like a hat? That will give you a few author stats”, said Maryn.

“Oh, Alexandre Dumas, it says. It’s funny how I remember the title but not the name of the author.”

“That’s just one of the sad facts of history, Brady. Not all authors end up being a household name even if their works are remembered. I’m sure it will happen to some of us, too. We can’t all be famous. Maryn sighed and pondered her selection. She sighed again. “I wish I had gotten A Christmas Carol. It has a better plot.”

“Oh, no’, said Carole, “I’ve drawn The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I read that when I was in high school. What a total yawn that was.”

“Well, you can colorize it, Carole’, Pam told her. “Get it to match your hair. Maybe it’ll be an improvement.”

“Well it can’t make it any worse, that’s for sure’, Carole agreed. “Who did you get, Pam?”

“It’s fantastic. I can’t believe how fantastic it is. I’ve got CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. “What about you?” Pam said as she turned to Captain Canard who was sitting on her right. “Don’t you want to share? Or do you want it to be a surprise?”

“Yeah, buddy, how about it. Why the blank look?”asked PA Sockpuppet. Captain Canard looked up from his passage. He locked eyes with Ruth who was sitting across the table from him. “What is it Captain? Is something wrong?” she asked him.

“I’ve drawn The Art of War by Sun Tzu”, he said.

“Fantastic”, said Pam. “That ought to be fun.”

“Sure, you could do that. Lots of battles and stuff like that”, Carole agreed. Her purple curls bounced like springs when she nodded.

“I’m a Quaker”, replied Captain Canard.

“Oh, my”, said Ruth, “That is awkward, isn’t it? I’m a Unitarian”, she said. “Why don’t we switch? Is that allowed?” she asked the instructor.

“Usually not’, said Nancy, “But in this case I think we can make an exception. By the way, who are you giving up, Ruth, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh, it’s Totem and Taboo by Freud”, she said as she took her new seat between Pam and Allen. Captain Canard sat down looking pale.

“Cheer up, bucko”, PA Sockpuppet said as he clapped him on the shoulder. “It could have been worse. You could have ended up a pirate!”

“Who did you get the, Mr. Sockpuppet? H.G. Wells War of the Worlds?”

“Oh, no. Nothing so grand as that. I have Poor Richards Almanac. Poor old Ben. He’d be rolling in his grave if he knew the allegory I have planned for it.” The PA Sockpuppet chortled with glee. His beady black eyes gleamed like polished buttons as he clapped his padded hands together in his excitement.

“That leaves me, I guess”, said Barb.

“Well, who is it, Barb? Aren’t you going to tell us?” Ally asked her. Barb covered her eyes with her hand. She knew she’d never be able to live this down. Someone, probably several someones were always going to remind her of this moment. She could only hope her friend Ruth and Kita and Ally would forget to mention it over the internet.
“I drew Desiderius Erasmus”, said Barb.

“Who?” asked Carole. “I’ve never heard of him.” Brady and Maryn exchanged blank looks and shrugged. They hadn’t heard of him either. Ruth burst out laughing and Barb blushed crimson. The darker she blushed, the harder Ruth laughed.

“Mother, what on earth is so funny? What are you laughing about? Who is this Erasermus fellow, anyway?” Ally asked.

“Are you going to tell them or should I?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, all right, then”, said Barb. “The piece I drew is called, The Praise of Folly.”

“Fantastic”, said Pam. “What’s it about? Why is it so funny?”

“Oh, that’s not what’s funny”, said Ruth. “What’s funny is when we graduated from school, Barb’s mother asked her what she planned to do with her degree. When Barb told her mother she planned to be a writer, her mother screamed, ‘That’s sheer folly, Barbara! And she fainted dead away right there in the middle of the graduation crowd. They had to call an ambulance to come and carry her away she was so distraught.” Ruth started laughing again.

“Ever since then”, Barb said, “Every time one of us screws up, the other one shrieks, ‘That’s folly!’ My poor mother; toes up on the lawn in front of our entire graduating class. I don’t think we’ll ever forget that.”

“I don’t think your mother will either, Barb”, said Ruth. “She still gives me the evil eye when she sees me. She acts like it was my fault you decided to be a writer. I never could convince her it was the other way around.”

“How come I never heard this story before?” Ally asked.

“We mother creatures do keep some secrets, young one. That’s all you need to know.”

“You are so, so right, Madame Ruth”, said Nancy as she stood up from the head of the table. “Is everyone satisfied with their passages now?” She glanced around the table. Everyone held a stylus and looked expectant. They were ready to write. “Good, if you are all ready to proceed, I’m going to leave the room briefly to answer a call. At the end of 45 minutes I’ll call a short break for 15 minutes. When we come back from break, we’ll write for another 20 minutes and for the last 20 to 30 minutes or so we can share our work. Now, if you all will excuse me, I’ll be back with you shortly. Nancy ducked behind the screen and left the room.

“Psst, Brady”, hissed Maryn.

“Huh?” Brady looked up from the desk top image in front of him. He had been randomly poking the holo-image in front of him. It looked and behaved like pooled oil under his stylus. He liked watching the pretty colors form and reform under his stylus as he poked it. Sometimes he could even get the dots to connect. He had forgotten there would be a digital copy on CD of his random pokings all over his cyber paper.

“There’s something strange going on, Brady.”

”What do you mean?” Brady asked.

“I mean that the instructor took off mighty fast for a phone call. I think there’s something going on around here that the management doesn’t want us to know about.”