BoBo's Dead!

While sleeping very peacefully one morning I was jerked out of my awake by the most gut wrenching screaming you have ever heard! It scared me to death. I fumbled out of bed so fast that I nearly slammed my head into the dresser as I tripped over a shoe.

Running from my bedroom to the kitchen I now realize my 2 yr. old son was the one screaming. As I rounded the corner, all wild eyed and my hair standing on end I saw my small son crumpled on the floor. He was crying so hard his tiny face was purple and his body was shaking like a leaf on a tree during a terrible storm.

As I landed on the floor next to him, nearly falling on him because I was moving so fast, I start searching. I see no blood; no bruise nothing to indicate a wound or anything else that would indicate a reason for this screaming.

Calming down I pulled him into my lap and said “son what is wrong”?

The jumbles of attempted words coming out of his mouth were like trying to understand someone speaking a foreign language. So we sat there and we rocked. I kept telling him he needed to calm down so I could understand what was wrong.

Finally between waves of tears this beautiful blonde hair, blue eyed baby of mine finds the strength to talk. He points his tiny finger toward a kitchen chair and said “Matthew killed my Bo Bo monkey”.

I know I sat there for a moment thinking that I have certainly misunderstood this little darling. How could his brother have killed his stuffed toy?

Slowly I turned my head in the direction of the chair that was holding the beloved Bo Bo monkey.
I nearly choked to death when I saw the monkey laying there. Trying to hold in laughter and maintain some sense of being the adult in control was like trying to not breathe.

There lying on his back was Bo Bo, one arm hanging off of each side of the chair and both legs hanging off the other side. His lifeless little face covered in red blood. His mouth was full of blood. The blood was running down each cheek with the speed of frozen molasses.

Standing on the other side of the kitchen was Matthew looking at me like he had no clue what my problem was or why his little brother was crying so hard.

I grabbed the reins of my emotions and ask him what on earth was going on.
His first response of course was that he had done nothing. After an interrogation that would have put an FBI agent to shame I discovered that there had been a conversation as to whether the stuffed monkey could swallow catsup or not. Trying to solve this scientific question Matthew and our middle son Jonathan took BoBo to the kitchen and proceeded to test their theory to see who was right and who was wrong. Shawn walked in during this testing faze and assumed the red to be blood.

It took several hours to clean all the catsup off of BoBo’s face, to get the stains out of his yellow shirt. Finally he was returned to the land living stuffed animals. This task was made even harder because of having a small child glued to my leg the entire time.

Yes life with my three boys has always been entertaining. Days like this happened more often than not. I never did come into the world I dreamed of. Fame and fortune were not to be mine. There would never be thousands of adoring fans or more money than I knew what to do with. The fame I searched for came to me, not in the manner I dreamed of but in the hearts of my little boys. They could have cared less about movie stars and models. Their focus was on mom and that made me famous to them. Now when I sit back and think about the fame I once sought and the fame I ended up with I realize I was blessed by God to get the latter. That meant more to me than fancy clothes, money or my name in lights could ever mean.

This is a true story, no names have been changed. We still have BoBo Monkey. That is the only major incident he was involved in, I can’t say the same for the boys. He now rests comfortably in his old age and is quite content.

LOL!!! A woman after my own heart. I love writing and reading humorous non-fiction short stories, and I also have three boys. I love this story. It made me laugh throughout, and being a mother of three boys, I could totally relate. I did catch a few things that could use some tweaking.

The very first sentence is a little awkward. I think maybe awake should read sleep.
While sleeping very peacefully one morning I was jerked out of my sleep by the most gut wrenching screaming you have ever heard!

Consider making these changes to the following sentences:
Running from my bedroom to the kitchen I now realized my 2 year old son was the one screaming.
As I rounded the corner, all wild eyed and my hair standing on end, I saw my small son crumpled on the floor.

Be sure to stay within the correct verb tense in a story. Don't let the excitement of it all let you get carried away with writing something in the way you would say it out loud.
As I landed on the floor next to him, nearly falling on him because I was moving so fast, I started searching. I saw no blood, no bruise, nothing to indicate a wound or anything else that would indicate a reason for this screaming.

Just a few punctuation difficulties in the following sentence. When it comes to question marks, there's a few simple rules: Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks, even inside single quotes, but the placement of question marks with quotes follows logic. If a question
is in quotation marks, the question mark should be placed inside the
quotation marks. When you have a question outside quoted material AND inside quoted
material, use only one question mark and place it inside the quotation
mark.
Calming down I pulled him into my lap and said “son what is wrong?”?
This sentence might read better in this arrangement too:
I calmed down, pulled him into my lap, and said “son what is wrong?”

I found a little more of the same errors in the following sentence:
Finally, between waves of tears this beautiful, blonde hair, blue eyed
baby of mine found the strength to talk. He pointed his tiny finger
toward a kitchen chair and said “Matthew killed my Bo Bo monkey.”.

Consider taking out extra words that aren't really needed in a story. Also anytime you can take the word "I" out of a story the better.
I know I sat there for a moment thinking that I had certainly
misunderstood this little darling. How could his brother have killed his
stuffed toy?

I don't know how many times I've experienced this, LOL:
Trying to hold in laughter and maintain some sense of being the adult in control was like trying to not breathe.

Just a couple of little things in the following sentences:
There, lying on his back was Bo Bo, one arm hanging off of each side of
the chair and both legs hanging off the other side. His lifeless little
face was covered in red blood. His mouth was full of blood.

I love this description!
The blood was running down each cheek with the speed of frozen molasses.

I would love to see the following put in dialog with a couple of descriptions of facial expressions or body language. Dialog almost always strengthens a story.
I grabbed the reins of my emotions and ask him what on earth was going on.
His first response of course was that he had done nothing.

I love the "FBI interrogation" metaphor here. It also needs a comma:
After an interrogation that would have put an FBI agent to shame, I
discovered that there had been a conversation as to whether the stuffed
monkey could swallow catchup or not.

Consider the following changes:
Finally, he was returned to the land of living stuffed animals.

This task was made even harder because of having with a small child glued to my leg the entire time.

Yes, life with my three boys has always been entertaining.

The fame I searched for came to me, not in the manner I dreamed of, but in the hearts of my little boys.

Now, when I sit back and think about the fame I once sought and the fame I
ended up with, I realize I was blessed by God to get the latter.

That meant more to me than fancy clothes, money, or my name in lights could ever mean.

That is the only major incident he was involved in., I can’t say the same for the boys.

I noticed there were a few problems with commas, like most of us have, so I thought I would share a short, easy to follow article on commas: Commas

I hope my "red pen" was a little helpful. I'm terrible about wielding it when given free reign.

Lora

Thank you so much for the red ink, I will try to re-work that tomorrow. I used to have sleep in that line instead of awake but someone else told me I should have the same word twice so close together so that is why I had changed that one.

Cynthia

That is very good advice. We do try to avoid using the same word twice if it is at all possible. Perhaps you could use the word slumber or something like that. Awake, didn't really make sense to me.

[i] It amazes me the number of people it says have read my story and yet no one really comments. Is this normal for many of the readers here to not give feedback on what they like or didn't like about the story?

It seems we need a few more people who enjoy critiquing each others work. Most of the people here will give feedback on what they like about other people's work, but they shy away from giving advice on how to change their work. I seem to be one of the few people who does the critiquing. Apparently, our people have taken "Thou shalt not judge others" to a whole new level. LOL But, we really need to find a few people who are willing to lovingly give each other a hand up with their creative writing. If you know anyone who would like to participate, please consider inviting them to CCW. Also, you might consider posting your story in the non-critiquing section of non-fiction for general comments.

Thank you for the advice, I will try that. I will be more inclined to critique others writings soon. I have a place I got to and submit my stories for challenges, and as soon as I get a first place there and am no longer considered a beginner then I feel I will have a leg to stand on to critique others. But I do often at least comment on whether I like the story or not.

That was part of me checking this site out to see if I was going to get ANY feedback at all. I need that to help me grow as a writer and I'm finding many of these sites but few that have any critiquing or opinons shared by the majority of the readers. It's depressing as I want to be involved in several sites but if you can't get even a note as to whether they like your work or not then it does very little good.

Thank you so much for your willingness to chip in and help. Even inexperienced writers have something valuable to give to other writers. If a person is even well read they can kind of tell where a story needs work and where the strengths of a story are. With the examples of the writing you've posted on this site, I'd say you already have a leg to stand on.

I, too, had the same experience with other writing forums. No one really commented, and if they did it was either not useful or pretty rude, especially on the secular sites. So, since I had a Bachelor's degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing and the computer know how, I thought, why not create a writing forum of my own that would help Christian writers. So I trashed all of my usernames and passwords to the other sites and created my own forum. That aught to teach 'em, LOL. Now, I make sure that at least I give everyone a comment or critique of their work, because I know how it feels to want the help and friendship of other writers and not be able to find it. Not only that, but if anyone should be writing, it should be Christians. The more that better for everyone. I'm so glad you found this site. I hope we have a long lasting writing friendship.

AW and the light bulb goes off LOL, didn't realize this was YOUR site! It probably says that somewhere but you know how it is. Being a natural blonde and all I can really miss things sometimes.

Oh, don't worry about not knowing that. I don't think it really says it anywhere. The only clue would be that I am the only head "Administrator" of the site, but then that's really not a great clue either. I'm naturally blonde too, so that's probably why it never entered my mind to print it anywhere on the site. I think I'll mosey on over to my profile and add that little bit of information.