Read a Story

 
  • Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
3 votes

Domesticated

One day you are young, playing the field. Each weekend is an adventure, work is a way to pay for beer. You don't worry about where your food is coming from or how clean your house is.

Then, in an instant, you change. Your shell lives on as a professional with an increasingly challenging and rewarding career. You save money. There is food in the fridge, clean dishes in the cupboard.

She did it. She turned you into a responsible human being. An adult! As you eat the nutritious lunch she packed you, you wonder how the hell it happened.

Sign up now to give notes to the Scrawlers you're reading and scrawl your own stories.

2 Notes
Barry about 1 year ago

Interesting take on coming of age. You've taken what, in male-dominated bar discussions, is often portrayed as a negative evolution and made clear how positive it really can be.

I'd definitely like to see what you could do with this story given 250-500 words. There are some chicken-or-the-egg questions to address in the story. Which came first, the maturity or the woman?

Of course, there is one little word that is sticking in my craw right now: "shell." "Your _shell_ lives on as a professional with an increasingly challenging and rewarding career." In the context of this 100-word story, I wonder if the word "shell" is a more apt descriptor of the first version of the protagonist, with the more complete version coming after the significant other entered the picture.

Luke responded about 1 year ago

Yeah, this is why you need an edit function for, say, 12 hours after publication. That statement is an artifact from an earlier "draft" that I somehow missed. I would like to reword it, because I have an idea that is similiar to yours to convey the maturation process...

Nate about 1 year ago

I want to look at the ending. I wonder if "She did it." would be a sufficient ending, all by itself. If so, it makes me wonder about the title - would "Adult" work, since that seems to describe how the narrator now sees himself?

I ask these questions, because I wonder if more tangible details in the first and second paragraphs, with some parallelisms drawn between the two, would help drive home who the narrator once was and who the narrator has become. The ending I'm suggesting may be a bit truncated, but I still think editing the final paragraph to give the first two more detail may be something to consider.

By the way, I had some of the same feelings about my own life, recently. She did it. :)