Writing Challenge – Celebration

Challenge: Write a victory speech. Let the exposition of that speech come out slowly bit by bit so that at the end we realize that it's a very different kind of speech than the one that we thought it was going to be when it started.

Bonus- What's happening around this person talking?

Bonus- Is this a person talking?

Bonus- Make it covertly autobiographical

HAIL AND FAREWELL

                          CHIPPY

I’d like to thank you all for being here.

The turnout is very flattering.

It’s good to know that Zippy and I touched so many lives in such a short time.

It’s also good to know that we’ll never be far from you, quite literally, here in the backyard.

You’ll think of us as you play, and picnic, build snowmen, rake leaves, and even mow the lawn.

Each season of the grass will bring new and different memories of us to your mind.

The wood chips in the box are a nice touch, by the way.  A scent of home to guide us on our journey to what’s next.

I think our proudest moment was when we drove poor Grandma out of the house that one day.  Our escape meant we could be anywhere.  And she wouldn’t set foot in the place until we were safely back in our cage.  She waited in the car for a good hour until you found us.

Everyone tried to reassure the old gal that gerbils aren’t the same as mice, but to her, rodents were rodents, and vermin were vermin.

She never warmed up to us.

But now she’s got the house to herself at last.

Perhaps not.

Perhaps you will replace us.

We were your first pets, not your last.

Maybe another gerbil will one day soon roll around inside our plastic ball.  Much to Grandma’s chagrin.

Of course, she had no way of knowing we were hiding that day in her precious piano.

And you didn’t have the heart to tell her.

We lived a good full life, Zippy and I.

It’s fitting we should pass on within hours of one another, and that I, Chippy, should join Zippy in the same shoebox, which now you bury at the foot of the dogwood tree – the one bit of outside we could see from our perch by the window.

Thank you again for holding such a solemn ceremony for us.

It’s good to know we mattered.

And that you aren’t just throwing our corpses out with the garbage.

Of course now there are some things we will never know, like why none of your names rhymed like ours.

But we will happily feed the dogwood now.

Perhaps we will become the wood chips for someone else’s bed one day.

Farewell, human keepers!

Thanks for the pellets.