Edit: Come to think of it, and having checked the properties--this must have been me imagining what Elly submitted during her night-school class during the new-run era. I see from the properties that this seems have been created in 2009. I am not sure where I might have posted this.
Elly's Short Story
The Amazing Ella Sue
by
Elly Patterson
Ella Sue was the most beautiful, talented, and amazing girl in all of Vancouverland. All the other parents wished their children were like Ella Sue, and all the other children wished they were Ella Sue. Ella Sue's mother was a sainted, charming woman, but also mean and sometimes abusive, and she didn't appreciate Ella Sue, except on those days that she did, and one time she said, "If you weren't so difficult, I would have had more children!" Ella Sue had a younger brother named Philadelphia and was six years old when her mother made that comment. It hurt her feelings but also made her feel kind of proud, so Ella Sue decided that if she ever had a "difficult" six-year-old and one younger child, she would say the exact same thing! Ella's father was talented and charming and well liked, but he was also weak and didn't stand up for his kids against his wife.
When Ella Sue was ready for university, she bravely and beautifully chose to go to the University of Torontoville, far from the only home she had ever known! She was going to be an English major with the goal of either being a writer or a teacher, it is hard to remember which! One day, while flitting gorgeously into the library to study for her hard classes with a lot of homework, she met a dental student name Pat. Pat was asleep in her favourite study nook! She woke him up and he insulted her teeth, so of course, she had to fall in love with him and he had to give her free dental work! Even though he was only two years older than she was, he was already in his second year of dentistry, while most students who were two years older than her were only in their third year of undergraduate studies. She was never exactly sure how that came to be and as of now, she has still never asked.
After either one or two years of university, Ella Sue dropped out and married Pat. Either she had lost interest in her degree or Pat was in desperate need of financial assistance. She might have taken jobs in a bookstore and gotten freelancing work, or maybe she picked up extra money by typing up students' papers. Who cares, these are boring details no one cares about!
Ella Sue's best friend from university was named Constantina. Constantina became a radiology tech and after university, she was in a medical mission somewhere in Latin America, where they speak Spanish, only someone told me some of those Latin Americans actually speak Portuguese. Who has time to keep track of all that stuff? If it's Latin America, how come they don't speak Latin? So, Constantina took a lover who spoke Spanish and/or Portuguese. He was a doctor and he promised to move to Canada because he had knocked her up, but he never did, so Constantina had to give birth to a bastard! Ella Sue never said that to her face, though she was super-happy that the baby she herself had around the same time was born in wedlock! But Ella Sue is such a good friend, she encouraged Constantina to move to her block. Or maybe Constantina lived there first and convinced Ella Sue to buy the house across the street. No, next door. No, wait, across the street. Yeah.
Anyway, Ella Sue had two children, Thomas and Deborah, also known as Tom and Debbie. When Tom was five and either in pre-school or kindergarten, Ella Sue might have signed up for a creative-writing class and dropped out because she got the flu and missed the first two classes and had too much homework. Or maybe she didn't sign up for a creative-writing class until Tom was six and starting grade one. It doesn't matter which, either way, she did sign up for a class in creative writing or contemporary English. And she had to write a short story. She wrote the best short story her professor ever read! It was so good, it made him laugh and cry at the same time. He called his best friend, who worked at a big publishing company, and read the story to the friend over the phone. The friend also laughed and cried and said that Ella Sue had to have a contract to write a collection of short stories!
Ella Sue wrote a collection of short stories. They were all about Pat and Tom and Debbie and Constantina, and also sometimes about Philadelphia and his sometimes dates with Constantina. They were about how Ella Sue was a busy housewife who had no help and no time to herself! She told stories about how her kids always interrupted her when she wanted to do something or made messes just to make her mad and refused to act like small adults the way children are supposed to. The collection became a best seller and Ella Sue became a Canadian treasure! Everywhere she went, Ella Sue met readers who said, "Oh, Ella Sue! I love you so much! Your short stories are just like my real life! I rip out my favourite ones and tape them to my refrigerator!" Sometimes Ella Sue would meet someone who was mean and told her that her stories had mistakes. But they didn't matter and Ella Sue came up with comments to let them know they didn't matter, and she said them with a smile on her face, in a little-girly voice. That way no one could claim she was being mean even if she was.
And she lived happily ever after.
The End!