Howdy!
Inspired by ’s wonderful one-sentence short stories, I decided to try my hand at a one-sentence essay. It’s very short, as you can imagine, so it’ll be a quick read, though I hope it’ll leave you with something to chew on (no pun intended…maybe).
I used to think of my childhood household as pet-free, but looking back I realize we had lots of pets: two dogs, one of whom (Urs, a German Shepherd) was too aggressive to keep and had to be sent away, and the other (Snow, the most beautiful Samoyed you ever saw)—whom we’d found on the street and whom I loved like my own brother—was claimed by his rightful owners after a week; a pair of turtles named Leonardo and Raphael (I’m not kidding), who lasted with us for three years before being sent back to the pet shop on suspicion of sinister powers (you might scoff, but for us Eastern Europeans it’s not that shocking); a fish, still unnamed, which I was gifted for my 15th birthday by a group of friends, and which I assume eventually died after falling down the drain the day my grandmother decided its glass bowl needed its first cleaning, during which she proceeded to drop it in the sink, shattering it (but what do I know, maybe the fish is still alive and sipping Margaritas on a beach in the Dominican); and finally, a hamster called Grace, though she came later, when I went off to college, and she died after only two years, in the hands of her vet; and now I understand why my parents always claimed “we’re unlucky when it comes to pets,” and didn’t want to get another dog after Snow, though eventually for some reason they did, a white Pomeranian they weren’t ready for, whose name is Yoshi and who, like all the other members of his race, is possessed of, in equal measures, cuteness and batshit craziness—he barks at literally everyone and has bitten each member of the family to bleeding—and I ask myself why people never seem to learn.
Lovely, Andrei. This worked great as a single sentence essay. Snow and Yoshi are awesome names.
My mum is allergic to just about every animal, so dogs or cats were off limits as a kid.
My wife and I have a cat, Clementine, who also seems to be possessed with the occasional bouts of batshit craziness.
This is a great story and very creative single sentence! Also, semi-colons are the best!😄