I am a woman of many words. Sometimes too many. During highschool and college I always had the same writing deficiency: Writing too much.  While classmates complained about the inexplicable amount of page numbers we were required for our papers, I silently complained too, but for a different reason.  They always had trouble writing enough pages, while I always had to refrain from writing too much.

So with that thought in mind, I couldn't help but smile to myself when I read about Ernest Hemingway's (supposed) dare he received from collegues, to write an entire story in less than ten words.  As the rumor goes, this is what he wrote:

"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

It took me a minute to realize the depth of meaning that these six words held. And before I knew it, I was staring off into the distance, imagining a story, one that I was literally making up in my head as I thought it, but also one that I felt was written by Hemingway himself.  Perhaps it was even a true story, that he experienced in his lifetime.  As I stared off under the intoxicated influence of my imagination, I pictured the story played out scene by scene.  First, I saw a man who I imagined to be Hemingway, pulling the baby shoes out of a flimsy and small cardboard box.  He hands them to an  annonymous male buyer.  I imagine this buyer has a pregant wife at home, and this would be his first child.  Perhaps this buyer had read the six words in a newspaper ad and, due to his low income as a millworker, decided that he should buy baby shoes secondhand.  The buyer, however, did not realize the emotional sensitivity of the purchase before he met up to retrieve the delicate little shoes. 

At the home of the current baby shoe owners I see a wife and a husband (aka the seller, and maybe even Hemingway himself) and the buyer. The three people brought together by fate stand in the quiet and unusually clean living room.  Every coaster is perfectly stacked, every picture frame is tilted in the same direction.  Not a single decorative item is out of place.  The floors, walls, and coffee table look as if they've been dusted and cleaned an unhealthy amount of times.

The buyer prepares to make a purchase that he had, only hours before, mistakenly believed to be an innocent transaction.   But as the seconds tick, the buyer realizes more and more that what he's stepped into is a graveyard.  The house might as while have caution taped wrapped all around it, warning all outsiders that its no longer a home, but a house condemned by tragedy.  As the seller slowly hands the shoes over to the buyer, the seller's wife stands near the fireplace, her whole body tense, as if she only moments ago witnessed a traincrash that killed every passenger.  That train also carried her maternal instinct to maintain her womanly strength.  She looked as if she would crumble at any second. 

The silence seems to pierce the air with overwhelming discomfort, and all three people are regrettfully aware of it.  Once the shoes are in the hands of their rightful new owner, a shrieking, underlying grief, one that was buried yet still alive, made its appearance in a husband and wife whose one last connection to the child they lost was in a tiny pair of rubber-soled shoes. Through tears, the wife turns away.  She can't stand to look at someone else holding her baby's empty shoes; its as if the purchase of the shoes confirmed that she'd never see her baby grow into a beautiful human being that had her eyes, her husband's mouth, and their family name.  The husband does not turn away, instead he stares at the buyer's hands with nervous concern, as if he is worried his hands will hurt the delicate shoes and destroy any possible good the future could bring. 

The buyer notices the feel of the rubber, the crisp smell of the shoes' unbroken tongues, and the perfect pattern and bows of the untouched laces.  He only notices the shoes' simple characteristics because they are no longer simple, they now contain great significance, a significance that's tied to the broken hearts of what was supposed to be a family, but now is nothing more than a man and a woman who lost the only thing that mattered to them. 

It's as if the shoes were dipped in gold, the buyer thinks. That's how valuable they feel in his hands. But no, this is no gold. Gold implies that the shoes are worthy of positive essence and light.  Beautiful, bright, heavenly, something to be shown off.  But no, the shoes do not represent that at all, they are cursed, and they only make the buyer feel pity and emptiness. 

The buyer apologizes as his places the little shoes back into the little cardboard box.  A box with four flimsy walls, that enclose the shoes in a cloud of darkness that not even shadows can get into.  The wife still stands near the fireplace, her back facing the two men.  As if turning around without walking anywhere would make her disappear from sight.  Such is the delusional thinking that accompanies devastating loss.  The husband, standing with the buyer, nods his head with understanding.  This is the fourth potential buyer to turn down the offer, and all three parties know why.  The grief of losing a child spreads a pain through the air that lingers on all objects, thoughts, ideas, and human senses.  Every person who walks through the door of this home can feel it, and it will soak into your being quick, like an infection.  The potential buyer thanks the husband and wife for their time, tips his hat, and as politely as possible removes himself from the premises before his own heart shatters from the heart-broken air.   





So there... I took a six word story and created a story containing... well, a lot more words.. Thus proves my point that I tend to get carried away with my recording of words, and I end up writing and writing until the clock hands spin wildly.  This can be a good thing: it makes for a juicy story filled with lots of details.  But its not always good.  Too much wordiness takes away from the simplicity of the message being sent.  (Remember, professors don't want you to go OVER the page limit, either).. But I digress..

The more important point that is proven is that Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest writers to ever exist, was actually able to write a story filled with so much detail, emotion, and meaning, without using more than six words.  I may have used my own imagination to help portray all that the story entails, but still, he was the one that wrote it first. 


Stories are stories no matter how long.