Writing Workshop Assignment #3: Jared and Phoebe

This week's assignment:
Using the characters below (or come up with your own character - we are looking for cliché characters that we will make unique through characterization), write a scene individualizing your character through particular details that will make us sympathize and/or identify with him or her. Do this for two characters.

• An absent-minded professor
• A lazy laborer
• An aging film star
• A domineering wife
• Her timid husband
• A tyrannical boss
• A staggering drunk

To make the assignment more fun, I tried to create characters that fit the descriptions but were a few steps removed from the obvious archetypes (e.g. Norma Desmond or Albert Einstein).

Jared

    You know I can hear you.
    Well, not quite hear you, exactly. But, yaknow, the tone of the amused mumblings to your buddy is pretty damn familiar. The same running bits of inane conversation are my companion in every coffee shop and arthouse theater in this mad city. Yes, yes, I’m that kid... I was in 1993 anyhow. The plucky youngster who freed a herd of elephants and learned the value of friendship. Well, My character did. It’s surprising that people forget that. I mean, people really can’t seem to get it in their skulls. Really annoying.
    My ears perk up. The word ‘goatee’ rises above the din. Yes, hilarious. A former 12-year-old moppet actually got up and grew facial hair.
    Hey, better than all the perverse death rumors that dogged me a few years back, though. What is it that makes people dream up such twisted fates for their childhood icons, anyway? So glad that people finally got the memo on that one.
    Eh. I order my double cap, no whip, and head to my old favorite spot in a dark corner of the café. With a single faux-graceful move, I grab my trusty Mac from the ol’ messenger bag, plop it onto the beat-up wooden table, and get to it. Email report: nothin’ from the agent (again), invite to some Seal Beach BBQ from a girl I met like once, frantic missives from that web video director I’m working with, and, as always, fifty dozen and eight messages from cynical ex-children asking the same questions about whether I’m still in touch with Tulip the Elephant (she kinda hated me, actually) or if that whole incident with the mescaline and the exotic-dancers-slash-college-reporters was in any way true (I mean, geez, what do they want me to say?). Delete, delete, delete.
    I scratch the oily hair under my fedora, lean back ‘til my head butts the crummy painting on the wall behind me, and start pounding out another email to that agent of mine. Really gotta get myself in something new soon. Preferably without an elephant this time.

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Phoebe

    Over, under, over, under, overunderoverunder. Magenta, then blue, yarn alternating in an intricate yet classic pattern. Phoebe always marveled at its therapeutic effect. Sitting in her office, surrounded by tchotchkes representing Greek urns, Javanese chandis, Hokusai prints, Olmec heads, et alia, the repetitive practice of crochet enabled her to, for the moment, forget that the school required her to remain in that office until the stroke of five. An unnecessary encumberance, she posited. The students know better than to trouble their professor when there existed an entire hierarchy of teachers’ assistants to handle the dull inquiries of undergraduates.
    Ah. Phoebe sipped the cup of Bao Zhong oolong tea at her side. Overunderoverunder, sip. Overunderoverunderover, sip, underoverunderknockoverknockunder, sip, inhale, sip, overunderoverknockknockknock, sip. Sigh.
    “Oh, is there someone at the door?”
    A be-sweatered freshman girl brusquely entered the inner sanctum and commenced her blathering. Phoebe set aside the half-crocheted scarf and gave the student a perfunctory two-second glance before settling her eyes on the school crest, visible just above the student’s left shoulder. Such a shame. Nearly all of the students observed the unspoken social contract whereby party one, the student, would refrain from exercising the right to appear during posted office hours, and party two, the professor (exempli gratia Phoebe), would in turn refrain from criticizing the students’ incessant failure to pay attention and curious need to play Angry Birds during an sociology lecture.
    “...and so, I was wondering, is Foucault’s hypothesis really applicable to the modern world? I think there is something kinda, um, naive about his position.”
    Phoebe blinked. “Well?,” the student inquired.
    “I’m sorry. I was... I was preoccupied. I am... currently working a publication about Toynbee and his influences.” As Phoebe launched into an impromptu discussion of industrial Britain, her voice took on a singsong quality and trailed off.
    The student glanced nervously. “Well, if you’re busy, I can, uh, talk to my study group about it. ...Sorry to bother you.” Phoebe gave another perfunctory glance and nodded as the student darted from view. Phoebe hummed a few bars from Gilbert’s Patience as she contentedly took up her crocheting once again.