Finding an Adventure

Alice was sitting in a hammock on campus while her lab partner tried to go over their chemistry homework. Alice tried to pay attention, but science classes were never of any interest to her. She found her thoughts drifting as the warm spring breeze blew through the trees and made the hammock sway. As Alice began to think of anything other than chemistry homework, she noticed something darting between the trees. A little squirrel wearing a little jacket and beanie. Alice found nothing off about this until the squirrel looked at his wrist to check the time on his little watch. This is when Alice began to wonder what a squirrel was doing with a watch and why it would need to know the time anyways. The squirrel ran off and went into a large hollow tree. Alice decided to abandon the chemistry homework and followed the little squirrel into the tree.

Alice stepped into the darkness through the hollowed-out tree and immediately fell down a hole. As she fell, she noticed the oddest things along the way. There were various items of furniture that all looked oddly similar to ones she had found on campus. She saw plush couches like the ones she often napped on in the student union and those weird cabinets from the chemistry labs that were always filled with those strange items that they used for experiments.

Alice looked down and noticed there was ground coming closer towards her. She started to scream because she was afraid of how painful it would be to hit the ground after falling for so long, but then she realized something was off. She wasn’t really falling, per se. She was more like slowly floating downwards. When she finally reached the ground, she looked around at her surroundings and was very confused. There was nothing there except a table with a basket of cookies on it and a small door on the far wall. Alice looked at the cookies and nibbled on one as she tried to decide what to do. She felt an odd tingling feeling all over and knew that she was in for something magical.

Author's Note:

I based this story off of the beginning of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. In the original, Alice is daydreaming while her sister is reading. Alice peers over and notices it has no pictures in it and wonders how someone could be interested in something so boring. Suddenly, Alice sees a white rabbit checking his pocket watch and then running down a rabbit-hole. She soon follows after him, entering Wonderland and beginning a big adventure.

When I read this story, the part about her spacing out while her sister was reading reminded me of the times that I have spaced out trying to do group work outside on a nice day. I decided that I wanted to keep it close to the original, so most people would pick up on the similarities, but set it on our campus to modernize it a little. We have all seen those adorable little acorn monsters on campus, so using one as my "rabbit" just felt right. These squirrels are so loved by our community; my boyfriend even thinks we should make them our mascot instead of the Sooner Schooner. I thought ending it before the adventure really starts would allow the reader to decide what happens and let their mind wander.

*** Image: Squirrel