My Life Is a Movie

My Life Is a Movie

Copyright 2014 Dale Ward

Published by DWard Media at Smashwords

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

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Table of Contents

Chapter One: On the Run

Chapter Two: Two on Their Own

Chapter Three: Exploring Unknown Lands

Chapter Four: Home Base Happenings

Chapter Five: Evening News - Youth Service

Chapter Six: Sunday Morning Edition

Chapter Seven: Monday Morning Edition

Chapter Eight: Backseat Roadshow

Chapter Nine: The Tuesday Edition

Chapter Ten: New Beginning?

Chapter Eleven: Friday Evening Edition

Chapter Twelve: Plan Z

About the Author

Other Resources

Connect with Dale Ward and My Life Is a Movie

Chapter One: On the Run

Hello. My name is Wyatt Monroe and I am ten years old. I live with my mom and Joe – my stepdad, and his son Bart – who is 16 and can drive, Joe’s daughter Erin, who is 13, and then my real sister Lyndsy, who is 14, and the only fun one of the bunch – well, most of the time – sometimes she can be a real pickle, too. I spend most of my time on my new cell phone – not talking on it, but doing the other cool things on it that I can do. (I can’t believe Joe even got it for me, but I’m sure glad he did.) All my games are there – which I play constantly – and I use the camera a lot, too – the video part of it. I like to take video of everything as it happens. And I mean everything. It makes me feel like I am in a movie and am watching what goes on, and not really being a part of it, but being a viewer of the movie, and waiting to see what happens next. I don’t know why I like to do this, but I do. My Life Is a Movie.

It’s late Tuesday afternoon and my sister Lyndsy is at the kitchen table creating her latest masterpiece. She really likes to draw and paint and sketch and doodle – she does it all the time – almost as much as I make movies. She probably enjoys painting the most, which is what she is doing now. Her Life Is a Painting. She does the sketching and doodling and stuff when we are out and about and she doesn’t have her paints in front of her. She uses these paints that come in little vials and she has to have a little cup of water to clean her brush every time she goes to a different color – or if she wants to mix colors. She can also use more than one brush, too, but she doesn’t do this too often (and I don’t know why). She does watercolors sometimes, too, but she says that the colors are not as vivid and too washed out most of the time, which makes sense since they are watercolors, but never mind.

Lyndsy also likes to text a lot, too, but it is always and only to her best friend Kelsey, who lives not too far away and is over here sometimes, too. Or Lyndsy is over at her place, which is usually the case, because Lyndsy doesn’t like to be around here and uses every excuse she can to be at Kelsey’s. I don’t think Kelsey likes to be here too much either, but sometimes it just works out that way. Kelsey’s family is rich and they have a nice house – a big house – Kelsey even has her own room and TV and computer and everything – and Kelsey’s mom and dad are still together. They’ve been married for like forever (fifteen years?), and that is really weird, but nice, too. Problem right now is that it is summertime, and Kelsey and her family spend two months in Tarpon Springs, Florida at their second house. (Nice, huh?) Lyndsy thought she was going to get to go with them this year (wouldn’t that have been sweet!), but it fell through at the last minute, and Lyndsy was really mad and upset about that (she gets mad and upset at a lot of things), but she got over it. (Well, not really, but what can she do? Pout? Yeah, that’s what she did.) Finally mom promised that Lyndsy (and me, too!) would be able to go for a couple of days and stay at mom’s sister’s house (that’s Aunt Meredith – her younger sister), who lives out in the country (with Uncle Kevin). We did this last summer for a couple of days, too, and it was a fun trip. It took us forever to get there, but they have a nice little house and they take care of cows and horses. They have a cool barn (where the three horses live when they aren’t outside), a small pond (where many fish and several snakes live), another barn (with a big tractor-like thing, and then other smaller tractor-like things), and an assortment of dogs and cats running around (lots and lots of these). Lyndsy and me stayed there for three whole days last summer, and it was great. I hope we get to do it again, but mom hasn’t even asked Aunt Meredith yet – just promised us about it – so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed. (Maybe if we get to go that will help Lyndsy’s mood, and she won’t be so crabby.)

As I pan my camera and head over to see what the masterpiece painting is this time (recording the whole time, I might add), I pass Erin who is slugged out on the couch and doing nothing. That is her hobby: doing nothing. She is sitting there sunk down deep into our old, ugly couch that Joe picked up at a garage sale cheap. The couch is mainly white with these faded out reddish (or now kind of pinkish) flowers on it, and I have to admit that it is really comfortable (which is why Joe got it – hints: sleep, nap, crash), but I also have to admit that it is really ugly and old. (I know, I already said that, but it is that old and ugly that it’s OK if I repeat myself.) There is also an easy chair in the room – just as old, but not as ugly. About all you can say about it is that it is brown – old and brown. (I guess you can also say that it is empty at the moment.) There’s one old wooden table in the room, next to the chair, which holds a lamp, and various knick-knacks, the remote, the latest TV magazine, and usually the remains of someone’s breakfast, which surprisingly is missing this afternoon. Erin (or Bart) must have gotten their butt up at some point in time and accidently threw away the remains of breakfast. Probably Bart, because this is his chair of choice, and Erin doesn’t move her butt from the couch too often. She’s twirling her long brown hair in her pointer finger from her right hand – I think she is watching some stupid teenager comedy show on TV, but she has this faraway look like she is a million miles away, and I don’t think she is really paying too much attention. In her left hand is her pink phone, and every once in a while it dinks and she looks at it, and then she replies to whatever idiot girlfriend just dinked her. (Lyndsy texts a lot, too, but at least she is only talking to her Best Friend Forever Kelsey, and it is not constantly dinking. Erin will hold fifteen conversations at once with all her idiot girlfriends, and they are always talking about nothing. Let’s zoom in real quick and get a peek and it says: Did U see her UGLY shoes. See what I mean? I can’t take any more of that…) It’s only one week into summer vacation and she hasn’t left that spot on the couch yet. I’m surprised she hasn’t left a butt indentation in the couch – well, she might have, but who would know unless she gets that butt out of it! The only time she gets up is to Do Her Hair (which can take forever come to think of it! And then she constantly plays with it while she sits there mindlessly). Doing Her Hair is like the big event of the day for her (and she thinks it should be all of us!) – other than sleeping – and now that she shares a bedroom with Lyndsy, she is only in the bedroom whenever necessary. Since they are close in age, you’d think they might get along, but they don’t. Anyway, she tries to trip me as I go past her – which is not too hard to do because my nose is stuck watching the action on my camera – but when she sticks out her bony little leg, she smacks her shin on the coffee table, and instantly she grabs her leg and mouths the word Owww. (Ha ha – I got it all on video, too.) She quits twirling her hair long enough to stick her middle finger in the air at me. (I got this on video, too, in case I ever need it.) I chuckle, and she raises up one corner of her top lip in a snarl. (I’m surprised it doesn’t knock off the two pounds of bright red lipstick she has on it!) I carry on with my big wide trucking shot – basically ignoring her – and she goes back to twirling her hair.

No one else is home right now except for Lyndsy. I finish my traveling shot (this is the opening shot for today’s The Wyatt Monroe Show) going from the living room and past the big picture window that looks out across our little crappy back yard over to where Lyndsy is working on her painting, and I zoom in on it to get a full shot. It is a painting of a farm and a pasture, and is really good. There is a farmhouse in the background, and in the front of the painting are cows on the left side, then a fence, and then horses on the right side. I got to give her credit: most people (like me!) would just paint one cow or one horse – because that is a lot easier – but not Lyndsy. She has four cows and three horses. That’s pretty impressive, eh? I always notice, though, that she uses lots of dark colors, and the dark sky (with dark black clouds, of course) is very creepy – kind of cool, actually, if you like that sort of thing.

So, Lyndsy, do you know this place? Or did you just make it up in your head? (This is the interview section of The Wyatt Monroe Show.)

Lyndsy stops for a second and looks up. I know not to bother her when she is painting and really getting into it – like when she is just starting, or halfway done and painting real fast – she gets really angry and yells – or totally ignores you – but when she is almost done, she actually likes to talk about it and even smiles sometimes – like it has made her somewhat happy – unless, of course, she hates the picture, then she is rather crabby. She must like this one, because she almost smiles (with absolutely no bright red lipstick, I might add!), cocks her head to the right and says, "Well, I think we passed something like this on the way to Aunt Meredith’s last summer, but I don’t know for sure, so let’s just say I