It's called juvenilia

This whole bookshelf thing has had a trickle-down effect in terms of reorganizing things around here. I've gone through every closet in the house and decided what to keep and what to toss. *yawn* At any rate, I was quite pleased to find two immense folders stuffed with things I'd written in my schooldays. I had thought it all long ago thrown away.

I have for sometime tortured my husband with fond rememberings of an assignment I once did for Humanities. The assignment was to write the "missing scene" from Hamlet. You could do anything (my friend Kim had the ghosts of Polonius and Ophelia talking in the graveyard, which was quite good).

Mine had Dr. Who. Which is odd, as I never watched much Dr. Who in my younger days (I used to think it was an appallingly small amount until I started watching the new episodes with my husband, who was bragging up the many episodes he had seen until it came to light that he didn't know what a Dalek was. How much Dr. Who could he have possibly seen and not know what a Dalek was? Less than me, I'm guessing). In my memory, this Hamlet scene of mine was a work of brilliance, playing Hamlet's depression against The Doctor's joie de vivre.

I kind of regret finding it now. It was much better in my memory. First off, this is the incarnation of The Doctor I chose to work with:

Not the choice I'd make now, I tell you. And it had none of the clever playing off of world views I was remembering. It mainly involved The Doctor showing up to mess with Hamlet's head. I'm not sure what exactly I was going for. (I got an A on the paper, though, since it was mostly being graded for things like punctuation and having a plot, and my teacher surely had no idea how badly out of character The Doctor was behaving).

I did find something that holds up better, if only because I don't remember it as being a staggering work of genius in the first place. It was also for Humanities (all the cool assignments were for Humanities). Exactly what I was assigned to do I can't quite recall, but it was a play I remember performing before the class. I played Holmes; it was almost certainly Kim in the role of Watson. Here, for your delight or torture, it is:

THE SOLVING OF A CRIME - or - DR. JOHN WATSON BECOMES AN EASTERN THINKER

Set: The scene takes place on a path that leads up to a river in the distance.

NARRATOR: In another parallel dimension, a man very much like our ficitional character Sherlock Holmes existed. However his companion, Dr. John Watson, was a little bit different. The two of them are on their first case together when our story begins.

(enter Holmes and Watson)

HOLMES: Observe, Watson, as I gather the clues that shall solve this case. (Holmes produces a tape measure and begins to measure footprints).

WATSON: I say, Holmes, what are you doing?

HOLMES: I'm measuring the distance between these footprints. I shall be able to mathematically derive the height of the suspect. It is always my first step in cases with footprints available.

WATSON: But Holmes, don't you realize how subjective measuring is? It's a marvel you ever solve a case at all with such methods (scoffingly).

HOLMES: I am the world's finest detective! My methods are impeccable! I've successfully solved every case I've ever had. I assure you, my height predictions are flawless, whatever you may say about my measuring.

WATSON: Don't you realize how much human judgement is involved in measuring even the simplest of distances? Look, can we agree that human judgement always has a margin of error?

HOLMES: Mine being phenomenonally small, of course.

WATSON: But existent all the same?

HOLMES: I suppose so.

WATSON: I know you're a bit of a mathematician. Can we also agree that two points never lie in the exact same spot in space?

HOLMES: That's a commonly known fact.

WATSON: So the object of measuring is to get the points on your tape measure to be as near as possible to lying consecutive to the edges of the footprints?

HOLMES: Of course. I see what you're saying. I have to judge between the marks on my tape and the points between which I'm measuring. It's impossible for them to occupy the same space, and therefore it is impossible to achieve an accurate measurement of the length between. However, this is irrelevant to the case at hand. The culprit is six foot one, plus or minur a half of an inch for your uncertainty factor, Watson. You'll note the wild patterns in the dirt here where the body first hit the ground. He was struggling and therefore was alive at this point.

WATSON: Alive? What do you mean, alive?

HOLMES: Are you daft? I mean he was alive, as in not dead. Sheesh!

WATSON: How do you know he was alive?

HOLMES (barely containing his annoyance): I just showed you. I think we can agree dead bodies don't generally put up much of a fight.

WATSON: My dear boy, I'm merely trying to tell you that you cannot decide if something is living or not because your decision would be too heavily based on your preconceived notions of what is living, which are most certainly wrong.

HOLMES: How do you know they are wrong?

WATSON: I don't. I only want to say that you should base your judgements on what you've experienced, not what has been inferred to you from teachers and other sources.

HOLMES: I was right; you are daft. Are you sure you're a doctor?

WATSON: Let me give you an example of the problems of language. How do you define life?

HOLMES: The qualities by which a plant or animal differes from stones or water or dirt. At least, according to Webster.

WATSON: How do you know this stone is not living? Maybe life to a stone is lying very quietly wherever they happen to fall.

HOLMES (cynically): Let me guess, their life's ambition is to be a paperweight?

WATSON: Possibly.

HOLMES: All living matter is contracted from carbon compounds.

WATSON: So coal is living? And diamonds?

HOLMES: No, coal and diamonds were once living, or so I've been told by countless geologists.

WATSON: This brings us back to the same point I made earlier. All of your famed decisions are based on your preconceived views of how things are. You yourself have stated many times that you owe most of your success to the repeating of patterns. You've read nearly every criminal record there is. This isn't your experience; it's someone else's. Therefore, your view is already going to be as biased as that of the records you've read, and then you add your own bias.

HOLMES: You are a singularly irritating man. As far as my biased views are concerned, this man was living at this point, okay?

WATSON: If you say so, although I must insist you quit bragging about your methods when they are so far off base.

HOLMES: Humph.

(they walk a little further down the trail.)

HOLMES: All right, here he quit struggling. He's dead now. The body must have been dumped in the river up ahead. If we can find the body, we'll be able to ascertain the cause of death.

WATSON: How?

HOLMES: Through the marvels of modern science. You claim to be a doctor; surely you know.

WATSON: "Modern science" is hardly what I'd call marvelous. It has many set backs.

HOLMES: Such as?

WATSON: It's much too left-brained to be accurate. Not everything can be explained by equations or fit into neat mathematical relationships. Some things just are.

HOLMES: Such as?

WATSON: Life.

HOLMES: Not that again.

WATSON: Where I was brought up, I was taught not to quantify and label everything I saw. If only I accepted it and let its essence flow through me, I would understand it. I can't explain it, but I Know it.

HOLMES: You mean to tell me you know the meaning of life, but you can't tell anyone about it?

WATSON: Precisely, Holmes.

HOLMES: Well, there's no need to go on with this, then.

NARRATOR: And so you see in this dimension, Sherlock Holmes gave up his life of crime-solving. He and Watson moved out of 221B Baker Street to the Mystic East and spen the rest of their lives never speaking, but understanding.

No, I can't remember what I was reading at the time, but it probably had "Tao" in it. The Tao of Physics or The Tao of Pooh or The Dancing Wu Li Masters (OK, there's no Tao in that title, but it's about Tao). I do recall really enjoying saying the line "You're a singularly irritating man."

(Aside to my fellow writers - can you appreciate how hard it was to copy-type that without trying to fix it?)