#110, Voicemail

A voicemail is an oral message that is left on a phone. They are used instead of text messages though they have fallen out of favor more recently. Voicemail is an interesting medium as one must speak on the phone, but without response. As a result, the messages are often awkward and rambling.

In the work of short fiction, Everything's Under Control, Eric Bronner tells the story of a man who accidentally let a baby elephant loose in the city. Instead of writing the story as a traditional narrative, Mr. Bronner wrote it as a series of voicemail messages. Doing so provided a unique perspective and required a different type of language (conversational English) than typical used in fiction writing. An excerpt is below.

YOU HAVE ... TWO ... NEW MESSAGES.

FIRST MESSAGE. FRIDAY JUNE 12 3:42 P.M.

Pickup sis. It's me ...

Listen, I'm in jail — but I'm not asking for bail this time. I just need you to make some phone calls since I only get the one.

First, call the administrative offices at the zoo, tell them the baby elephant is not missing. Tell them Dr. Wainwright, my supervisor, called from the San Diego conference and told me to tell them that he gave the OK for her to be loaned to State Central University for the weekend for some behavioral study but forgot to inform the director. If they ask why I'm not calling myself, say I had to go to the dentist and she shot me full of novocaine.

Next, call Dwight at his parents house and tell him I'm calling in my favor. I need him to go to a bunch of grocery stores and buy, like, 50 jars of peanut butter — but only the kind without sugar. Tell him they're usually labeled 'Natural,' but tell him not Skippy Natural, that has added sugar. Tell him ... tell him just to look at the ingredients and make sure it doesn't include sugar. He should then go over to the big grassy field along the Parkway and smear half the peanut butter into the grass in patches a few feet apart for a hundred yards along the edge of the woods. Tell him to rub it in good so that anything trying to lick it up will have to spend a long time. Remind him to bring his cell phone and turn it on. If he gets a call from Jenny, he should go wherever she says and do the same thing there with the rest of the peanut butter. Tell him, he does this for me, we're even.

To complete this Journal response, address the following:

1. Write two voicemails addressed to another person. It can be a friend, family member, an acquaintance from PEAI, or someone else altogether. This is a creative writing assignment so let your imagination run wild! Format it similarly to the message below. Remember, this should be written as if it were spoken.

   • FIRST MESSAGE. SATURDAY March 21 11:10 P.M.
     Write the first voicemail here

     SECOND MESSAGE. SUNDAY March 22 7:32 A.M.
     Write the second voicemail here

2. Write a response to one of your peers as if you were the person the voicemail was addressed to. For example, if I wrote a voicemail to Ponyboy, you should write a response back to me as if you were Ponyboy.

-Brenden Lee Teacher