Ironía

The year 2000. I was wrapping up my time at Mt. Hood Community College and looking forward to moving to Seattle to study at the University of Washington. That summer I took an accelerated second year Spanish course where we meet for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week.

One of the assignments we had was to write a page long story that contained irony… in Spanish of course. I wrote a timeless story about a boy and his dog, and this morning I woke up with that story in my head for some reason. Below is a retelling of that story. This is from memory and in English so it won’t be exactly like the original, but it's close enough.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Billy. Billy had a dog that was his best friend. His dog’s name was Ruffy. Billy and Ruffy used to play together every day after Billy would get home from school. They would run in the field and chase each other and have a fun time until the sun would set. At night time, Billy would go inside to eat dinner, do his homework, and go to bed. Ruffy had to stay outside, so he’d bark and bark because he missed Billy. One of his neighbors hated Ruffy because he barked so much. Finally one day the neighbor had enough and he told Billy that if he didn’t keep his dog quiet, he’d shoot Ruffy!

A few days passed, each day the same as the last. Billy would go to school, come home and play with Ruffy, and then Ruffy would bark all night. Then one day when Billy came home, Ruffy was nowhere to be found. “He’s probably running in the field,” Billy thought. “He’ll come home soon enough.” When Ruffy didn’t come home that night, Billy started to worry. He wondered, "where could Ruffy be?" The next day when he got home from school and there was still no sign of Ruffy, he realized what had happened. His neighbor must have shot Ruffy!! Billy was very angry and decided to get revenge on his neighbor. Billy caught the neighbor’s cat, put it in a sack and walked down to the river. Billy threw the bag into the river and watched the bag squirm and listened to the cat’s cries.

At that moment, Billy saw the bushes moving on the other side of the river. Something was coming out of them… It was Ruffy!! Ruffy heard the cries of the cat and jumped into the river after the squirming bag. Billy called after Ruffy, but Ruffy got caught in the strong river current and was carried away and he drowned.

The End.