"Bhima! Calm down. Saying it isn't going to help anything."
"Well, you know it's true, Arjuna! Yudhishthira is our only quarterback on the team and now he's hurt. Who's going to quarterback in Friday's game?? You?!?"
"You know I'm a receiver, Bhima. Just calm down; I have a plan."
"Please enlighten me then because if we don't win this game it's over for us."
"Bhima, for crying out loud. I understand the situation we're in! That is why I'm going to do something I never thought I would have to do..."
Bhima gave Arjuna an incredulous look and Arjuna began to explain his plan.
"You see, I'm kinda adopted. I never met my biological father and my mom got remarried when I was really young so I always just called him dad."
"Arjuna... I'm sorry about your biological father not being in your life and everything but how is this story going to help us win.... The game is in two days!!!"
"Hear me out! Gosh, you're so impatient, Bhima. Every time I ask my mom about him she just says he was some kind of "Football King" and that he lives at the top of Mount Scott now."
"You're father was the Football King and you are just now mentioning this?!?!"
"Well... yeah. I didn't think it was that important or true actually."
"Arjuna! Everyone knows about the stories of the Football King and how he would save teams even if no one had them favored to win. No one has heard from him for about eighteen years, which makes sense because he must have disappeared about the time you were born! He owes you, Arjuna- for walking out on you."
"Okay, I'll go check it out. Pray I'm back in time for the game Friday night or we really will have a big problem."
"Good luck, Arjuna! Be safe."
Arjuna set out towards Mount Scott hoping to make it by sunset. By the time he reached the bottom of the mountain he was already tired from the day's activities but knew he needed to trudge on because his team was depending on him.
In the first thirty minutes of the climb Arjuna ran into multiple people hiking and camping. As the mountain became more and more steep he began to see less and less people until he had not seen anyone for at least an hour.
Arjuna noticed a few yards ahead the steep incline began to level off and he knew he must be nearing the crest. As he climbed over the final giant boulder in order to get to a clearing at the crest, he spotted a man in a fishing hat, sitting in a chair leaning back next to a pond like he hadn't moved for hours. It was a peculiar scene, seeing a pond so large a top of such a steep mountain but Arjuna did not question what he saw.
(Pond)
"Oy!" Arjuna shouted. "I do not wish to disturb you, but I am in search of the Football King. Do you know where I can find him?"
"I'll tell you this, boy," The fisherman started, "if you can catch the fifty- pound bass from this here pond I will tell you all you want to know about the Football King."
"You have yourself a deal." Arjuna was an experienced fisherman since his step-dad had been taking him fishing since his earliest memory and knew he would be able to complete the task given the right tools.... just hopefully the fish were biting today.
No more than twenty minutes later, Arjuna had his first bite and pulled in the fifty-pound bass on his first attempt.
The fisherman was amazed by what he just witnessed and asked, "What do you wish to know about the Football King?"
"Where can I find this so called Football King?" Arjuna asked. "I am his son who he left before even having a chance to meet and now he owes me."
"It is me, son. I am the Football King and your father," the fisherman proclaimed. "I wanted so badly to be a part of your life but I was cursed and if I had stayed you would never have been able to play football. Not until the day you would come looking for me is the day the curse would be lifted. Now everyone will know you achieved your skill yourself and not because your father is the Football King."
"Father, I have made the trip to find you because my team is in trouble. Our quarterback, Yudhishthira, got hurt in practice and he is our only chance of winning so we can go to Nationals."
"I see. Tell Yudhishthira to wear these pads on Friday night and he will be stronger, have more agility and most of all be healed of his wounds."
The Football King produced shining, golden shoulder pads from thin air that were light as a feather but stronger than the weight of a thousand- pound man.
"Thank you, father." And with that Arjuna rushed back to his home field just minutes before the Friday night game began.
"Yudhishthira! Come here! I have something for you from the Football King."
Yudhishthira slowly lifted the shoulder pads over his head and his throwing arm was miraculously without pain. He could feel his strength and agility racing through his veins as he stood up and shouted, "This is our stadium, boys! Let's send them packing!" and with that the team rushed the field.
Authors Note:
In the original version of the Indian Epic, Yudhishthira is worried about defeating Prince Duryodhan without the help of any of the gods. This is when a sage by the name Vyasa tells Yudhishthira to tell his brother Arjuna to visit his father, the god Indra. Arjuna gladly takes on this quest to find Indra to get celestial armor from him. In light of football season I thought it would be fun to make the Pandava brothers in the original story into a different kind of brothers and put them as star players on a high school football team (think of small town, football is life kind of brotherhood). In the original tale, Arjuna is also gone for a very, very long time (long enough for his brothers to think he died on his journey). I shortened his journey substantially to only about two days and instead of Arjuna physically fighting to talk to his father I liked the idea of a fishing challenge.
Of course I kept to the football theme and instead of golden armor like in the original epic, Arjuna was presented with golden shoulder pads.
One more thing to point out is that in the original story Arjuna kept the armor for himself but in my version Arjuna gave the shoulder pads to Yuhdhishthira.
Bibliography: The Indian Heroes: Mahabharata- The Princes of Elephant City by C.A. Kincaid.
Aahhhhh.... I see you took Laura Gibba's suggestion and wrote a football theme this week! It was a pleasure to read! I smiled when I saw that you included Mt. Scott into the tale. I also appreciated the life-like pictures since I've been digesting so many deity/calendar art images lately! I was really interested to read in your author's note about Arjuna's journey to his father -- the version of the Mahabharata that I read this week didn't spend more than a sentence on it, so that was cool to learn. Funny thing, I also wrote a story this week about Arjuna's father, Indra, helping him with a 'weapon' of sorts.... Ok, a rainbow pony. I wrote about a rainbow pony this week. It was fun. Your story was well written and it flowed nicely!
ReplyDeleteHello Candace,
DeleteI would like to start by saying that your story was very entertaining to read. However, I think that if you would have changed the names of your characters it would make your story easier to read. I found that the foreign sounding names distracted me from the actual content of the story and led me to re-reading many sections of the story. I also think that the introduction could be a bit cleaner. The introduction as it is now it is hard to follow and seems choppy. I think that there is a huge opportunity to make this a better introduction that would be better at grabbing the readers’ attention. I was also curios as to how he was able to get down from the mountain so fast when it took him so long to get up the mountain initially. It would be nice if there were more clarity here. Overall, this was a good read and I loved the football theme.
When I first looked at your Portfolio Index and saw the title 'The Football King', I was instantly intrigued! I'm not a big sports fan, but the idea of you being able to create a story from when I know we have read, I was really very interested to see what you accomplished. After reading your story it was just as I'd thought! I really like how you changed the original story but still kept mostly true to the main themes and ideas. I think I saw a couple of very small typos or grammatical errors through the story but they weren't anything detrimental to your story. I think if you just read through it once or twice slowly, which can be hard I know, you should be able to catch them. I don't really have any big notes or changes that I think you should implement. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and I look forward to reading more!
ReplyDeleteYES! I am so happy you decided to go with a football theme for your story. It seems even sweet reading this after OU's victory. There is something very satisfying reading about the characters from the epic going through every day situations. I loved reading about these characters of such standard playing football. You did a great job with this story!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I like how you have your index set up! It makes navigating your portfolio a breeze. I picked to read your Football King story specifically because I really could care less about sports. I try to care, I really do, I just wasn't brought up with it! Anyway, I think you did a great job of matching our tales from India into a modern setting with a common theme of football games. If you wanted to take it a step further, maybe consider re-naming the characters, and then in your author's note leaving a guide for who plays who. That makes it fun for the reader (to figure out which character alligns with which) and it'll give you a good challenge to be very specific when expressing characteristics. Overall, very nice job! Woo, sports!
ReplyDeleteI like how you used an Oklahoman setting for this story. I can easily imagine two students having this discussion. The only things I can think of that could be improved are closely connected. At the beginning of the story, it would help to provide some exposition, before or after the first line. It would help the reader know right away exactly what's happening and where the two character are. You could also add some dialogue tags so that you don't have to have the characters repeat each other's name. With these dialogue tags, you could describe what they're doing (having food, drinking coffee, etc.).
ReplyDeleteHaha oh my gosh I love this story! You really do a good job of incorporating the epics into modern settings! It's so easy to imagine Arjuna and Bhima and Yudhishthira in a football team trying their best to defeat the Kauravas. I also really like the adaptation into the golden shoulder pads, haha, that's a really nice touch! Great story! Can't wait to read more!
ReplyDeleteHello Candace! I really enjoyed this story a lot! It was very creative and different! I was definitely able to see all the brothers in a small town setting trying to figure out how they were going to win. I do like how you translated the football them into the shoulder pads just like in the original story where he had the armor. I think that would a great opportunity to make a twist to the story that you really hit on! I honestly was kind of hoping that the Football King would make his way down and play with them as kind of a father and son bonding time! However, I think it was a good decision to have the story to play out the way it did. I was also wanting to see some of the football game once they got everyone health and ready to play! Other than that great job with the story! I loved it!
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