In late 2005, things were not all that great in my life. I had finished Laurie and Dag way back in June, and had lost any desire at all to write anymore Sims tales or much of anything else. Part of it was that I had poured my heart and soul into the Laurie and Dag project only to have it met with derision, and the other reason was that because I had put so much of myself into those stories, I had burned myself out.
By that fall my mother had taken very ill, and I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to fly back to Ohio to see her. But by November, I finally was able to. From the very beginning of the visit, it was quite apparent that this would be the last time I would be with her before she passed away. She had suffered a number of strokes over the years and had been confined to a bed in a nursing home for a long time. She could speak, but was hard to understand and it was often frustrating and difficult for both of us to communicate. But let there be no mistake about the fact that despite her many handicaps, she still had entire use of her faculties.
I would spend most of the day sitting with her and we would watch a lot of television. Often, it was a DVD or a movie on one of the limited selection of channels that she had. Sometimes though, she would watch the Cooking Channel or some other show that didn’t really interest me. It was during these times that my mind would wander and I would begin to think about why things happen the way they do and why they turned out the way they did.
Did you ever stop to think about the many decisions you have made in your life that if you had done them differently, your life may have taken a completely different path. Take me as an example. If I had not married wife number one, would there ever have been a wife number two? Or a wife number three for that matter? Or would wife number two simply have become wife number one? But how would I have met her since it was wife number one who wanted so desperately to move back to her home town and that is where I eventually met Mrs. Clyde II? As you can tell, you could play this game for hours if you just think of one incident or one decision you made and change it completely to alter the path that you had followed.
During this period of time that I spent with my mother, I also had lots of time to begin to think about my own mortality. I guess we all do at times like that. Dying is not something that I’m particularly afraid of. We all have to go sometime, sooner or later, so we might as well make the best of things while we are here and not worry about what happens after we are gone because let me tell you, the situation is completely out of our hands. Oh, we can possibly extend our longevity if we do certain things and take certain precautions. But it is certainly no guarantee of anything. Just because we smoke, it doesn’t guarantee that we will get lung cancer, although it does increase the odds that we will. And just because we don’t smoke it doesn’t absolutely guarantee that our lungs won’t end up as a shriveled mass of cancerous cells. There just aren’t any guarantees about anything.
So in that week I spent with my mother, I came to two conclusions. One was that even if you could go back in time and change something in your life, that doesn’t guarantee things will be better. And the second thing is that if we all came out of our mother’s womb with the word’s “Unconditional Money Back Guaranteed” tattooed on our behinds, life would be a whole lot simpler. If things weren’t going so well, then we could all just take a mulligan and try again.
During that week I spent with mom, it was also approaching the Christmas season. The two best known Christmas stories of all time also just happen to deal with these same matters of life and death. Those stories are Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. In A Christmas Carol, it is the ghosts who travel with Scrooge through time to remind him of what his life was like, what it could have been, what it should have been, and what it could still become. In It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey is given the opportunity by angel Clarence Oddbody to see what life would have been like if he had never been born.
So in the evenings, when I would leave the nursing home, I would end up at my sister’s home and on her computer with a lot of time on my hands. I had always wanted to do a Christmas Story of some kind or another and using It’s A Wonderful Life as an inspiration, I managed to put together this story, Laurie’s Wonderful Life. By the time my week with my mother came to a close and I had to fly back to California, I had also finished the text of the story.
I don’t feel bad about using the premise of It’s A Wonderful Life for my Sims story. The same premise has been used a gazillion times in other TV movies and endless episodes of TV series. It had also been remade at one time with Marlo Thomas playing the Jimmy Stewart role in a TV movie so Laurie wasn’t even the first female to have taken over the role. But once you get past the basic premise, Laurie’s story differs in many ways.
This is not a total rehash of It’s A Wonderful Life as the latter part of Dag’s Courtship of Eddie’s Father was. In the beginning it is darker in tone than one might expect. It is certainly far darker than the original and a lot harsher in the beginning than anything I have ever written. And I mean that in every sense of the word. But you have to remember that the subject matter is far more serious in the early going, and you also have to remember that it often reflected my own pent up emotions and anger at times. There are going to be those of you who will understand it, and some of you will not. Even when I greatly edited the original text so that the story would pass the censorship of the Sims 2 site, it was not exactly greeted with open arms and was the worst received story of the three that I wrote.
Yet, in the end, it could also turn out to be the best. It’s not for me to judge. It once and for all brings closure to what I now call the Baker Family Trilogy. And here for the first time, you can read the restored text that I removed so that the story would conform to the TOS of The Sims 2 web site. Be forewarned that when I do post Act One, it is not recommended for those bothered by extreme violence, or those bothered by the occasional expletive. It is not recommended for anyone under the age of thirteen.
I had some doubts about what to do with Laurie’s Wonderful Life. I had thoughts of storing it away and never using it again. It would have enabled me to write about the Baker’s once again if I so desired to. But I decided that this is their story and this is how it ends.
I also thought about holding the story until Christmas, but I honestly think the fact that the story takes place during that time of year has little to do with the over all themes. It just so happens that it takes place around the Holiday Season just as the original film happens to begin and end during that time of year.
As for my mother, I have always wondered what she would think about many of the things I have written. I know she wouldn’t care for most of the political items that I have written on my other blog. She was a staunch Republican but I’m not sure how she got that way. Well, come to think of it I do but I won’t delve into that.
I’m not sure what she would think about the Baker saga or even if any of it would have interested her. She might have liked The Kid & Me, and she might have liked Dag’s part of the story of Laurie & Dag. I know she liked the movie it was based on. I’m not sure what she would think of Laurie’s Wonderful Life at all. My mother never had the opportunity to read any of these things I started writing here or in various places around the internet. She was no longer capable of reading on her own and had to be read to. However, Just a few short weeks after I returned home from that visit with her, and just a few days before her birthday, I received the dreaded phone call.
I’m glad I was able to spend that week with my mom. Maybe if there is a God or a heaven, then possibly she is now able to read this and know that my inspiration for it came from her. Since that time, I have often returned my thoughts to things I could change in my past if I could. But like George Bailey, and like Laurie, I’m not sure it would be such a good thing to be able to do. But that is something none of us will really ever know, so you better make the right choices the first time around.
On a final note, it won't be absolutely necessary to read my other two stories on here to read Laurie's Wonderful Life. The problem is that by the time you hit the third act, you will be completely lost as to how the events that are unfolding relate to past events. However, I have tried to include a quick run down of a few of the characters as how to relate to Laurie's Wonderful Life within the story itself. At any rate, Act One should be up within a few days.
Click here to proceed to Act One of Laurie's Wonderful Life.
By that fall my mother had taken very ill, and I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to fly back to Ohio to see her. But by November, I finally was able to. From the very beginning of the visit, it was quite apparent that this would be the last time I would be with her before she passed away. She had suffered a number of strokes over the years and had been confined to a bed in a nursing home for a long time. She could speak, but was hard to understand and it was often frustrating and difficult for both of us to communicate. But let there be no mistake about the fact that despite her many handicaps, she still had entire use of her faculties.
I would spend most of the day sitting with her and we would watch a lot of television. Often, it was a DVD or a movie on one of the limited selection of channels that she had. Sometimes though, she would watch the Cooking Channel or some other show that didn’t really interest me. It was during these times that my mind would wander and I would begin to think about why things happen the way they do and why they turned out the way they did.Did you ever stop to think about the many decisions you have made in your life that if you had done them differently, your life may have taken a completely different path. Take me as an example. If I had not married wife number one, would there ever have been a wife number two? Or a wife number three for that matter? Or would wife number two simply have become wife number one? But how would I have met her since it was wife number one who wanted so desperately to move back to her home town and that is where I eventually met Mrs. Clyde II? As you can tell, you could play this game for hours if you just think of one incident or one decision you made and change it completely to alter the path that you had followed.
During this period of time that I spent with my mother, I also had lots of time to begin to think about my own mortality. I guess we all do at times like that. Dying is not something that I’m particularly afraid of. We all have to go sometime, sooner or later, so we might as well make the best of things while we are here and not worry about what happens after we are gone because let me tell you, the situation is completely out of our hands. Oh, we can possibly extend our longevity if we do certain things and take certain precautions. But it is certainly no guarantee of anything. Just because we smoke, it doesn’t guarantee that we will get lung cancer, although it does increase the odds that we will. And just because we don’t smoke it doesn’t absolutely guarantee that our lungs won’t end up as a shriveled mass of cancerous cells. There just aren’t any guarantees about anything.
So in that week I spent with my mother, I came to two conclusions. One was that even if you could go back in time and change something in your life, that doesn’t guarantee things will be better. And the second thing is that if we all came out of our mother’s womb with the word’s “Unconditional Money Back Guaranteed” tattooed on our behinds, life would be a whole lot simpler. If things weren’t going so well, then we could all just take a mulligan and try again.During that week I spent with mom, it was also approaching the Christmas season. The two best known Christmas stories of all time also just happen to deal with these same matters of life and death. Those stories are Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. In A Christmas Carol, it is the ghosts who travel with Scrooge through time to remind him of what his life was like, what it could have been, what it should have been, and what it could still become. In It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey is given the opportunity by angel Clarence Oddbody to see what life would have been like if he had never been born.
So in the evenings, when I would leave the nursing home, I would end up at my sister’s home and on her computer with a lot of time on my hands. I had always wanted to do a Christmas Story of some kind or another and using It’s A Wonderful Life as an inspiration, I managed to put together this story, Laurie’s Wonderful Life. By the time my week with my mother came to a close and I had to fly back to California, I had also finished the text of the story.I don’t feel bad about using the premise of It’s A Wonderful Life for my Sims story. The same premise has been used a gazillion times in other TV movies and endless episodes of TV series. It had also been remade at one time with Marlo Thomas playing the Jimmy Stewart role in a TV movie so Laurie wasn’t even the first female to have taken over the role. But once you get past the basic premise, Laurie’s story differs in many ways.
This is not a total rehash of It’s A Wonderful Life as the latter part of Dag’s Courtship of Eddie’s Father was. In the beginning it is darker in tone than one might expect. It is certainly far darker than the original and a lot harsher in the beginning than anything I have ever written. And I mean that in every sense of the word. But you have to remember that the subject matter is far more serious in the early going, and you also have to remember that it often reflected my own pent up emotions and anger at times. There are going to be those of you who will understand it, and some of you will not. Even when I greatly edited the original text so that the story would pass the censorship of the Sims 2 site, it was not exactly greeted with open arms and was the worst received story of the three that I wrote.
Yet, in the end, it could also turn out to be the best. It’s not for me to judge. It once and for all brings closure to what I now call the Baker Family Trilogy. And here for the first time, you can read the restored text that I removed so that the story would conform to the TOS of The Sims 2 web site. Be forewarned that when I do post Act One, it is not recommended for those bothered by extreme violence, or those bothered by the occasional expletive. It is not recommended for anyone under the age of thirteen.I had some doubts about what to do with Laurie’s Wonderful Life. I had thoughts of storing it away and never using it again. It would have enabled me to write about the Baker’s once again if I so desired to. But I decided that this is their story and this is how it ends.
I also thought about holding the story until Christmas, but I honestly think the fact that the story takes place during that time of year has little to do with the over all themes. It just so happens that it takes place around the Holiday Season just as the original film happens to begin and end during that time of year.
As for my mother, I have always wondered what she would think about many of the things I have written. I know she wouldn’t care for most of the political items that I have written on my other blog. She was a staunch Republican but I’m not sure how she got that way. Well, come to think of it I do but I won’t delve into that.
I’m not sure what she would think about the Baker saga or even if any of it would have interested her. She might have liked The Kid & Me, and she might have liked Dag’s part of the story of Laurie & Dag. I know she liked the movie it was based on. I’m not sure what she would think of Laurie’s Wonderful Life at all. My mother never had the opportunity to read any of these things I started writing here or in various places around the internet. She was no longer capable of reading on her own and had to be read to. However, Just a few short weeks after I returned home from that visit with her, and just a few days before her birthday, I received the dreaded phone call.
I’m glad I was able to spend that week with my mom. Maybe if there is a God or a heaven, then possibly she is now able to read this and know that my inspiration for it came from her. Since that time, I have often returned my thoughts to things I could change in my past if I could. But like George Bailey, and like Laurie, I’m not sure it would be such a good thing to be able to do. But that is something none of us will really ever know, so you better make the right choices the first time around.
On a final note, it won't be absolutely necessary to read my other two stories on here to read Laurie's Wonderful Life. The problem is that by the time you hit the third act, you will be completely lost as to how the events that are unfolding relate to past events. However, I have tried to include a quick run down of a few of the characters as how to relate to Laurie's Wonderful Life within the story itself. At any rate, Act One should be up within a few days.
Click here to proceed to Act One of Laurie's Wonderful Life.
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