WikiHow is one of the craziest places on the Internet, and that’s saying something. It has articles on literally everything, from How to Apply Makeup in Sixth Grade to How to Hide the Fact that You Forgot to Wear Underwear. All with completely serious instructions and professional step-by-step illustrations.
So what happens when we write stories about some random WikiHow articles?
During the last stream, we did an exercise where chat suggested some crazy WikiHow articles, and then we voted on two for us to write very short stories about.
It was a fierce competition, but in the end, these two WikiHow articles were the winners: How to Shower with a Lemon and How to Survive an Encounter with an Ostrich.
You can see what we did here, along with some great stories from chat,
or just scroll down for what we wrote.
Abbey’s story for “How to Shower With a Lemon”
It had been a long, long day at the office. So many budget reports, so little time. I trudged my aching body home through the rough, dirty streets of Minneapolis, eyes half open.
I fidgeted with the lock of my gate, nearly dropping my groceries. I took off my coat, and rested it on a bench. I stripped off the remaining layers of clothing, and took a dip into the refreshing waters of the river. I cracked open half of a lemon from my grocery bag, and began rubbing it profusely across my naked body. That’s when I heard it – the sounds of angels trumpeting from on high! I’ve heard how lemons are god-like for cleansing your skin and hair, but this was a truly out of body experience!
Then the police arrived, and roughly cuffed me and took me to jail.
My story for “How to Shower With a Lemon”
Finally, I’d found it! Online, there was an article about how to take showers in a different way. I’d always had difficulty really feeling refreshed after a shower, and listening to my friends, family and coworkers talk about how they felt so good after a nice hot shower never really sat with me. I’d always been missing… something.
But now I knew what I was doing wrong. Soap and shampoo were not the answer. I needed to try something else, and this website had exactly what I needed.
So I rolled out to the store, bought what I needed, and then anxiously went into the bathroom, stripping down to just my bare yellow-ish skin. I turned on the hot water, stepped into the steaming shower, and then grabbed my new cleansing device: a human.
I rubbed the naked human’s oily skin all over my lemon rind hide, letting it clean me like no soap had ever done before. The human let out some strange gurgling sounds as I used to to exfoliate my lemon skin, but the website had said that was all just part of the process. It stopped making the sounds after a little while.
When I finally finished showering, I shut off the water, hung the limp human on the shower rack, and stepped out to dry myself. I looked at my sparkling yellow skin in the mirror and smiled. Finally, I now knew the joy of a refreshing shower.
Abbey’s story for “How to Survive an Encounter with an Ostrich”
The day had come: my mom had bought us a caravan pass for Capt. Morelli’s Safari Den, and today was the day we would visit. We packed up a cooler full of sandwiches, juice packs, and fruit snacks. This was the best day ever.
We pulled up to the large gate with a huge picture of a shirtless Capt. Morelli holding a baby tiger. We handed over our ticket, rumbled our minivan down a dusty dirt road and made it to the first section of the park: the Ostrich Plains.
As we passed the checkpoint, they surrounded us, their long necks craning to see the large amount of humans packed into one rusty vehicle. We were warned at the gate not to open the windows, but my dad was the first to open the van door.
“They really can’t be that dangerous”, he rumbled. “Here, Susan – hold my beer. I’m gonna show the kids how to make new friends and tame a beast at the same time!”
And that was the last time we saw him.
My story for “How to Survive an Encounter with an Ostrich”
Scientist McCarthy rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses as he and his associate Scientist Laura were driven into the park. He couldn’t believe he was giving this crackpot park head his time of day. He had important research to be conducting.
As an agricultural scientist, it was his responsibility to make sure the world was fed. If even one person went hungry, he felt it as deeply as his own personal failing. Every minute he was wasting on this lame trip to Whatever Park that he’d been asked to go on was another minute he could be saving lives.
Then the jeep they were riding in came to a sudden stop. Scientist McCarthy groaned and decided then and there that he needed to go back to the lab.
“Laura,” he said to his associate. “We need to head back. This is stupid.”
“Oh come on, McCarthy,” she said. “Just give it a chance. Let’s see what they want to show us.”
She opened the door of the jeep and stepped out. McCarthy grumbled and crossed his arms. If he didn’t leave the jeep, then they had to drive him back, right?
“McCarthy!” yelled Laura, shoving her head back inside the jeep. Her face was red and her eyes were wide as eggs. “You… you have to see this!”
McCarthy narrowed his eyes skeptically and opened the door. Fine. If he got this over with quickly then….
He looked up and couldn’t believe his eyes. He slowly removed his sunglasses in disbelief.
“My god…” McCarthy gasped to himself. “They DO travel in packs.”
In front of him was a herd of hundreds of giant ostriches. As tall as skyscrapers, they waddled across the planes in front of him, grazing on the tops of trees, the flaps of their wings causing winds that made McCarthy grasp his hat to keep it from flying away as he smiled to himself. With ostriches this size… they could feed the world forever!
The crackpot park head stepped out of his own jeep, and stumbled over to McCarthy and Laura on his cane, grinning from ear to ear between his white beard.
“Welcome,” he said, “to Ostrich Park.”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-11:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming March 2019.