Moldy the Cold-Nosed Reindeer: My first-ever short story

Author’s Note: It took me a bit to determine what even counted as my first-ever piece of writing for this challenge. My writing journey stems all the way back into my childhood and had 2-3 starts and stops before I fully embraced my identity as a writer in high school. Even then, my writing goals, focus, and, most of all, style has changed a good deal since those fledgling days (thank goodness).

So, we will examine the first piece of writing I ever wrote that I can both remember and have a record pointing back to.

A Writer is Born

Join me as I cast my mind all the way back to 10-year-old me in the 4th Grade.

Now, I loved the Christmas movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In fact, I started a tradition a few years ago where I watch the oft-overlooked GoodTimes Entertainment version from 1998 before the 25th each year. This is partially because it feels hipster of me to watch the less popular movie and partially because GoodTimes Entertainment went bankrupt and no one is around anymore to enforce the copyright, so it’s readily available on YouTube.

But back before I understood concepts like “copyright” and “intellectual property,” all I knew is that I appreciated the OG tale of an underdog getting his comeuppance (unless you count David and Goliath, I suppose). We sang the songs in elementary school, I watched the stop-motion movie and its companion New Years special at home, and I even had a toy that only now I realize was styled in the 1998 version of Rudolph.

Yes, I know the difference in character designs between the two versions. I’ve got a whole separate tirade saved up when it comes to the Bambi literary versus cinematic universes. Catch that one in the Book Club challenge entry.

And because I can’t help myself now that the seed of the idea has been planted, read through to the end for a sidebar rant on the differences between the 1998 animated version of the Rudolph story and its stop-motion predecessor.

Anyhow, I loved Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and, I’ll admit it, I still do. So, with the actual moment of inspiration for what would be my first-ever short story lost to time, we’ll cite this overall passion as the genesis.

And thus, “Moldy the Cold-Nosed Reindeer” came into being.

I don’t remember much (anything) about the drafting process. But drawing on context clues, I can tell you it’s one of the few stories on my vast bench written entirely by hand:

Yes, that is a photocopy. No, I don’t know where the original is. Considering my age at the time, it’s a miracle that my parents had the foresight to preserve it at all before it was lost in the back of some folder and thrown away at the end of the school year. I certainly didn’t know how to operate a scanner ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But at least now you know I’m not fronting. I really did write an entire knockoff of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the ripe old age of 10.

Parodying in one sense, copyright infringement in another.

And since it’s never occurred to me to do this before, I’m going to transcribe it for the first time ever. Here. Now. That’s right, you get to witness writer history in the making. One writer’s history, anyway.

Let’s get after it.

Christmas Stories Untold: Moldy the Cold-Nosed Reindeer

‘Twas December, and everyone was wearing a smile,

Except for Moldy, who was in denial,

Why did Moldy have a frown in December?

Very few people but I, remember:

Well as you can see, Moldy didn’t enjoy December. Why? Well, in December the temperature of Moldy’s nose would drop to temperatures below -20℉ and would freeze anything on solid contact. Also, the frigid temperatures would affect his coordination. For some odd reason, whenever exposed to freezing temperatures, Moldy’s body seemed to slow down considerably. This meant he couldn’t win any sort of race or game that involved speed. He was also never picked by any team for Antlerball, not only because he was slow and could never keep up with the flying ball, but he also had short and deranged antlers so it was very difficult for him to hit the ball. Moldy was always teased and laughed at for his imperfections, just like Rudolph! As you also could’ve guessed, the reindeer never let Moldy join in any reindeer games, just like Rudolph! Then one Christmas Eve, Moldy was chose to lead the sleigh. Why? Maybe jolly old St. Nick saw something in Moldy that nobody else did. But anyway, the journey has been running smoothly. It was amazing, Moldy thought, that every continent they’d flown over had been warm and humid and hadn’t slowed him down at all. For the first time ever, Moldy was discovering what a fast flier he was. He even noticed that some of the reindeer were having a hard time keeping up with him. Unfortunately, Moldy’s luck ran out. As they flew into Virginia after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the temperature started dropping. As the last of the presents were delivered to the residents of Leesburg, Moldy seemed to be flying the slowest he’d ever flown. The other reindeer were urging Moldy to pick up the pace. Cupid was saying, “Moldy, if you [keep] flying at this pace we’ll never be finished with the United States before sunrise!” and Blitzen was shouting “Hurry up slow poke!” They were so busy trying to get Moldy to speed up that none of them except Moldy realized that they were about to hit the Appalachian Mountains! Fortunately, Moldy was flying slow enough that he still had enough space between himself and the mountains to turn away from them. All the other reindeer were stunned. They had always thought of Moldy’s slow flying as a bad thing, but now they realized that it had just saved them from crashing into a mountain. After they finished delivering presents, the reindeer set course for the North Pole cheering and singing about Moldy’s heroic deed the whole way there. Their parade of cheering and hooting for Moldy lasted all the way through the landing procedures so that every soul would know of what Moldy had done. And so as the reindeer and elves alike paraded and celebrated for the hero Moldy, I walked around taking in the whole story, which is what you just read.

***

Mic drop ending right there.

Okay, before I get into my reaction for this story so far in the past I didn’t even remember its contents until I was forced to go through it line by line just now, can we all appreciate the image of me squinting at a JPG and listening to “Jump in the Fire” by Metallica to motivate myself to keep typing? This little experience will live rent free in my head forever.

Clarification: I did not edit or embellish these words in any way. Every word, punctuation mark, and sentence is true to the original except for one insertion where I felt the missing word would be disruptive to the reader (“[keep]”). And God knows how tempting it was for me to add missing commas or insert just one line break in there (just one!), but I held myself back. Because that would be inauthentic to my OG writer self.

My initial reaction:

• Is it predictable? Yes.
• Did I unnecessarily insert myself into this story? Double yes. I wish I could tell you why.
• Is it impressive in terms of execution for a 4th Grader? Triple yes.

I mean, those are some big words for a 10-year-old. Deranged? Landing procedures? Credit where credit’s due. I’m also impressed that I drafted the whole narrative by hand and only ended up with one word missing and no spelling mistakes given I didn’t have a word processor to help point these things out. For all I know, I might have a worse record than that in this essay.

Suffice it to say, I also have a greater appreciation for paragraphs these days.

Finally, I found myself chuckling repeatedly at the first plot hole I ever wrote myself into. The weather’s warm in the Southern Hemisphere during the holidays. Nice attention to detail, younger me. Except you seemed to ignore the fact that the flight originates and terminates in the NORTH POLE. Where it’s always COLD.

Ah, well, good thing it’s a kid’s story.

Still, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that I set out with the goal of writing a Christmas story and succeeded. Considering the amount of unfinished drafts in my free writing folder, that’s no small feat.

What Have I Learned in the Past 17 Years?

I know the challenge prompt is to reflect on how my writing has changed, but that almost feels a bit redundant here. As in, yes, my writing has changed. It would be a bit frightening if it hadn’t considering I’ve almost tripled in age. I took English courses, earned a degree in Technical Writing, and worked as a professional content writer, so it’s not really fair to compare the technical components given 10-year-old me didn’t have the benefit of all that experience.

Maybe it’s more appropriate to reflect on the parallels between where I drew my inspiration from way back when and where I draw it from today.

First off, the dream of writing a Rudolph-inspired story has never died. In college, I started a novel that would redefine the classic tale with a decidedly more Marxist bent to it. In this dystopian vision, the North Pole is ruled by the Arctic Empire, and the Nicholas dynasty dreams of conquering the world on the backs of its exploited workers.

After a failed uprising, a few rogue army officers escape the noose and slip into the wilderness to pursue a guerilla war, not knowing that they will someday find their champion in a reindeer cast out from the imperial stables for his supposed deformity.

Wow, that’s a hell of a pitch. Might have to pick that novel back up one of these days.

Of course, the dream did suffer a crippling setback when I recently discovered that Rudolph is a licensed character for which I would need to acquire the rights to use in my book Arctic Wind Rising.

Second, the general approach of parodying the plots of other stories I liked would continue for quite a long time, transitioning from Rudolph to Bambi to any movie or book that caught my fancy. Over time, however, these early stories and novel attempts went from straight knockoffs to works inspired by versus stolen from their source material.

And from there, it wasn’t too long until I was coming up with my own original ideas and executing them.

I also give partial credit to this early foray into fiction writing and the journey it inspired for why there is now a subcategory of my writing titled “Woodland Tales,” but more on that when I dive into another character universe I may love far more than anyone else: Bambi, the original book and its oft slept-on sequel plus the movie adaptations.

Stay tuned for that challenge entry. I am quite seriously reading through Bambi: a Life in the Woods at the moment so I can have the best bits fresh in my mind and pull out some good passages for you.

Until then, I promised a sidebar rant, didn’t I?

Sidebar Rant at Midnight: Rudolph 1998 and What Could Have Been

There’s a fact that we all seem to conveniently forget about the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop-motion movie from Rankin-Bass.

Actually, it turns out there’s a few things we tend to overlook. Take it away, The Atlantic:

There’s a lot in Rudolph that people don’t seem to remember. At one point, the Abominable Snowmonster tries to murder Rudolph in front of his parents by smashing a giant stalactite on his head. As our gentle hero lies facedown, concussed and unresponsive, his own girlfriend—the beautiful, long-lashed Clarice—wonders aloud why the snowman won’t put the little reindeer out of his misery: “Why doesn’t he get it over with?” This was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, not The Third Man. Meanwhile, back at Santa’s workshop—a phrase that should connote only the jolliest of associations—a dark tale is unfolding. Santa, it turns out, presides over a nonunion shop where underproducing elves are deprived of breaks and humiliated; they dream not of Christmas, but of escape. Poorly constructed toys are thrown onto a bare and frozen island, where they cry and wander. How long have they been there? A year? A thousand years? One of the toys, A Dolly for Sue, looks perfectly fine—why has she been stuck with the misfits? Rankin finally admitted the nature of Dolly’s flaw in 2005, when he revealed that she suffered from “psychiatric problems.” The Island of Misfit Toys, it turns out, is but another atoll in the gulag archipelago.

“Gulag archipelago.” Holy shit.

Add to all that, the fact that this version of Santa is straight up a dickhead when Rudolph’s nose is revealed, chastising his father Donner and writing Rudolph off right then and there. That our protagonist later proves himself useful doesn’t change the fact that this entire society from its head of government on down was ready to do everything short of banishing him.

Given this precedent, it’s easy to believe that part of the writers’ goal with the 1998 retelling was to push back on this ostracization.

There’s still hazing from the other reindeer (you can’t deviate too far from the source material), but Rudolph’s parents don’t attempt to hide his unique attribute and generally stand by him. Even more noteworthy, Santa embraces Rudolph as part of his extended family without hesitation.

On top of that, the cast includes John Goodman as Santa and Whoopi Goldberg as the villain Stormella. Also, an Arctic fox with a New York accent for some reason? I assume so he can really lean into it for his musical number “Remember, It Could Always Be Wo(ooo)rse.” ♫ Yes, things could be better in this big universsse ♫ (I’m not making this up)

That’s another difference between 1964 and 1998: 1998 includes musical numbers. For better or woooorse.

Yes, the animation feels a bit cheap at times. Yes, the plot isn’t all that different from its predecessor in the long run. Yes, it was a complete commercial flop that likely played a direct role in its GoodTimes Entertainment’s eventual bankruptcy (I mean, they did lose almost $10 million on it).

Still, I feel like the heart of this movie is much more intact than its predecessor. And it’s a fun watch during the holidays with a couple fingers of whiskey.

So I’ll watch the Rankin-Bass version to marvel at the intricacies of stop motion and to embrace the colder, harsher side of living in a place that’s winter all year round. And I’ll watch the GoodTimes Entertainment version to feel more in tune with the spirit of the season and chuckle at that completely out-of-left-field New York accent. What, did the fox live in Queens before moving to the North Pole? Come on!

Well, this has been an absolute joyride through my childhood. If you made it this far, thanks so much for sticking with me.

And be on the lookout for my next article to learn how a somewhat older version of me got absolutely rocked by Bambi: a Life in the Woods. Words cannot describe how excited I am to write this.