I wrote this story for my English class my senior year in high school. The assignment was to take a word, in my case the word was picture, and find 10 sentences in various sources that used the word. Then, we had to present those 10 sentences and somehow create a definition for this word. Keep in mind I graduated in 1998, and yes, some of the facts in this story are wrong. Maybe those reasons are why I got a C.
“So anyways,” Baby Spice said, “our trip to Chicago was, as the Americans say, ‘tha missle.’”
“No, Emma, it’s not ‘tha missle,’ it’s ‘tha bomb,’” corrected Scary Spice.
“So sorry, lovey, I do have such a hard time keeping up with the American language.”
“Well, our trip was great. We went to Navy Pier, saw the Sears Tower, walked down Michigan Avenue, and watched the Oprah show and Jenny Jones. Oh! And we saw Those Crazy Americans, but in America they call it the Jerry Springer Show. We also saw a Chicago Bulls game with Michael Jordan.” Sporty Spice was by now gasping for air.
“That Dennis Rodman fellow was there, too,” said Ginger Spice, “I think he actually changed his hair color during the game. And I swear it was him who was in drag at that house club we went to.”
“If only you could’ve seen all that we’ve seen, Aloyusus, you’d be so impressed!” exclaimed Posh Spice.
“It all sounds wonderful, girls,” said their manager, Aloyusus, “but a picture is worth a thousand words. Did you get any pictures of Chicago?”
“Pictures? What are pictures?” asked Baby Spice.
“Well, girls, you’ll have to figure that out on your own. I have to go to a recording session with my next hit singing sensations, the Spice Boys.” And with that he left.
“Well, girls, we need to find out what a picture is if we’re going to help Aloyusus understand how much fun we had,” said Scary Spice.
“Let’s get to it, then,” said Ginger Spice.
Posh Spice went home and started looking in her encyclopedias. She was feeling very 1989 and 1992, so she first decided to look in her Encyclopedia Britannica volume nine page 428 from 1989. She came across an entry for a picture frame: “The picture frame made the photograph look nice.” The 1992 World Book Encyclopedia volume 15 page 454 had an interesting sentence in it reading “Early civilizations used pictographs, or picture writing, to communicate with each other.” Posh Spice pondered this information.
Ginger Spice decided to take a more political approach by flipping through her old issues of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine George. In the October 1997 issue she found two sentences that gave some clues to the word picture. The first one read “Washington’s top brass saluted George and Tommy Hilfiger’s party, while stars flocked to Columbia Pictures’ Opening.” The second one was the flat out statement “Picture this!” Ginger Spice thought about this information and began to draw conclusions.
Sporty Spice decided she needed a good workout. She threw on her Nike’s and went to her own private gym. Sporty can’t work without music, so she threw on a mix tape. While listening to Snapshot by RuPaul, she heard the line “Snapshot, take my picture, snapshot” and began to think deeply about this lyric. When the tape continuted into The Prodigy’s controversial hit Smack My B**** Up she was amazed to hear another mention of the word picture in the line “Smack my b**** up, take my picture.” Sporty quickly finished her workout and went to think about the new information she had just received.
Scary Spice was tired from the whole Chicago adventure and went home to rest. She wanted something soothing to listen to, so the put on Mariah Carey’s Do You Think of Me. As the song played, she remembered the line “I picture you embracing me.” Wow, thought Scary, funny that that word would come up so soon after we were talking about it. But that wasn’t the end of it. While listening to Madonna’s dance floor classic, Vogue, she heard the line “Harlow, Jean, picture of a beauty queen.” Scary was beginning to get tripped out. She immediately called Baby Spice.
“Emma, I was listening to some songs and I heard the word picture twice!”
“It’s funny you should mention that because I was reading some comics and I found the word twice, too. When I was reading my issue of Uncanny X-Men #247, the Dazzler said “I always liked having my picture taken. Us stars are SO not camera shy.” And then I was reading Avengers #242 and Captain America said ‘A thousand pictures couldn’t describe the horror I saw in World War II.’”
Baby and Scary Spice decided to act on this new information. They called the rest of the Spice Girls and they all decided to meet back down at the studio to compare notes and solve this mystery. Aloyusus came back after the Spice Boys were done recording.
“Aloyusus, we now know what a picture is!!!”
“Oh?”
“A picture is a visualization, drawn, photographed, or imagined, that you show others or you see yourself. It’s something you look at of something that is real or not real. It can also be a motion picture, or a movie. If we’d have known you meant photographs, we’d have shown you photographs.”
“Very impressive, girls,” Aloyusus said as he was handed a packet of pictures.
“What is this a picture of?”
“Oh, that,” said Posh Spice, “that’s when we had to use Dennis Rodman in our performance because Scary was sick. He really does look good in that wedding dress, doesn’t he?”
