The Scrapbook of Clark Hofstrand

The Scrapbook









of Clark








Hofstrand














BY Definitely Not





Clark Hofstrand

Games With Cathy








When my parents first brought me back from the hospital,
Cathy took one look at me and leapt several feet straight up into the

air. For further clarification, Cathy was a cat (hence the name). She
was a grey siamese and stayed with us until my 8th grade year when

she succumbed to kidney failure. Cathy, despite being extremely
intelligent for a cat, could be bullishly curious and aggressive at

times. When I would cry as a baby, she would try to bite my head.
Later on, when we would try to play board games, Cathy would
come up and try to roll the dice. She would mosey around the

playing field for a bit, and then plop down right in the middle of the
game. Upon trying to move her, she’d bite us or swipe at us with her

claws. The only thing that seemed to work every time was my oldest
brother, Reese, who had a nasty impression of Frankenstein’s

Monster from Young Frankenstein when he attempts to sing “Put It
On The Ritz”.



Seeing as how we could always rely on Cathy coming after us, we started
to make games out of it. When we had friends over, we’d build forts out of

pillows and blankets and see if we could keep Cathy out of them. We would
also run around with blankets over our heads and trail them behind us to see if

we could outrun her. Cathy proved to be a loyal and loving cat, despite her
early transgressions, and as such, I miss her very much. (262 words)

Uncle Bob’s Seance





I have an uncle named Bob. He’s a radio show DJ and a website-certified ufologist (a person who studies

UFOs). He loves anything that pertains to ghosts, conspiracies, or aliens. Furthermore, he’s a very sociable person and
will talk to you for hours on end if he catches you unoccupied at a family or social gathering. Bob’s family owned a

pizza shop when he was growing up, and we sporadically have pizza-making parties at my house featuring him as the
head chef. It was at one such party that we decided to have a seance in our backyard. We have a six-acre backyard that

goes through a field, some woods, and ends at a river. At night, the woods become rather spooky, forming the perfect
environment for a seance. We trudged out into the dark and finally arrived at a picnic table by the river.


















Bob lead the seance (he’s certified, you know) and the table instantly fell silent.

Sitting in the dark, holding hands, and listening to someone try to communicate with the
dead lets the imagination run wild as far as filling in the darkness surrounding you goes.
I will admit: I was a little scared at one point. Sean, one of my brother’s friends who had

lived in a haunted house for a multitude of years, had a name pop into his head. He
announced it to the table and Bob was dumbstruck: Sean had just said the name of his

recently-departed mother. Sean and Bob had met that night, mind you, and Bob hadn’t
even brought up his mother in conversation. After some more fruitless attempts, we

gave up and walked back home, but with a new appreciation for Bob’s ability to host
seances and Sean’s innate ability as a medium. (295 words)

Pregnart Läk







My grandfather and uncle collaborated with a few friends and built a
cabin up in Canada. The cabin is located in the Pipestone Lakes, just north

of the border to Minnesota. Typically, we go there once every year in the
summertime to fish, hang out, read, and play lots of cards. The interesting

thing about the Pipestone Lakes is that they’re not all entirely connected.
In fact, the lake that our cabin is on requires the use of a mechanical
portaging station, the owner of which we pay in beers. One of the nearby

lakes, Helena, has a beautiful portage. A small runoff from the lake trickles
down into a stream, goes underground for a short while, and then

culminates into a roaring waterfall at the end. I spent a long time here
playing around as a young child, and as such, I can call upon my memories

of it to bring me back to my “happy place”.

The Helena Portage, however, is a cakewalk compared to the portage to the aptly-named
Pregnant Lake. The trip to the portage is a half hour excursion in itself, and the portage is a
mile-long trek through a poorly-marked trail that winds through dense forests and swamps

alike, all while carrying motors, tackle boxes, and fishing poles. Fortunately, Pregnant Lake is
well worth the journey. The fact that it is difficult to access means that nobody fishes there,

meaning that the fish are abundant and always biting. The lake is “pregnant” with fish. As a
young boy, this was a magical place for me: it was fishing but without all the waiting! We

spent a few hours there, catching fish left and right, before we went back. A few years ago, we
discovered that many of the lakes up there don’t have officially have names, meaning that we

can name them for ourselves. As such, when it came my turn to choose which lake to name
Clark Lake, I did so without hesitation. (330 words)

Monster In The Woods






As previously mentioned, we have a large backyard behind our house in the Woodlands. As a youngin’, I

would spend a lot of time back there playing with my brothers: Reese, Neil, and Troy. We had airsoft wars and
hide-and-seek games, but probably the best game that we played was called Monster. In this game, one person was a
monster, and it was their job to tag the survivors. However, the survivors had flashlights, and two survivors shining

their light on the monster would kill it. When a monster tagged somebody, they became a monster too, and the last
person standing won and became the starting monster for the next round.

Although quite similar to zombie tag in concept, Monster’s fun came from the creative approaches we’d all take
to the game. Some of us would climb in trees and try to hide from the monster. Others would turn off their flashlights,

lie down in the middle of the dark field, and hope that their low profile would dispel attention. The monsters also had a
variety of approaches too. My favourite was the cinematic take, where you’d make scary noises and stalk people like

you were from a scary movie. It was also fun when someone played along too and tripped continuously in the same spot
or loudly declared their intentions to split up the group.
The last time I ever played this game, I was the final survivor, but didn’t know it. I

saw someone approaching me and turned tail in the other direction, full sprint. An
important feature of my backyard is a large patch of thorny blackberry bushes, and it was

this feature than I sprinted into. My face was covered in thorns, but I honestly thought that
it was super cool. What wasn’t cool, however was removing them all either by hand or

with tweezers and then having a bunch of holes in my face that oozed blood. (322 words)

Tooth +1






In 3rd grade, the dentist’s x-rays revealed something special in my mouth: an extra tooth. Officially, it’s called a
supernumerary tooth, and I most likely got it from my father, who also had one. It was descending between my top two front
teeth and was causing the pair to split apart. Had it been left alone, the tooth would have appeared right in the middle of my
mouth, making me perfectly symmetrical like Tom Cruise (but alas, I will never truly be beautiful!) We scheduled some more
appointments, and before I knew it, it was the day of the surgery. The waiting room of the office was typical, but the defining
feature of it was a TV on the wall that showed the procedures they do during their surgeries. It had moving diagrams that
showed how they screwed in prosthetic teeth or moved the jaw, sometimes with real photographs. Before seeing this, I wasn’t
nervous, but the video put a newfound fear in me of people manhandling my mandibles. Nevertheless, I persisted, and we were

finally called in. The dentist was nice and had gloves that were mint-flavoured. A team of assistants and nurses came in, all of
whom were very nice and friendly. Finally, he put a small oxygen on my mask and told me to breathe deeply whilst counting
backwards from ten. All I can consciously remember from that point on was that it smelled like strawberries.

I woke up a few hours later on a bed in the dental office. My head was heavy and my mouth was dry
and numb. They wheeled me into the car to send me home. Along the way, we stopped to grab a milkshake
(the Orange Freeze at Steak & Shake tastes just like Pop Ups ice cream, trust me.) After arriving at home, we
situated myself on the couch where I passed out watching Hercules. Within a few days, I was ready to go back
to school, but this time I was loaded with stitches and scars to show all of my friends. The dentists said that
the stitches would dissolve in my mouth over time, yet I continued to find small strands sticking out of the roof
of my mouth for the next several months. I played with them using my tongue until they grew tiresome, at
which point I’d have to go in with my fingers and pull them out. Even grosser, I’d stuff the threads in between
the couch cushions. (412 words)

Frogs And Fanatics






When my two eldest brothers, Reese and Neil, were growing up, they had two
best friends who were also brothers that lived just down the road. Their names were

Scott and Matt, and they came over so frequently that we became friends as well, if
only by association. They came over every day after school and mucked around
with us. Unfortunately, they moved to Michigan before they started high school, but

we still stay in good touch. One of Matt’s favourite video games was called Heroes
of Might and Magic V: Tribes of The East, and he played it nonstop. It had local

co-op capabilities, so we spent days playing the same campaign on one screen,
duking it out with griffons and skeletons. One time, we went out to eat, forgetting

that Matt was still playing it in the basement. When we came back, he was still
there, none the wiser.

We also spent copious amounts of time in backyard, playing made up games or

just exploring. After a spell of heavy rains, the backyard flooded. Scott was over at
the time, and we sped into the water in our shorts. Upon splashing around for a few

minutes, we soon discovered that there were dozens of frogs swarming the shoreline.
Scott had an idea, left, and returned shortly with a plastic bucket. We spent the next

half hour herding frogs into a bucket. When we couldn’t find any more, Scott
decided to bid adieu and went home with his new bucket of frogs. Apparently when

he arrived home, Scott didn’t know what to do with the frogs. He put the bucket in
his sink for a few hours, but knew that he had to do something with them. Finally, he
decided to go out in his front yard and dump the entire bucket into the grass. Dozens

of frogs spilled out into the night and hopped away. Whether or not that was good
for the environment, we don’t know, but at least he didn’t see any bugs in his house

for the next few weeks. (345 words)