My Odyssey

    "Aw, man! Not another English project," I said as Mrs. Roach handed us a paper entitled "The Odyssey: Your Personal Journey." The first thing I said when I got home was, "I just have to finish this paper as soon as possible, but I'm so tired. Oh well, I guess I can sleep for an hour or so."
     "Odysseus, wake up!" shouted my men. "You need to write your report on cyclopes for Zeus." They were right. The great chief god Zeus had ordered me to give him some research on cyclopes by Friday so that he could know all their strengths and weaknesses incase they ever decided to go to war with us. It was a dangerous task that I was not that willing to do, but an order is an order, so my men and I got on our ship to head to the land of the cyclopes.
     It was to be a long and tedious journey. At the end of the day, we decided to stop at the Lotus Eaters' Island to rest. As we got off the ship, just the smell of the sweet lotus blossoms was enough to draw us into the the island. "Stay and eat the lotus," coaxed the lotus eaters.
     "Why not?" I said. "I might as well stay here forever and forget my report. I never wanted to do it anyway." One of my men took a bite out of the flower and immediately keeled over. While the lotus eaters carried him away, we made a run for the ship. "Forget that!" I said.
     We decided to straight to the land of the cyclopes after that. It took three days, but we finally made it. We sat behind a grove of trees and watched and watched for hours, but all I could come up with was big, lazy, oafy, one eye, and herds sheep. Zeus would not be pleased. "There has to be a better way," I said dejectedley as we went back to the ship. "Maybe Circe knows what to do."
     We sailed another day to Circe's house, and it was just where we needed to go. "Come in," said Circe.
     "I need some information about cyclopes," I said.
     "You've come to the right place," she said, and with that she changed all my men into pygmy cyclopes. "There you go," she said proudly.
     "That's not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking more around the area the area of a reference book."
     "Oh, you're no fun," she said sadly. She then turned my men back to normal and handed me a book entitled The Cyclops: A One Eyed Wonder. It was perfect. I thanked her, and we said good-bye.
     We set out to sea again. The wind was slight, and the sea was calm. I thanked Aeolus, the god of the winds, for this nice quiet, and I started working on my report. It was going quite smoothly, and I was learning a lot.
     I was about halfway through my report, when I heard the soft call of a Siren. I became distracted from my work and strained to listen. The voice became louder, and soon more followed. I got up and as I was being lured, one of my faithful men saw my state and turned the ship away from the voices not a moment too soon, because I was just about to jump overboard and swim to the Sirens' call when the voices stopped, and I realized that my report was due the next day.
     I worked and worked all throughout the night until my beautiful report was finished. At that moment, Zeus appeared before me and demanded my report. I gave it  to him, and as he read it, he smiled. "Well done," he bellowed, and gave me five gold talents as a reward. He then poofed back to Mount Olympus with a cloud of smoke. Exhausted from my travels, I took a well deserved rest.
     "Wake up, Diane," said my mom.
     "Ahhh! What time is it? I need to start my paper!" I shouted. Then I remembered my dream. Perfect. I quickly jotted down every detail, and in no time at all, I had finally reached my goal.

The End