Shapiro with a chicken, presumably rehearsing these scenes from “The Room” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BS7M5LUais
Although he wouldn’t become a vegetarian until age 13, Paul Shapiro loved animals at least several years before that, penning a short story at age 9 about a lost dalmatian titled Where’s Spot?
Now serving as Vice President of Policy Engagement for the Humane Society of the United States, Shapiro’s first book comes out this week: January 2, 2018. It’s titled Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, about new technology that allows meat to be grown in a lab by multiplying only a few cells of an animal — without any slaughter or death involved. Shapiro predicts the practice could become the industry standard at your local supermarket and restaurant within a few decades.
Here’s what Shapiro says about his short story at age 9, followed by the story itself:
My thoughts on Where’s Spot?
I’m not sure what the pub date on this literary masterpiece is, but my mom thinks I was perhaps nine when I penned it, meaning around 1986. Interestingly, it’s actually not penned at all, but rather typed, meaning I was a nerd with some type of primitive word processor of the day. It appears that I forgot to type the title and byline, meaning I had to scrawl them onto the page post-printing in cursive, which at least is far better than my cursive today.
Soooo, maybe “masterpiece” may be a bit much for Where’s Spot? After all, a grammatical error in the very first sentence may not have been the best way to impress my teacher. I should’ve thought about asking my mom — a former editor — to proofread it, but instead I put the apostrophe in “Simpsons” before the ‘s’. SMH. [Scratching My Head.]
It doesn’t get much better from there. Exhibit A: “Spot was a Dalmation with many spots.” Even ignoring my misspelling of Dalmatian, I wasn’t exactly painting the most vivid picture for the reader.
I don’t want to give away the ending of the gripping mystery, but it’s not much of a page-turner. Well, it’s literally not much of a page turner in that it’s just barely more than one page. But if you can’t make it all the way to the end, at least rest easy knowing that the question in the title of the novella is indeed answered. Spot is found.
For what it’s worth, given that I now work full-time in the animal welfare field, it does seem at least somewhat interesting that even at such a young age I was writing a story involving a missing animal in need of help from the local animal shelter. Perhaps if my parents had known this would be my career they could’ve saved a lot of money on education in topics unrelated to my profession. For one, writing lessons would’ve been useful.
Enjoy the story!
Where’s Spot?
by Paul ShapiroIt was a Sunday morning at the Simpson’s [sic]. Scott was playing with Spot, the family dog. Spot was a Dalmation [sic] with many spots. Spot was in the right neighborhood at the right time.. He had all the best dog friends in the world. There was Bess, Ron, and Blinky.
One day all the dogs were out playing together. Spot saw a huge pile of soot and decided to jump in and so did the others. They played in the soot for hours. In fact Spot was so black that you couldn’t reconize [sic] him.
Mr. and Mrs. Simpson called everyone about Spot to ask them if they’d seen him. Bess, Ron, and Blinky were reconized [sic] by their owners immediately. After Mr. and Mrs. Simpson got back from the animal shelter they asked Scott if anyone called. Scott replied like this: Nobody called but a black dog stopped by and tried to get into Spot’s bed but I made him leave because I knew we couldn’t get a new dog. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson ran over to Spot’s bed and saw that it was full of soot. Immediately they realized that Spot must have come home full of soot and not have been recognized [correct spelling that time] by Scott.
Now the mystery of what had happened to Spot was almost solved. The only question was where had he gone after Scott made him leave. Since Spot was no where [sic] to be found in the neighborhood, the Simpson’s decided to check the animal shelter again. When they got to the shelter there was still no Dalmation [sic] in sight. However, there were a whole lot of black dogs that were about the size of Spot. After getting permission from the people who ran the animal shelter, they started to give each of the black dogs who were Spot’s size
[At this point the 3-page story skips page 2, which has apparently been lost to history. We resume our tale in mid-sentence with the few lines on page 3.]
by strangers. The third dog, however, didn’t mind at all. In fact, he licked the Simpsons, who were not surprised after that to discover that the black dog was really Spot.
Follow him on Twitter @PaulHShapiro or visit his website Paul-Shapiro.com. Buy his new book Clean Meat out January 2 on Amazon or at CleanMeat.com
A Step In The Write Direction 
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