writing prompt

The Smell of High School

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

In 1976 and 1977, the scents of Charlie perfume and Right Guard deodorant collided in my high school.  All the cool girls wore Charlie, and everyone used Right Guard.  The May that I was due to graduate was hot, and the school wasn’t air-conditioned. Imagine hundreds of puberty-ridden teens filling stuffy hallways.  The scent was overwhelming and accompanied by the slamming of metal locker doors.

Built in 1916, the school was massive and architecturally interesting.  It still stands and is used for a variety of things, but in the late ’70s, it swarmed with students. I was one of them.  There were more than four hundred in my graduating class. 

The basement opened into an outdoor area called the arch.  It was cool and dim and packed with teenage smokers.  The arch smelled of burnt tobacco, as well as Charlie perfume and failed Right Guard.  Sometimes you could catch a whiff of pot.  We stood there during lunch, smoking and talking.  I mostly listened.  I was still considered the new kid, and nobody knew me.  Nobody tried to know me.

I had an advanced biology class in one of the coolest rooms, although it was on the third floor.  The biology lab was furnished in 1930s-era lab tables, and the teacher, Mr. Berry, was a legend.  We were dissecting fetal pigs, and the room reeked of formaldehyde as well as Charlie perfume and Right Guard.  Sometimes I would sit in there at lunchtime with other students and work on my pig. 

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National Pancake Day was yesterday

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National Pancake Day was yesterday. As usual, I’m a day late and a dollar short. Nevermind that I had a pecan waffle with extra pecans sans syrup at the Waffle House this morning.

Still and all, I offer you this, my homage to maple syrup (and to pancakes though indirectly.)

As a child, I did not like pancake syrup though I loved the shape of the Aunt Jemima glass bottle. Everyone thought I was weird, but I much preferred my pancakes and French toast with tons of butter. Dripping with butter. Drowning in it. Floating.

Some time during my misspent early adulthood, I did not mark the day in my calendar of things to remember, I was unceremoniously given pancakes with syrup already applied. Not wanting to be one of those people, I unenthusiastically loaded a forkful and put it in my mouth.

Oh my. All the pleasure pheromones and chemicals and other assorted signals lit up like a Christmas tree at the North Pole and I smiled big and broad.

Real maple syrup tapped from trees is one of God’s gifts

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Cinderella’s Step Sister Speaks Her Mind

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

I cannot believe this. I just can’t.  That little bitch, pardon my language, but this is so beyond the pale that that’s the nicest word I can use.  After all we’ve done for her.  I don’t even know where to start.

I guess with the housecleaning thing.  Cinderella is OCD.  No, really, I mean it.  She was officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist and everything.  Won’t take her meds.  We never asked her to clean anything.  And she’s made our lives a living hell.  It would look like no one lived here if it was up to her.  She entered a state of rage cleaning when I once left my library book on the piano while I ate lunch.  She thought I should have returned the book to the basket she bought for library books.  Everything has a specific place.  Everything.  And she goes nuts if you don’t use it.

I do all the cooking. I like to cook, but not with her around.  I like to gather all the ingredients, use them as I cook, and put them away when I’m done. She thinks I should go back and forth to the pantry fetching and returning each one in turn.  Bah! Sister cleans the kitchen, but can’t meet Cinderella’s standards, so she cleans it a second time grumbling about how she has to do everything if it’s to be done right.

And the talking and singing with the animals.  Good grief.  We live in a 3-bedroom apartment in Queens.  No deer, no rabbits.  Yeah, there are birds.  We’ve seen and heard Cinderella stand at an open window and sing and dance.  It never occurred to us she thought she was communing with forest creatures.  I mean, really, why would we?  And singing?  Cinderella can’t carry a tune even with a little red wagon and a small boy to pull it for her.  She’s dreadfully tone-deaf.

All we’ve done to try and make her a part of our family!  I’m sorry her father died.  He was a good stepfather and I miss him, but we only knew him for a few months.  Of course, we didn’t mourn as hard as she did.  But we felt so sorry for her – all alone in the world.  We made sure she understood that this was her home now and we were her family.  We were generous to a fault with her.  All of her dad’s money, even that bequeathed to us, is in a trust not to be released to her until she’s 21.  We’ve been paying for everything.

And the ball.  My God! What a debacle that was.  The Met called the police when she tried to crash it while wearing her prom dress and silver shoes from the Goodwill.

I could go on and on, but you should get the picture now.

Intense Contentment

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There’s a pot of potato soup at a slow simmer on the stove.  Everything about this day is slow.  Unhurried.  Leisurely.  Unfolding gently from the dark of predawn to the sunset at 5:07 pm. It is a day to burrow into all the comforts that make home home.  Pumpernickel bread is baking and the house is filled with the smell of caraway seed.  Irish butter was procured for the bread and mulled cider will round out the evening menu though Louisa is considering making gingerbread for dessert.  She nestles deeper into the chair as she considers the expenditure of energy that will take. 

Gingerbread would be good.  There is heavy cream to turn into whipped cream, but the kitchen is spotless, and she is not sure she wants to clean it again.  Louisa ponders.

Royce is napping upstairs.  She figures she has the house to herself for another hour.  He is a marathon sleeper.  No 20-minute power naps for him. He says anything less than two hours is not worth his time.

The house is silent except for the hum of the furnace and the purrs of the cat.

She has not had the television on at all this day and silenced her phone several hours ago. 

Louisa is hibernating in the peace she and Royce have built in their 30 years of marriage.  All the rough edges have smoothed.  They fit together like the two halves of the yin-yang. Both are strong personalities, but they have long worked out their friction points without giving up their identities.  They are not two shall become one,  but two that curve together in all the right places. 

It was a lot of work. These past six, seven years have been ones of ease and plenty.  Love and friendship.  Passion and camaraderie.  He still makes her laugh.  She still makes him think.

The forecast called for just flurries, but Louisa estimates there are two inches of flurries accumulated on the back deck.  There is no place she needs to be.  There is nothing she should be doing.  All that concerns her is whether she wants to make gingerbread or not.

She decides that the smell of gingerbread baking will heighten further this intense feeling of contentment.  The warmth of it will further keep at bay the bluster of the outside world.

Can contentment be intense?  Is that an oxymoron?

She whispers a small prayer:  May all beings know this feeling.  But she doesn’t dwell on it.  She does not want to consider the reality of the the all-too real world.

She wants this day to go on and on.