writing prompt

The Girl in Black

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment
Photo by Gioele Fazzeri on Unsplash

Dear Diary,

They think I don’t hear them.  They think I’m oblivious and lost in a haze of weed.  They think I’m a retro Goth.  

I don’t care what my senior class thinks.  I quit caring about sixth grade when the cliques got serious.  I really stopped caring when my great-grandfather died. I wore black to his funeral and have worn black ever since.

They all have no idea, and I like it that way.  I’m not just an introvert, I’m very private.  I don’t even talk to the therapist my social worker has been making me see for two years.  The one my state insurance pays for because we don’t have any money.

I don’t care what my family thinks.  I was a mistreated child that nobody could be bothered to rescue.  My summers with Great-Grandfather are the only reason I’m not a real mess.

I don’t care what anyone thinks.

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Reunion

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

Writing Prompt from Lee Martin: Choose someone from your past whom you haven’t seen in several years. If you were to see them, what would you say and/or do?

I’ve missed her. 

Dreadfully.  It’s been a good long while now, too long since I’ve communed with her.  The last time we interacted, she was just hitting her stride.  And then her world fell apart – emotionally, politically, creatively, and physically. 

The years have passed slowly in some respects and like a galloping racehorse in others.  Any way you look at it, too many years have passed.

She is me.

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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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