“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the gangster sneers. The easy way? Giving up another agent is never that. The path may be smooth, but the slide down is vicious and if you can’t be trusted, who’ll catch you when you fall?
Pull outmy finger nails, break my bones, poke my eyeballs blind , I’d never tell.
“If you don’t get up here right now, dinner’s in the dog!” Mom hollers.
The hard way would be to resist the bodily urge for sustenance.
Thank you to Roger Bultot for the inspiration. The image is all his.
Every Child Is An Artist
Paul dropped his sketchbook. It fell open at a misshapen drawing of an old man. “What’s the point? I’m rubbish at Art.”
Grandma sighed and sat next to him. “I knew a painter who said ‘the purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls’”.
“What does that mean?”
“He also said he painted things as he thought them, not as he saw them.”
“Was he any good?”
“A few years ago, one of his paintings sold for $174 million, but no, if you think Art is recreating what’s in front of you, he was terrible.”
Extro
Roger’s photo stirred a lot of things, but one of them was admiration of the intricate artwork around those main doors. I wondered how the ancient artists felt affixing each tiny tile, and that led me to the very modern problem of making my kids do art homework. And hence this story.
Paul’s name is of course a play on Grandma’s famous friend’s, an anglicised version of Pablo.
This was what google suggested for “Picasso Song”. Enjoy!
Before we Crushed Candy or Crafted Mines, even before steered Snakes and blue hedgehogs, we stacked blocks.
Not Lego or Jenga blocks, though we did that too when we ran out of battery or patience, but 2D blocks we flicked with our thumbs. We were fast, egged on by the accelerating fall rate and the increasingly frenzied music that accompanied it.
The long ones were killer if you were struggling, but lifesavers if you’d braved making a canyon. I suppose like all the things that came after – value was determined not by the item itself, but by your position when it arrived.
You can’t stop them with your thoughts. I know that. I’m not just some dumb kid, I’m nearly seven.
You can’t stop them with prayers either, but in case he’s listening. In case he can hear me over the bangs and the screams. Are you there, God? It’s me, Maggie.
You can’t ban them. The man on TV says so. Only the bad actors then. Not the good ones like in the Barbie Movie. Mom said I was too young but I saw it at Harper’s sleepover.
Miss Soto will stop them though. She’s really nice. Everyone listens to her.
Extroduction
I’m sorry, America. There’s a lot I don’t understand about your country but this one is top of the list. I remember Dunblane. I was 14 years old. I remember the news reports and the songs and the appeals and the endless photos of flowers and teddy bears lining the streets of a small town in Scotland. It was the deadliest mass shooting in UK history, and within a year, laws had been passed to make it harder to own a gun, in a country which already had decent gun control. In other countries, a single school shooting has been enough to make international headlines and new laws. American school shootings don’t even necessarily take the top spot on national news. Stats vary widely, but even the lowest estimate I could find was 8 school shootings in the US this year (the highest was 143, just over one every 2 days).
So, Rochelle’s nice picture of guitars, reminded me of the video below. It’s over a year old, and it may say something that I don’t know whether or which school shooting it refers to. Please watch it.
Some more notes, specifically about heroes:
Harper in my story was named for Harper Moyski who died in Minneapolis last month. She was 10. The boy who died with her was 8, and the youngest victim taken to hospital was 6 years old. One of the heroes of that story was a little boy called Victor who was shot while lying on his friend, Weston, trying to protect him. Weston was unharmed; Victor was taken to hospital and survived.
Miss Soto is Victoria Leigh Soto, a Sandy Hook teacher who died protecting her class. Twenty 6 and 7 year olds died in that event, together with six teachers.
We called Dunblane a ‘massacre’. The government was given little choice but to enact reform (even against high profile resistance from, among others, the Royal family). In the USA, they seem to call these things Tuesday.
Thank you to Sandra Crook for the photo – all rights remain hers.
A Look Of Love
When I caught his eye, looked away, peeked back and found him still looking, I felt giddy.
I can still feel the rush in my heart when he gazed into my eyes and said he loved me for the first time. In the doorway of my little flat, after a night of bowling and laughter.
And a different rush when he lifted my veil, looked into my soul and whispered. “I do. And I always will.”
But there is something comfortable about sitting together, looking out of the same window. Gazing not at each other, but at the world… together.
Love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together, in the same direction – Antoine de St-Exupery
They called him Teapot for years. As in “Useful as a chocolate…”. It was something Grandpa said once, when they were changing a tire and he didn’t have the strength to turn the wheel nut key. Because he was seven.
So he was Teapot until he left home. His sisters claimed it was affectionate. Sometimes. His father said “character-building”. Mom never used it – she hadn’t been there – but she didn’t stop them either.
On his first day at work, a cute secretary introduced herself as Maggie.
“James,” he replied, holding out a hand. “But you can call me… Jim.”
Extroduction
Oh my, this story is so much longer in my head. The sisters, both older, were there as well at the tire change. Of course, Grandpa didn’t invite them to help, but they would’ve been just as valuable as James. And that word “Sometimes” is a hyper-condensed version of how the sisters used the name in the intervening years. And we never even got to the rock star era when Jim reclaims the name Teapot and writes a song called “Chocolate Guitar” which was my first impression of the picture prompt and the link back to it.
I’m happy with the 100-word version though. I hope it works for readers.
I have a couple of very dear friends with non-complimentary nicknames. I hope each one of them knows how much it is said with love, something I choose to believe about mine.
Thanks to Ted Strutz for the photo. I’m sure he wouldn’t be like my character!
The Value of Things
“Back then, we knew the value of things. Took care of them. I spent every Sunday under the hood or chassis of that ‘old rust bucket’ as you call it. If she broke down, I fixed her. And if I couldn’t do it all myself, your Uncle Ronny came across and we’d tinker while your mother made the Sunday Roast and washed up and whatnot, then we’d watch the game with a few well-earned beers and she would bring us sandwiches and put you kids to bed.”
“And when Mum broke down?” I thought. “Did you take care of her?”
Extroduction
Not a true story, but I think there might be a few people who feel it could be.
It was week five of no answer, and time for the final message. “If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you don’t require services and close your file,” she typed.
Where had the boy gone? Was he still alive? Teenagers don’t call a crisis line and set up counselling for no reason. But they might not attend for a million reasons, some mundane, some worrying. His lack of response gave no clue to which this was.
The desk phone rang loudly, and she answered with her usual spiel.
“Hi,” said a tiny female voice. “I think I need help.”
Extroduction
This week’s story is not-quite-true, but close enough. At charities like the one where I work, the Intake Coordinator has an incredibly valuable job – hers (or his) is the first face or voice young people meet when they come for help. She takes them through a detailed assessment and passes them on to the rest of the team for in-depth services. When she answers that phone, she never knows whether it’ll be the plumber booking an appointment or a person in crisis.
Once a client is on the books, if they don’t attend appointments, it’s her job to follow-up before she can close the file. Clients might fail to attend for any number of reasons – transportation issues, work scheduling clashes, forgetting, getting help elsewhere… or much more upsetting ones.
Such organisations, and the people who work in them, are life-saving, but to avoid burnout everyone has to embrace an uncomfortable truth – you can’t save them all.
This is one of my favourite parables, and such a valuable reminder.
I took mushrooms once. Everything swam. Colours wandered away from things, words floated in my vision like bubbles and roared at me for not reading them aloud, so I called their names as they grew starker, more vivid across my mind.
My vision is blurred now, the only things floating across it the clumps of vitreous my brain perceives as the view. And I wonder, sometimes, what would happen if I took mushrooms again. Would things get brighter? Would words and colours return to my sight? Or would the floaters rise up against me and demand to be spoken aloud?
Extro
Not a true story, on either end, so my apologies for inaccuracies on the experience!
Once again, Rochelle has gifted us a summer rerun on a day I need it! Apologies to all those who read / commented last week to whom I haven’t responded yet. I appreciate you all!
This week we’re back with Melanie, and a rerun from ten years ago when she was… exactly the same age because she’s a fictional character. Only the rest of us grow older!
elmowrites 