Month: April 2019

My Little Red Wagon

Fandango15 Comments

CB21C71B-0FF1-4FA9-AC7E-B7A77EADA22AWhen I was a kid, about eight or nine, my ma used to regularly send me to the small grocery store about a half a mile from our tenement house. She’d give me a list of things to pick up, like bread, milk, juice, eggs, chocolate, etc.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the strongest or most coordinated kid around, and I would incur the wrath of my ma on those occasions when I would accidentally drop the one of the heavy paper bags and break the eggs or the milk bottle.

My father and mother had gotten divorced a few years back, and she had taken up with the married lawyer who represented her in the divorce case. But since he was married, they had to meet on the down-low. So when I was at school, she would take my younger brother to the park in the afternoon once or twice a week and she and the lawyer would meet there. My ma would put my brother on the carousel and the lawyer would give the kid who ran the ride a few bucks to watch my brother for an hour while he and my ma engaged in some afternoon delight.

I managed to find out about their weekly assignations from my baby brother, who wasn’t as dumb as he looked. One night, the lawyer stopped by at our apartment and I confronted him. I told him I knew what he and my ma were up to and threatened to out them to my father. As lawyers are wont to do, he asked if I’d be interested in some negotiation.

I thought about each trip I took to the grocery store for my ma and the trouble I had balancing the heavy bags on my walk home. “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” I said, “if you buy me a little red wagon that I can use to haul the full bags of groceries from the store to home.”

The lawyer readily agreed and a few days later he delivered my shiny, new wagon.

Post script: I ratted him out anyway, and he was ultimately disbarred when it came out that he was screwing not only my ma, but many of his female divorce clients. Oh, his wife divorced him, too.

Written for Paula Light’s Three Things Challenge, where the three thing are “lawyer,” “carousel,” and “chocolate.” Also for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (bread), Your Daily Word Prompt (negotiation), Word of the Day Challenge (trip), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (wagon).

Fandango’s Provocative Question #21

Fandango31 Comments

FPQWelcome back! Now that April’s A to Z Challenge is over, it’s time to restart Fandango’s Provocative Question.

Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

Please bear with me today, folks, as it will take a while for me to get to the actual question.

For those of you who may not follow American politics, let me introduce to you Pete Buttigieg. “Mayor Pete,” as he known, is seeking the Democratic nomination to run for President of the United States. He is a graduate of Harvard University, a Rhodes Scholar, a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan. He is currently the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana. And bonus — he’s white and Christian. The perfect candidate, right?

Mayor Pete is making waves, too. Right now he’s ranking third or fourth (out of 20) in the early political polls and is getting a lot of attention and positive press.

He’s also gay and is married to his husband, Chasten. Wait! What?

And that brings us to this week’s provocative question. It’s prompted by something Reverend Franklin Graham, the heir to Billy Graham’s evangelistic preaching ministry and one of Donald Trump’s closest, so-called “spiritual advisors,” said about Pete Buttigieg.

Graham, who has steadfastly stood by Donald Trump through revelations of serial adultery, deceit, and a complete lack of the basic principles of morality and integrity, said this:

“Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian. As a Christian, I believe the Bible, which defines homosexuality as a sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised, or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman – not two men, not two women.”

So, with that “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” sentiment, we finally come to the question.

“Do you think America is ready for an openly gay person to be elected to the office of President of the United States? Explain your opinion.”

If you are not from the States, do you think the country in which you live could have a gay person in the highest office in the country?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

Note: some bloggers have had issues with pingbacks showing up lately, so if you don’t see it shortly after you published your post, you might want manually add your link in the comments.

And most important, have fun.

Z is for Zilch

Fandango25 Comments

FE58492C-6D4C-4ECB-BCF1-FF260933D86EI’ve got zilch, zero, zip. So it’s a damn good thing that today is the last day of the 2019 A to Z Challenge. Because I’m used up. There’s just nothing left for me to give. And I didn’t even have a theme for this 26-post alphabet challenge, like many bloggers who participated in this challenge did. I was free to post about whatever popped into my tiny little head. And even with that freedom, it was a burden.

So it’s over. For another year. If I’m still around and still blogging in April 2020, I’ll have to think long and hard about whether or not to participate again in next year’s A to Z Challenge.

Of course, should I decide to do it again next April, I can always just recycle my 2018 A to Z Challenge posts, since the odds are that many of you won’t still be blogging in a year.

It’s true. I read a couple of articles I found recently on the internet — so you know they’re accurate — when I Googled “What is the average lifespan of a new blog?” One article said that the average lifespan of a new blog is about 100 days. Another site estimated that new blogs these days typically have a four to six month lifespan.

And for those few of you who will still be here next April and who may have diligently read each and every one of my posts for this year’s challenge, you probably didn’t read, much less remember, any of my posts from last year’s challenge. Thus, by next year, they’ll all seem new to you.

In fact, do any of you who were around for the A to Z Challenge in 2018 even remember what my Z-post was last year?

Hint: it wasn’t “Z is for Zilch.”

Previous A to Z Challenge 2019 posts:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Twittering Tales — The Letters

Fandango3 Comments

57EC81B1-96E3-4D91-97F5-55F413B946D4“Here!” she said, dropping the bundle of letters on his desk. “Keep them or toss them. It doesn’t matter to me. Everything you wrote in them is bullshit. You said you loved me, begged me to wait for you. I did. But you’re not the same man you were when you wrote these. Goodbye.”

(279 characters)

Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: Suzy Hazelwood at Pexels.com.

FOWC with Fandango — Wagon

Fandango34 Comments

FOWCWelcome to April 30, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “wagon.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

Note: some bloggers have had issues with pingbacks showing up lately, so if you don’t see it shortly after you published your post, you might want manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.