Day: April 11, 2019

#writephoto — The Paths Not Followed

Fandango27 Comments

33C00427-6911-4430-888F-CD3E06EEBC41Benny set his heavy backpack down on the ground in front of the signpost and looked at the direction indicators. Whatever words had been either carved into or painted onto the wood pointers had long since worn away. Benny scratched his head and said aloud, “Here we go again.”

How many times in his life had Benny come to a crossroads and found himself having to choose which road to take? He always had the feeling that, no matter which way he chose to go, the paths not followed would have been the better choices. Benny remembered thinking how nice it would be if he had the ability to see where the other choices would have ended up taking him in advance of having to choose, but he knew that that was simply not possible. We make our choices and then, for better or worse, we live with them.

He figured that he still had a few hours of daylight before he’d have to find a place to pitch his small tent for the night. He looked at the signpost once again, still unsure of which way to go. Benny moved next to the signpost, pointed toward the direction pointers with the index finger on his right hand and said, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe….”

F84B23BA-0A15-484B-B04F-4E2898BA63E9Written for this week’s Thursday Photo Prompt from Sue Vincent.

The Sensible Thing To Do

Fandango9 Comments

I consider myself to be a very sensible man. I behave sensibly, I talk sensibly, I dress sensibly. I even espouse a sensible, middle of the road ideology, which is a very sensible position to take in these days of extremity politics.

I was very happy with my sensible ways. But my girlfriend was not too keen over my sensible manner. She said that I was boring and that I needed to be more demonstrative. She said I was too accommodating and needed to show more gumption. She said I was detached and needed to take a stand for things that stirred my passions.

But being the sensible man that I am, I never let anything stir my passions. I don’t allow anything to bedevil my sensible, even keel ways.

So I did the only sensible thing a sensible, dispassionate man like me would do.8D963342-E474-4416-8ECF-7D755F412104 I shot her.

Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (sensible), Your Daily Word Prompt (ideology),  Word of the Day Challenge (keen), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (bedevil).

J is for Jibber-Jabber

Fandango29 Comments

B56E50C7-0D5E-4AF9-8DD2-874AB25EC1D0When I was a kid, my father, who was a very opinionated man, used to accuse anyone who expressed opinions with which he disagreed to be jibber-jabbering. I never bothered to ask him what jibber-jabbering actual was. I just knew intuitively that, to him, jibber-jabber was foolish or worthless talk, or, essentially, nonsense.

I never gave the term “jibber-jabber” much thought outside of my father’s use of it until one day when I whispered to a friend of mine at a school assembly that someone who was speaking was jibber-jabbering away. He looked at me quizzically and said, “You mean talking gibberish, right?”

“Yeah, gibberish,” I said. I was embarrassed because I thought my father, who was an immigrant, had heard the word “gibberish” and had replaced the actual word with his own made-up, but similar sounding concoction, “jibber-jabber.”

But yesterday, when I was drawing a blank about what “J-word” to use for today’s A to Z Challenge, I Googled “words that start with J,” and, lo and behold, there was “jibber-jabber.”

It turns out that my father did not, in fact, concoct the word “jibber-jabber.” The word “gibberish” dates back to the mid 1500s and was actually an adaptation of “jibber-jabber.”

And none other than Lewis Carroll capitalized on the meaning of the word “jabber” (talking rapidly and excitedly but with little sense) in his nonsense-based, epic-style poem “Jabberwocky,” which first appeared in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (his sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) in 1871.

So consider this post to be a formal apology to my late father for thinking that he was speaking gibberish when he talked about people who were jibber-jabbering.

And with that, I think that I will stop jibber-jabbering right now.

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

FOWC with Fandango — Sensible

Fandango22 Comments

FOWCWelcome to April 11, 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 “sensible.”

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.

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