Day: December 16, 2020

#1MinFiction — All Decked Out

Fandango5 Comments

Cyranny, over at Cyranny’s Cove, has this One-Minute Fiction Challenge where she provides a prompt to inspire us to write a very short story. The idea is to manage to type our whole story in a minute or less. She does say that we can think about it before hitting the keyboard, and we can take all your time to edit it afterwards.

Just so Cyranny and rest of you know, I blog from my iPhone, and doing the one-finger tap dancing on a virtual keypad is a lot slower that touch-typing on a full-sized keyboard. So that means that my one-minute posts will, indeed, be very, very short.

So, with the caveat that what I just wrote above took more than the allotted 60 seconds, let the stopwatch start NOW!“Dammit Frank,” Elaine whined, “how many times must I point out to you that our deck is rotting. Even the birds are reluctant to land on it. So get your act together and sand the deck down and apply a new coat of stain on it before someone falls through the rotting wood and sues us for every penny we have, you lazy, good for nothing bastard.”

Okay that took me about 75 seconds, but I’m cutting myself some slack because I’m using an iPhone and it takes at least 20% more time to key in the text with one finger on a tiny, virtual keypad than it does on a laptop or desktop keyboard.

I rest my case.

All Part of the Game

Fandango20 Comments

The manager slowly walked out to the mound. When he got there he leaned in close to the pitcher and said, “Listen, Luis, the bases are loaded and there are two outs. I think the batter is going to try to catch us off guard by bunting. So I want you to throw him your knuckleball low and outside and then charge the plate right after you pitch the ball just in case he gets some wood on it.”

“I got it, Dave,” the pitcher said. The manager walked back to the dugout and Luis wound up and threw his knuckler. Unfortunately, the batter swung away and the ball zoomed out at full speed, connecting with the charging pitcher’s head almost right between the eyes.

The sound of the crack the ball made when it hit Luis’ skull reverberated throughout the ballpark, destroying the festive mood of the thousands of fans in the stands. The medics came out to attend to the unconscious pitcher and called for the stretcher to carry his limp body off the field. Any sense of optimism about the pitcher just shaking off his injury and being able to resume the game disappeared.

Fortunately, Luis did regain consciousness in the locker room, but after being transported to the hospital for further evaluation, the doctors determined that Luis had suffered from significant nerve damage and agreed that his professional baseball career was likely over.

A year later, Luis returned to baseball, but not as a player. His new job was as the team’s pitching coach. One of the first things he taught his charges was to never rush the plate before the batter swung at the pitch.

Written for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (bunting), Word of the Day Challenge (charge), MMA Storytime (zoom), Ragtag Daily Prompt (festive), Your Daily Word Prompt (optimism), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (nerve).

FFfPP — Piano Man

Fandango10 Comments

Billy Joel and Elton John were Jason’s idols. He truly believed that if he had a piano and could learn to play it, his name would be right up there with Billy and Elton as one of the greats. The only problems was that he lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment with no room for a piano, and he couldn’t afford to buy one, anyway.

When Jason told his friend Steve about his dream to be a piano virtuoso but the obstacles he faced in reaching his dream, Steve said, “You know, Jason, you can get an electronic piano keyboard on Amazon for under 150 bucks. And when you’re not using it, you can fold it up and store it in your closet.”

“That’s a great idea, Steve,” Jason said. “I’ll jump right on that.”

A few weeks later, Steve called Jason. “Hey man, are you the new Billy Joel yet?”

“Nah, I returned the keyboard” Jason said. “I discovered that piano is not my thing. So instead I bought an electric guitar. I’m going to be the next Eric Clapton.”

“Rock on, buddy,” Steve said.

Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. Photo credit: Morguefile.

One-Liner Wednesday — Under the Spotlight

Fandango15 Comments

“The president’s recent discussions with those around him reveal that he sees his White House comeback deliberations as a way to earn the commodity he needs most after leaving office: attention.”

Anita Kumar, Politico White House correspondent and associate editor

The good news is that, despite his need to stay in the limelight, Trump will ultimately wilt under the truth, scrutiny, and heat of the spotlight and will finally melt away.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt. Political cartoon credit: Paul Fell.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #100

Fandango21 Comments

FPQWow! This is my 100th Fandango’s Provocative Question post. Whodda thunk it? I’m glad that a lot of you seem to enjoy these questions and I do appreciate the help that many of you have offered as suggestions for future provocative questions.

Anyway, welcome back, once again, to 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.

This week’s provocative question was suggested by Savio Paz over at Goin’ the extra…aaamile. Savio wrote, “Among all the good things we love about ourselves, there is side to us that we never talk about, a side we never want going public. It isn’t special to certain individuals, but we all have it — Our Dark Side.”

Coincidentally, in Jim Adam’s post on Monday, he commented that “there are some parts of my life that I am not real proud of.” In response, I commented back, “We all have parts of our lives that we are not proud of.”

So, based upon Savio’s suggestion, as well as Jim’s comment, the provocative question for today is this:

How do we make peace with ourselves, knowing that, being the basically good people we are, we also have a side to us which we know isn’t the best — our “dark side”? Can we overcome these parts of our lives that we may not be proud of? Or do we simply accept them, learn to live with them, and move on?

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. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.