Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 18th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on February 18, 2018.
You Sound Uppity
Everyone else in the class would answer “Here” when the teacher called roll in homeroom. But not Mark. He would always say “Present.” He was the only one who responded to roll calls that way.
“Why do you always say ‘present’ at roll call?” one of the other students asked Mark.
“Because I am present in class,” mark answered.
“But everyone else simply says ‘here.’ Saying ‘present’ makes you sound uppity.”
“But ‘present’ is such an interesting word,” Mark said. It’s more versatile than ‘here.’”
“How so?” the classmate asked.
“Well, for one thing, it means being where you are; being ‘here,’” Mark explained. “It can also mean being in the moment, as being engaged in what is going on. I’m not just ‘here’ taking up space, I am truly ‘present,’ fully aware of what is happening around me.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“But ‘present’ can also be a verb that means to give something to someone, like when you present someone with an award. Or you can use it as a noun to mean something someone gives you, like a Christmas present or a birthday present.”
“Ah, I get it,” said Mark’s classmate. “Like in, ‘I want to present this present to you.’”
“Exactly,” Mark said. “And it can also mean occurring now, as opposed to having occurred in the past or something that will occur in the future.”
“Wow, ‘present’ is a cool word,” admitted the classmate. “But using it instead of saying ‘here’ during roll call still makes you sound like an uppity asshole.”
Written for today’s one-word prompt, “present.”
This, That, and the Other 
This kid, did he get beat up a lot?
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I think he must have.
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Cool post.
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Clever and funny—a worthy rumination.
Alas, my head was present in a worrisome place when I presented this haiku last year.
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A lot of us were in the same headspace at the time, Annie.
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Since my blog was officially inaugurated on a day like today, I have several posts from my blog’s anniversaries over the years. I thought it would be fun to share my very first post, from February 18, 2018:
Thank you for hosting, Fandango!
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In Hebrew, “right” doesn’t mean “correct,” so you ALWAYS have to use different words. If you say right, people look at you funny.
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By “right” — do you mean, like, right-handed?
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This sounds so like a conversation in a class it’s not funny 😂
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A humorous post – worth repeating.
I’m back with a late flashback which seemed appropriate given the weather here this weekend: https://travelwithintent.com/2022/02/19/white-or-wet-copenhagen/
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We always said Present throughout my school and college. I guess that makes us uppity!
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Not if everyone did it.
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It is the ones who say “Yo” or some other slang type response that always got me…. it seemed to annoy some of the teachers too.
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