Day: February 19, 2022

One Minute Fiction — Breaking Waves

Fandango18 Comments

He stood behind the metal guardrail watching the waves break against the rocks just below. The waves were growing larger as the cold winds picked up and the storm clouds moved in. He snapped up his yellow rain slicker and covered his head with its hood, as much to keep him warm as to keep him dry when the large drops of rain started to fall.

As the wind grew stronger and the rain pelted him, he grabbed on to the handrail to try to keep from being blown away. He saw this moment, struggling against the elements, to be a perfect metaphor for his life, which was slowly slipping away.

Written for Cyranny’s One Minute Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Lebaneselily.

Sandman Wants to Know Yet More

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Sandman, over at The Jazzocracy, posed four more interesting questions this week and I thought it might be fun to take a moment or two to answer them.

Were you ever in any sort of scouting group growing up?

I was a Cub Scout.

If they gave merit badges for day-to-day things (dishwashing, laundry, commuting, coffee drinking, etc.), what would be the ones you’d earn the quickest?

Blogging and watching house hunting and home improvement shows on HGTV.

Have you done any ghosthunting?

Since I don’t believe in any life form after death, I don’t believe in ghosts. Hence, I’ve never done any ghost hunting.

Have you ever been “caught in the act”/ done it in public?

As far as being “caught in the act,” when I was about 15, my older sister once walked in on me when I was choking the chicken. She called me a pervert and immediately tattled on me to our mother. I got grounded for a week.

As to doing “it” in public, I had a girlfriend who liked to have sex outdoors and one day we stepped off the walking path at Potomac Park in Washington, DC and into a secluded area and did “it” there. We also had sex on the patio of her apartment, where anyone who walked by would have gotten an eyeful. And then there was the time a different girlfriend and I had gone to New York to attend the the New Year’s Eve dropping of the ball at Times Square. The next day we were taking the Amtrak Metroliner train back to DC. We were sitting in a crowded train car with our coats draped over our laps and engaged in a bit of mutual masturbation. I am pretty sure no one was wise to what was going on under our winter coats.

Okay, yeah, I know. TMI.

Weekend Writing Prompt — Recipe

Fandango22 Comments

He had an image to maintain, so when he learned that a gossip magazine was doing a close-up on his life, he knew it would be a recipe for disaster, not a tempest in a teapot.

(Exactly 36 words)

Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where the word is “recipe.”

Also for Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (image), Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge (close-up), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (teapot).

SoCS — Whatever

Fandango15 Comments

For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill asks us to use the word “whatever” any way we’d like. Okay, whatever.

When our daughter was a teenager, she used “whatever” or “um, whatever” all the time. Except she wouldn’t pronounce it the normal way, as I do when I express, for example, my core philosophy of life, “whatever floats your boat.” No, the way she said it was “what-EVER,” and the word was often accompanied by an exaggerated eye roll. 🙄 She was essentially saying to me, “Just stop, Dad. No one cares. Get a life.”

I used to really hate when she said that. She was blowing off whatever it was that I had just said to her as being totally unworthy of her time or attention and that she had no interest whatsoever in whatever I was talking about. I swore that I would never respond to either a question or a statement from someone with the one word response of “whatever.”

But yesterday afternoon, when my wife asked me what I wanted for dinner last night, I shrugged and said, “whatever.” And then, when she told me that it looked like Russia was going to be invading Ukraine and that Putin was likely going to target its capital city of Kyiv, my response to her was a dismissive “whatever.”

I’m so ashamed…or whatever.

P.S. you may have noticed that one of the “Topics of Interest (i.e., categories) I have on my blog called “Whatever.” And so far, I’ve used that category 70 times over the years. With this post, it will be 71 times.

FOWC with Fandango — Image

Fandango21 Comments
FOWC

It’s February 19, 2022. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “image.”

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. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please 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.