Day: August 8, 2022

#WDYS — The Theft of Joy

Fandango22 Comments

Mei was walking with her husband, Jian, when she stopped, drew in a deep breath, and started to sob. Jian saw the bicycle leaning against the wall and immediately understood. Their nine year old daughter, Sue, used to ride her bike all the time. It was almost like it was a part of her anatomy.

When Sue’s little brother, Li, turned six, Mei and Jian gave her permission to put Li on the rear rack and ride around the neighborhood with him. The kids had so much fun and watching their young children enjoying themselves so much gave an immense pleasure to their proud parents.

Little did they know, nor could they have ever foreseen, what would happen just one year after they emigrated to the United States from China. All they wanted to do was give their children a better life and more opportunity.

And then a deranged eighteen-year-old boy with a legally-purchase AR-15 assault rifle, marched into their elementary school, and started randomly shooting and killing innocent young children.

Li survived the heinous massacre, but Sue did not. He was traumatized, having witnessed the senseless slaughter of his sister and his classmates. All of the joy, including riding on the back of a bicycle with his big sister, was taken from him.

The thoughts and prayers the politicians expressed would never heal the wounds their family suffered.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Yaopey Yong @ Unsplash.

Blogging Insights — The End

Fandango8 Comments

It’s Monday and Dr. Tanya is back with her weekly Blogging Insights prompt. She provides us with a quote about blogging or writing and asks us to express our opinion about said quote.

This week’s quote is from author Brian Hutchinson.

“The difference between writers who finish books and those who don’t is that the finishers don’t stop writing until they get to: THE END.”

This is essentially the same sentiment as Richard Bach’s quote that Tanya highlighted last week, which was, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

Bach’s not quitting and Hutchinson’s don’t stop until reaching the end send the same message. And as I said in response to last week’s quote, this week’s quote can be applied to anyone who has a job to do. Your job is not done until you’re finished, until you’ve reach the end.

Anybody Heard From Sparky?

Fandango25 Comments

Melanie, at Sparks From a Combustible Mind, is MIA. She usually posts daily, including on Mondays, with her weekly Share Your World prompt. But today is Monday and there’s no SYW post. Not yet, anyway.

As far as I can tell, her last post was this past Friday, 8/5. And she comments on many of my posts, but the last comment I received from her was on 8/3.

Did she mention to anyone that she was taking a short break? Has anyone heard from her? I hope she’s okay.

Melanie, if you’re reading this, say hello. Please!

Standard Operating Procedures

Fandango6 Comments

“Listen, Keith,” Jason said, “we have a very systematic way of conducting business in this company. Our standard operating procedures have made this a very successful company. You can’t just go off on a whim and do things differently from our highly structured approach.”

“Jason, I absolutely understand what you’re saying,” Keith said. “But I had this great opportunity and one thing I’ve learned in my career is that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for approval.”

“Keith, you’re very good at your job and far be it from me to want to hinder your initiative and ingenuity, but you need to be remember that our company has been around for a long time. So long, in fact, that our original company charter was literally scribed onto parchment,” Jason said. “My advice to you, Keith, is that next time, before you find yourself out on a limb that might get chopped off, you’d be better off asking for permission than asking for forgiveness.”

Written for these daily prompts from yesterday: The Daily Spur (systematic), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (whim), My Vivid Blog (absolutely), Ragtag Daily Prompt (understand), Word of the Day Challenge (approval), Your Daily Word Prompt (hinder), and E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (parchment).

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #180

Fandango4 Comments

Welcome to Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenging bloggers to write a flash fiction piece or a poem inspired by the photo. There are no style or word limits.

The image below is from shutterstock.com.

For the visually challenged writer, the photo shows a schoolboy pushing a table with his science fair project, which is on wind energy.

If this week’s image inspires you and you wish to participate, please write your post, use the tag #FFFC, and link back to this post. I hope it will generate some great posts.

Please create a pingback to this post or manually add your link in the comments.