Day: June 4, 2024

WDYS / Simply 6 Minutes — My Son

Fandango17 Comments

“Oh my God,” what an adorable little boy,” Rebecca said. “How old was he in this photo?”

“He was about a year old at the time,” Eileen said. “Yes, he was beautiful. Everyone kept telling us he should be a baby model and so we enrolled him with an agent and he actually got a lot of jobs in print ads and even some commercials. He was such a good, sweet little boy.”

“Does he still do any child modeling? “Rebecca asked.”

Eileen smiled, “No, not anymore,” she said.

“Why not if you don’t mind my asking?” Rebecca said.

“Well, you know how it is,” Eileen responded. “They grow up, their features change, their personalities change.”

“How old is he now?” Rebecca asked.

“Let’s see,” Eileen said. “He’s about 17 now. But he dropped out of school and moved out of the house to live with some friends at some sort of farm in the country.”

“Do you hear from him anymore?” Rebecca asked.

“Well, he posts on Instagram and TikTok every once in a while,” Eileen said.

“Do you have any recent photos he’s posted?”

“I do, but he rarely shows his face for the camera,” Eileen said. “Here is the most recent one I have.” Eileen opened up Instagram on her iPhone, held it up, to and showed it to Rebecca.

“Oh my God, Eileen, I’m so sorry,” Rebecca said.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: ColinMaynard @ Unsplash with aging effect added by Fandango using Distresed FX.

Also for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes prompt. Photo credit: slappy2982.

MFFFC — Are You Talking To Me?

Fandango9 Comments

Are you looking at me? Are you? What’s the matter with you? You’re being awfully rude just staring at me like that. Is something wrong with me. Do I have some poop hanging from my butt or something?

Listen up, pal. I’m a lemur and I’m proud of it, do you hear me? Look at this face. Have you ever seen anything cuter in your entire life? And that tail? Oh my, are not those black and white barber pole stripes to die for?

No wonder you’re fascinated by me. I’m beautiful. But you? Ha! You must be the bottom of the barrel. You don’t even have a tail, and what happened to your fur? Did someone just sheer you? I bet you couldn’t climb a tree if your life depended upon it, much less swing from branch to branch like I can. Wanna see?

How was that, not too shabby, huh? So why are you still staring at me? You’re giving me the willies, you know. Why don’t you go gape at the elephants or the tigers for a while? I’m going swinging for a while. Begone when I get back.

A few minutes later…

What? You’re still here. Okay I warned you. I’m going to fling a handful of my feces at you. Then, maybe, you’ll stop staring at me.

Ha! That always gets them to go away!

Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Molnár Tamás Photography™ on Pexels.

Truthful Tuesday — No Green Thumb

Fandango16 Comments

Frank, aka PCGuyIV, is back with another episode of Truthful Tuesday. The idea behind Truthful Tuesday is for us to respond to the question (or questions) Frank asks and to be 100% truthful in our responses. No glib answers, no funny business, no fibs. Just raw honesty.

For this week’s Truthful Tuesday, Frank wants to know…

How do you feel about gardening and yardwork? Do you differentiate between them or are they basically the same in your book? Are they fun activities that are more hobby than chore, or are they tasks you’d pay good money not to ever do again if you could afford it?

Truth be told, I wouldn’t know a weed from a plant. When we first moved into this house four-and-a-half years ago, the guy we bought the house from had landscaped the front yard and had a gardener come out weekly to cut the grass and maintain the trees and shrubbery.

But our side yards and our backyard, flat for about 500 feet from the back of the house until a steep drop, was clean slate. The seller had covered the ground with a black tarp, presumably to keep the weeds down. My wife and I reached out to a landscape designer to get some tips on local, drought-tolerant plants and some design ideas.

We knew we wanted to build a recirculating waterfall, so we hired a specialist who builds waterfalls to design and build it. Then we hired a landscape company to do all of the hardscaping (deck, pergola, patio, gas fire pit, soft-surface kids’ play area), and plantings (trees, bushes, plants, grass, and groundcover).

It was not cheap, but the end result, especially now that the trees and shrubbery have matured, is beatuful.

As to ongoing maintenance, we have a guy who comes out every other week to weed, trim the bushes, and care for all of the plantings. My wife and I have time to do that ourselves, but neither of us has the skills. As I said earlier, I wouldn’t know a weed from a plant.

Fandango’s Story Starter #152

Fandango8 Comments

It’s time for my weekly Story Starter prompt. Here’s how it works. Every Tuesday morning (my time), I’m going to give you a “teaser” sentence or sentence fragment and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that sentence/fragment. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is simply to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

Anna always hated chocolate, so she was surprised and a little confused to find herself standing outside of the quaint chocolate shop on the outskirts of town.

If you care to write and post a story built from this teaser, be sure to link back to this post and tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.

FOWC with Fandango — Omit

Fandango11 Comments
FOWC

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 “omit.”

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, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.