Tale Weaver

MLMM Tale Weaver — Time

Fandango20 Comments

Stephanie Colpron, who hosts this prompt, would like us to tell her a tale about time. Like when we felt it slip through our fingers, or when we first realized how precious it is, or when we reminisced about a time of happiness or sadness. Alternatively, she suggests we may wish to craft a tale about time traveling, or time wrapping, whatever that is.

Yesterday afternoon, after a fairly active morning doing chores around the house, I developed a bit of an ache in my lower back. I decided to take a couple of Advil and to lie down in my bed, feeling sorry for myself because I am old and my body can’t do the things it used to be able to do. I was thinking that time is not on my side and the old Rolling Stones song, “Time Is On My Side” came to mind. I started humming it and thinking back to 1964, when that song was released. I had just started my freshman year in college, and back then, time was, indeed, on my side.

I had my whole adult life in front of me. Nothing but time. Plenty of time. I could waste as much time as I wanted to at that time and it was no big deal. Time was in abundance. There was a seemingly inexhaustible supply.

Back 57 years ago, when that Rolling Stones song was released, I didn’t worry much about time. I was invincible. Fast forward to late 2021. Now I’m quite vincible. Time for me is no longer in abundance as it was 57 years ago. There’s no longer an inexhaustible supply of time. In fact, if I’m lucky, I may get five more years of time before I simply run out of time. If I’m very lucky, maybe ten years. Any more time than that might not be such a good thing, especially if I run out of money before I run out of time.

That said, I’m not obsessed with time — or with dying. I’m not creating a bucket list of wild and crazy things that I feel I need to do while there’s still time. I prefer to spend whatever time I have left chilling. Just relaxing these old bones in the comfort of my home. (And okay, yes, figuring out how to ride my new e-bike without killing myself.)

As to crafting a tale about time traveling, as Stephanie suggested, I think maybe I’ll save that for another time in the future. Or maybe in the past.

MLMM Tale Weaver — Big Mistake

Fandango19 Comments

Pat was my best friend in high school. He had recently just started going steady with Mary and Mary thought it would be fun to fix me up with her friend Claire. I was never a fan of fix-ups, but Pat persuaded me to go along. “It will make Mary happy,” he said. “And besides, dude, Claire is totally hot!” So I reluctantly agreed to the fix-up. Big mistake!

The night of the big double date came. Claire was indeed a babe, but I didn’t really sense much chemistry between her and me, so I was kind of glad when the night came to an end.

Pat and I had just dropped off our dates and we were heading back to our neighborhood when a car pulled up next to mine at a quiet intersection. The driver honked his horn and both Pat and I looked over and saw a guy in the front passenger seat move his hand and arm in a circular motion, signaling me to roll down my car’s window, which I did.

“Are you the dickheads who were out with Claire and Mary tonight?” The guy asked.

“Oh shit,” Pat exclaimed. “Hit the gas.” I punched it, but the engine of my 1961 Chevy Corvair trembled and I felt the car lurch forward a few feet before the engine sputtered and the car came to a halt.

My stalled car was now surrounded by four rather large, thuggish-looking guys. One of them on Pat’s side of the car asked “Which one of you assholes was with Claire tonight?” Without hesitation, the guy I thought was my best friend pointed towards me.

“You, huh?” said a voice coming from my side of the car. I turned my head around to look at the guy who was talking just in time to feel a fist punch me hard in the mouth. “Stay the fuck away from her or next time you’ll wake up dead.” With that, he and his buddies jumped back into their car and sped away.

I was literally seeing stars. The pain was intense and I felt blood running down my chin from my mouth. I looked in the car’s rear view mirror and saw that I was missing one of my front teeth and the other was loose and almost hanging by a thread.

“What the fuck?” I said, looking at Pat.

“Yeah, sorry dude,” he said. “I probably should have told you that Claire’s married. The guy who hit you is her husband.”

“You probably should have told me? Are you fucking kidding me? Why would you and Mary want to fix me up with a married woman?”

“I dunno,” Pat said, shrugging his shoulders. “Mary said Claire wasn’t happy in her marriage. It seemed like, you know, a good idea at the time.”

This post was written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt in which Stephanie Colpron invites us to write a tale about a mistake and how we grew/learned from it even though it felt like something insurmountable. A true experience or a fictional story.

Sadly, this is a true story and I learned two things from this experience. First, never to go out on a fix-up date ever again. Second, always make sure, before asking a girl out on a date, that she’s not married.

Tale Weaver — Love is Blind

Fandango6 Comments

They say that love is blind, and I used to agree. Why else would a smart, beautiful women like her fall for a ghoul like me? It certainly wasn’t for my money. She had to be blind, or at least severely visually impaired, right?

Still, I believed we had a good thing going and I thought that I had earned both her love and her respect. But that good thing was all too brief. I found out that she was one of those people who believed in an out of sight, out of mind approach to love.

Or at least she did with me, because when I was not around, not in her sight, she made love with just about any other man who crossed her path. And, as I later learned, even with some other women she met.

With this new insight, I decided to take action, although some might think it was extreme. Let’s just say my former love has lost her sight and now she, too, believes that love is blind.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt. And for these daily prompts: Word of the Day Challenge (ghoul), Ragtag Daily Prompt (still), The Daily Spur (brief), My Vivid Blog (respect), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (extreme).

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

Fandango11 Comments

I always thought
That having
A lot of
Money
Would make me
Happy
I was wrong
I Fear

Written for:

KL Casey’s #writephoto (money). Image by KL Caley.

Jim Adams’ Thursday Inspiration (happy).

Stephanie Colpron’s Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt (fear).

Speaking About Climate Change

Fandango12 Comments

When my wife and I moved from San Francisco to the East Bay in January of 2020, a distance of only about 30 miles, we were shocked. We quickly learned that the climates in our former and new locations are quite different.

San Francisco is known for its relatively mild winters and cool summers. In the winter, it’s rare for the temperatures to dip into the 30s (Fahrenheit). In the summer, the high temperatures on most days are in the mid-60s to upper-70s. There are times it gets into the 80s and even occasions when it reaches the low 90s, but those very hot days are the exceptions.

Where we live now on the East Bay is a totally different story. While temperatures never really dip below freezing in the winter, it comes close enough that we occasionally wake up to see a light frost on the ground. And in the summer, temperatures in the 90s and even the low 100s are the norm, not the exceptions.

Don’t get me wrong. I love where we live now. Well, except for the deer and the gophers who are destroying my trees, plants, and lawn. But the climate just 30 miles east of San Francisco is not ideal like it is, as far as I’m concerned, in San Francisco, which is close to perfect. Climate-wise, anyway.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt.