Alice Audrey started a word association game on her blog. If you'd like to play, click this colorful Association button (immediately below), and you'll find the rules.
It's a different approach from the typical meme, so I thought I'd give it a try. But I'm thinking I may have jumped into the pond too soon, and that learning how to swim first might have been wiser. I'm not sure I'm "getting it," but I'm in, so here goes.
If I'm following the chain correctly (and I suspect I'm not), here are the responses so far, starting with Alice and ending with me:
I think I'm now supposed to tag someone else or leave it open-ended for anyone to join in. I'm choosing the latter, since I'd be in trouble were someone to ask me how it works. In any case, it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.
This week's prompt 100 words of prose or poetry is "Swimsuit." I'm diving in with this entry. For more, visit here and check out the comments.
The Big Day
“Bye, Papa.”
There’d be hell to pay if he knew where she was going, but as far as Papa knew, Millie was headed to work, where she scooped ice cream for the tourists like a good girl.
Not today! Today was the day of the big dive she’d been waiting for all summer. She went to the shop, but only to change into her new swimsuit in the storeroom out back.
At the pier, Millie climbed up to the diving platform. She waved to the crowd below, then she and Baron soared off the platform, rushing to meet their future.
Click here to learn more about the women who rode The Diving Horses of Atlantic City.
This video profiles the most famous of these women. It's pretty interesting (despite all the typos).
This week's prompt 100 words of prose or poetry is "consent." This is my entry. For more, visit here and check out the comments.
A Blunder of Consent
When I withheld my consent,
I thought of you as someone
Who would understand, someone
Who saw me as I am, someone
Who knew that the picture I paint of my life
Doesn’t include the colors of too much, too soon.
That’s not the way I see myself.
When you assumed my consent,
You considered yourself first, as someone
Who sees only himself reflected in my eyes, someone
Who is the center of his own universe, someone
Who gets what he wants, when he wants it,
God’s gift to women:
That’s the way you see yourself.
The young woman woke and looked out the window. What a welcome sight it was after seeing nothing but shades of grey for so long! The sky was bright blue, dotted with fluffy pillows of clouds, and everything seemed touched by a warm yellow glow.
She loved days like this, when the delicate springtime sun has finally chased off the lingering chill of a long hash winter. After months of being locked indoors, she was anxious to go out and perform her annual welcome to warm weather. Today was the day she’d hang the wash out on the clothes line for the first time this year.
She took her time pinning the wet laundry to the line, and enjoyed every minute of it. This always seemed like a new beginning, a chance to start over. She hung the sheets first, and as she started on the clothes, she laughed at the sound of Tommy playing between the sheets. He loved darting back and forth, shouting, “I’m invisible. You can’t see me!” At five years old, being invisible was his favorite fantasy. Every now and then, he’d be very quiet, and creep up slowly, popping out of his cover of white, and shout, “Boo!”
She braced herself for his sneak attack. He’d been quiet for a few moments, and she knew she was about to be “surprised.” But as she fastened one of her husband’s shirt to the line, she realized the attack was too long in coming. Something must have distracted him.
“Tommy, come out of there now. I don’t want you getting my clean sheets all dirty.” She waited, but Tommy didn’t come out. “I mean it, young man. I have a lot of laundry to hang, and I don’t have time to come find you. We’ll play hide and seek when I’m done. Tommy? Tommy!"
She started pushing her way through the wet, white forest of sheets. " TOMMY"
There was nothing but silence. Tommy was nowhere to be found anywhere between the sheets.
"T-O-M-M-Y ! ! ! ! !"
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Hearing his wife screaming in the backyard, he hurried out to the back yard as fast as his cane would allow him. He could see her feet, but she was hidden from sight between the sheets. He tore the wet sheets from the line and tossed them aside. Reaching her, he gathered the shrieking old woman into his arms. “Sshhh,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Sshhh.”
This was his annual welcome to warm weather, he thought, as he tried to calm her. It was the first nice day of springtime, a day just like that day thirty-seven years ago, when their son Tommy had disappeared from between the sheets.
This week's prompt 100 words of prose or poetry is "confessed," and this is my confession. For more, visit here and check out the comments.
Her Confession, Delivered Too Late
She and her new husband stood waiting to be introduced for the first time as husband and wife. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m honored to present Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Johnson!”
The doors opened, and as they walked though to join their guests, the room burst into a loud cacophony of sound. She gasped, and looked around in astonishment. Scattered around the reception hall, several of his relatives were standing, joyfully banging on pots and pans with serving spoons!
Laughing, her husband said, “It’s called a callithump. It’s for good luck.”
“Um, honey,” she confessed, “I don’t really like percussion music.”
My "mom," Titanium of Element 22, told me to go out and play. One should always do as Mother says.
So here's the game we're playing:
1) Go to your photo files, select the 8th photo folder.
2) Select the 8th photo in that folder.
3) Post that photo along with the story behind it.
4) Then challenge 8 blogging friends to do the same.
Here's my crazy 8th.
(The photo isn't one I took, obviously, but it is the 8th in the 8th, so here it is. I was always afraid it would show up on the Internet. I just didn't know I would be the one to put it there.)
The story? Long ago and far away, in a job long since finished, the costume prize was mine.
You'll find my fiction and poetry here. For a taste of non-fiction creative writing and occasional ranting and raving, visit me at PattiKen and the Muses: Home Away from Home
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To see what else the muses are up to, check out "My Other Stuff" on the tab above.
PattiKen
When I'm not in Massachusetts, you can find me following my muses hither and yon, shouting, "Hey, wait up!"
