A quote: “Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.” ~ Amelia Earhart
I’ll start with a story …
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“You upset?” Memaw asked.
I couldn’t look up, my eyes threatened to spill into my lap.
“Edie been asked to the dance, but she said “no”!”
“Shut-up, tick!” I glared at my little brother. She sat down close to me. “Why, hon? Boy not please you?” Memaw slipped a finger under my chin, lifting to read my eyes.
That wise smile. “Don’t count out your memaw” she winked. I watched, she leaving our two-room shack, walking to the lake, stretching her arms to the water, murmuring, hands glowing, gathering clouds of blue.
I would have my dress and my dance.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock, standard license
Hitchiking. Summer, 1978, from Portland Oregon to San Francisco, where my older brother lives. I just did two weeks as a drywall apprentice in Portland to make enough money to make the trip. Plan is to then fly to Omaha to start my second year of law school. First ride are two older women. Keep in mind, I am a bearded young man (from a summer of logging in Montana) and they picked me up anyway. Incredibly engaging conversation. Next ride was a neanderthal truck driver. Not much conversation. Imagine doing this activity in 2020…..
Navig8r says: To escape her fate as concubine to the head magician, the daughter of the empress’s dressmaker turned herself into a butterfly and disappeared into the heavens. Annoyed by a gnat, the divine emperor ordered the magician to find the and repair the leak in the sky through which he supposed the gnat had entered. The grieving dressmaker petitioned for the task so she could search the sky for her daughter. Three thousand seven years later, the CCP published a photoshopped picture, proclaiming that the world owes China a debt for ongoing cleaning and maintenance of the sky.
Heinlein writes how scientists locked a monkey in a room with only two ways out, and watched to see which the monkey would find. It found the third way.
I wanted to try that. I didn’t have a monkey, but I have my little brother. One day when mom left, I locked Karl in his room. Out the window, into the tree. Or somehow open the door. “What’s the third way?” I wondered. I could hear Karl puttering around.
Three hours later he was still puttering, when the front door opened and there stood Mom… and Karl. “You are supposed to watch him when he’s playing out front, Jim,” Mom scolded. Puttering continued.
Wide-eyed, trembling, I unlocked the bedroom door.
Mom screamed as a monkey ran past her and out.
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