Prompt #106
Do. Not. Fall.
Hello.
Surprise! It’s me.
What a world. I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty exhausted. I’m guessing you’re exhausted, too. Let’s be exhausted together.
I honestly don’t know if I’m just popping in here for one day or if I’ll continue to post. But here I am and I hope you’re glad to hear from me. It’s funny—I can see all of your faces in my head, though in truth, I don’t know what most of you look like. In my head, you are all beautiful!
So, yes, it’s Friday and not Monday, all the usual things have flown out the window. As my husband tells me when life goes haywire: Embrace it!
Here’s a little story, which is also a prompt.
Maybe it’s not a story. I’d call it more of an “entry.” Entry into what? I don’t know. An entry into my heart, I guess.
It’s not the best story in the universe, but I kind of like it.
How I Got Here
Two doors north was a man who had been one of the kids in some of the Our Gang movies. He was the fat kid, though he was a regular-sized adult. Across the street and up one was a widow, German, with a handsome son who was never around. There was the couple directly across the street. Green house, carport. He was a drinker. She put up with his drinking. They had a Golden Retriever named Sam who wandered up to the playfield and we’d yell at him to go home. There was the sad house where one of the daughters had died. Then the house with nothing out of place, the father ill at ease, the mother with her hair dyed black. Much later, the son told me that the mother had fallen off the toilet and broken her arm. I can’t tell you how I often I think of this while sitting on the toilet. How does one fall off? How is that even possible? The older couple across the street with their three kids: the father had been in a car accident, and his rebuilt face made him look like a gentle monster. The son grew up to work in some kind of laboratory. He breathed in a chemical that killed him. One of the sisters tried to teach me French. There was the girl on the corner with puppies and a rakish father. I don’t know how I knew he was rakish. Probably the hair and the sportscar. Also, they had a motorboat. Where was the mother? I don’t know. There was the yellow house with the mechanic who lived with his stiff wife and three kids. One dealt drugs, one played the drums at all hours, and one was a girl my age who was my friend. Every day, the mother combed the girl’s hair into tight pigtails just above her ears. That family was Christian Scientist and the dad died when he had a heart attack and wouldn’t let his wife take him to the hospital. My house had a basketball hoop in the driveway, a psychotic mother, a work-a-holic father, a bi-polar daughter, and two brothers, always fighting. I was the youngest, hiding in my bedroom, shades always drawn, doing nothing. I told myself as a child that my dreams were my reality and my reality was only a dream. I was a miserable child, teenager, young adult, adult, middle-aged person, and now I am a less miserable, but still miserable, older person. I live inside of my mind and it’s a mess in there. There are bullies, there are smart alecks, there are truth tellers. I’m always playing catch up. Maybe everyone is like that, I don’t know. There have only been a handful of times in my life when I knew what I wanted. I wanted to get married and I did. I wanted to have a child and I did. I wanted to live in a nice house and I did. I wanted to leave my husband and I did. Now we are at the present day. I want to be left alone most of the time, but I also want people to call me. I want the people who call me to know that I won’t answer the phone, just leave a message. I want the message to be short. Text would be better. I want God to show up already. I want a clean colonoscopy and a clear reading on my mammogram. I want to drink more water. I want to lose those five pounds. I want my children to win awards and give thank you speeches and the first thing they say is, I want to thank my mother. I want to read books. I never, ever, want to fall off the toilet. I want to enjoy my life and then die.
Okay, you know what’s next:
THE PROMPT
Write your own story called “How I Got Here.” It can be about the neighborhood where you grew up, like mine. Or it can be about some other way you “got here.”
Alternate prompt: Write a story that repeats the word “I want” over and over at the start of each sentence, as my little entry does toward the end. (Anaphora!)
Second alternate: Write whatever you want and post it. I’ve thrown out the rules with my old coffeepot.
Please comment on each other’s stories! Or write me love notes! Or write each other love notes! Or whatever.
That’s it! That’s the whole prompt!
I lived in a yellow stucco farmhouse at the edge of the wilderness and sometimes I wandered into that wild woods. I lived with mother, father, and w two sisters and a dog called Wedge, Wedgle, or Wiggles. Father was crazy. He shot at the neighbor's airplane saying it was hustling our cows and he heard voices coming out of the ground. I was his favorite child, he told me so and was afraid that I would fall in the pond and drown. He died from a bullet fired by the sheriff who came to question him. I miss him a lot.
My mother gave birth to me 7 months after she married my father. Then along came a sister, and another sister, and then a little brother. I went off to college, my little brother died, I got a job, I met my wife, we had a daughter, we got divorced, I met my second wife, her kids both hated me, they both got married, they both had sons, now they like me, now my daughter's having a baby, now I'm retired, playing a lot of tennis, wondering how much longer I'll be alive.