Prompt #117
Child's Play
Good morning!
I’m fairly certain…
…that many of you subscribe to Story Club. (If you aren’t a subscriber, take a look!) Right now, paid subscribers are discussing a story (“Feelings” written by Ruth Ozeki), which appears in Ozeki’s new collection of stories, The Typing Lady.
The story is about two young girls—classmates—who are given a school assignment: they are to perform an act of compassion and then write an essay about it. I won’t give away any more of the plot except to say that there is another character in the story, a girl who is thought of as strange and pathetic. None of the other students want to be friends with her.
Oh, childhood! So painful at times.
Reading Ozeki’s story, I was reminded of the strange girl in my class at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle. Her name escapes me now, but I very clearly recall the way the other girls, myself included, avoided her at all costs. I must have been in about the third grade, and I had my own set of strange behaviors. I still sucked my thumb, for instance. In fact, I sucked both of my thumbs, and everyone knew it. But somehow, I still had friends on the playground and wasn’t ever ostracized.
This girl, though…
One day, she came up to me on the playground and handed me a note, then ran away while I read it. The note said something like, “I’d like to be your friend.” Or maybe, “Can I be your friend?”
You can probably guess where this is going.
Was I compassionate and kind? Did I invite the strange girl—who had bravely reached out to me and to no one else—to join us on the playground? Did I say, “yes, of course, you can be my friend”? You know already I did not. In fact, I didn’t think twice about it. I remember crumpling up her carefully written note, tossing it away, and then going back to running around with my girlfriends on the playground until the bell rang. I don’t think I even glanced in her direction.
I’ve lived with my actions ever since, and I’ve thought of that moment many times. I hope that girl grew up to have friends and family and a feeling of connection. I’ve been able to find all of those things, but still a pang exists for that moment of cruelty. Little girl, wherever you are—I’m deeply sorry.
Okay, time for the prompt.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a story about some form of childhood cruelty.
The cruelty does not have to be huge, major, incredibly dramatic.
If “cruelty” doesn’t speak to you, choose something else, something with less power. You can write about a child who stole something. A child who did one wrong thing. A child who talks back. A child who gets in trouble for something they did not do.
The point is: Childhood.
Post your story in the comments, 400 words or less if you want me to read it.
Note: The strange girl from my elementary school—her name came to me! And so I looked her up on the google machine. Guess what? She’s fine! I can sleep at night again!
Note #2: A teeny tiny story of mine was published this past week over at FlashFlood. It’s called Freytag’s Triangle. For the complete 2026 FlashFlood Journal list, go here. Many, many stories to read! To learn more about FlashFlood—and perhaps enter one of your pieces next year—look here.
Wrote this this morning, before the prompt came to us... weird...
She sat next to me on the train.
She let me hold her hand, she held mine on her lap, between her two.
I pointed out some sheep, and she looked.
I pointed out cows, church steeples, a winding stream. She looked every time.
She liked our journey more and more. I told her the tractor was a Massey Ferguson.
She squeezed my hand, and said, ‘My little man.’
I gently pushed my head into her arm, and when she didn’t lean away, I pushed in more, until my head was resting on one side. I nearly fell asleep, there, warm in the sunshine, the green fields passing, the smell of her so close.
I was wearing my new uniform, and I had done up my own tie at last, and she hadn’t needed to tut at me about it. I wriggled my toes in my new shoes, which were very loose on me, and the hard leather had already rubbed the skin off the pointy bone at my ankle, but I had polished them doubly, and she was pleased with how shiny they were.
She looked beautiful, dressed in her smartest jacket, with a long patterned skirt and high-heeled boots. She had swirled her hair up and clipped it tightly behind her, and had let me watch her at the mirror, sitting on the bed behind as she pressed her lips onto tissue paper. She tied a blue silk scarf around her neck, and it lifted in the breeze after she let me open the window when the carriage got too stuffy.
I carried the suitcase along the platform, and the driver needed me to help him lift it into the taxi. As we pulled up at he school, I said, ‘Look at this!’
The headmaster greeted her with a handshake, and she looked so happy and at home. He took us to his office, poured her a cup of tea from a fine pot. She lifted it by the saucer without making a sound.
‘Shall we show you to your dorm?’ He said. I nodded and hopped down and reached for her hand, but she still had the saucer.
The bedroom was enormous, with tall windows, and beds for everyone. The headmaster stopped by the end of a bad, and said, ‘You can put your suitcase on there for now,’ and, nodding gravely to me, added, ’that’s yours.’
I heaved the suitcase with all our things onto the bed and turned.
‘Which is Mummy’s bed?’ I asked.
The headmaster looked at me, then turned to my mother.
‘Where will you sleep?’ I said.
She shook my hand, and her boots clipped steadily on the stone tiles, all the way to the far end of the dorm, and I could hear them even after she had passed out of the door.
This might need more specificity but here's a try with a 10 word story. I'm trying for fewer words these days. :)
I was five in grade two. I am still five.