Grab a book on the shelf to your right (to reach the shelves on the right you would have to get out of your seat, and thus, waste valuable composition time… just explaining this is taking too long).
Flip through the pages randomly, pulling out 10 words/phrases of note and write them down.
I’ll wait…
Ah… “Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology.” Nice pick.
And the list is…
Hades
Dismembered body
Python
Eternal years
Embarrassment
Memphis (I’m know this refers to Egypt, but Tennessee connections will be allowed)
Treatise on rhetoric
Redundant self-sacrifice
Protector
Voyage
Good, good… Now, in the time remaining, the challenge is to use all the words and terms in a very short story… in the order they were selected. You are to highlight, underline or otherwise bring attention to the used words. The clock is ticking… literally. I’d start writing if I were you.
“Aw, Hades!”
“Watch your mouth young man. Don’t you know there are little ones listening?” she said gesturing at the small ones in the backseat.
“What? Am I supposed to say ‘H-E-multiple hockey sticks?’ They’ll learn the words soon enough; and that’s if the TV hasn’t taught them the words yet.”
Concern settled into well-worn creases on Mrs. Carlton’s forehead. She couldn’t have been more flustered if she was hosting a party and went to check the neighbor’s coats, and a dismembered body tumbled out of the closet (“And Lord knows,” she thought, “Ida May is a person that wouldn’t let you forget something like that.”) Could the precious dear hearts be so easily corrupted? Was there no chance of doing things right this time and preventing them from turning out like the surly sitting to her right.
Up the road, a squirrel paused partway when crossing the pavement. The simple nut-addled mind didn’t seem to notice the impending danger in the approaching metal behemoth with its distracted driver. The squirrel merely chirped and switched its bushy tail.
The moody teenager was a little more alert, however, and made a break with his attitude to point out the clueless mammal.
“Um, Mom?”
“What now!?”
She had been concentrating on the idea of v-chip technology, wondering if it could actually be implanted in children and would temporarily render them blind if they looked at something inappropriate. The idea had drawn her in like a python luring its prey with its weaving head, and she didn’t appreciate being snapped out of the trance.”
BUMP! BUMP!
“Never mind,” the teenager mumbled and punctuated with a shrug.
A sickening realization dawned on the driver. The squirrel had moved on to its eternal years. The mother, however, was especially feeling her advancing age and her mortality at the twins in the backseat directed their curiosity at the unexpected noise.
“What was that, Mommy?”
“Yeah, what that?”
“Uh…” a groan escaped from Mrs. Carlton’s lips. Embarrassment streaked her cheeks. She glanced over at her older son for support. By the expectant grin on his lips, it seems he had decided to go from openly resistant to silently subversive.
“Mommy?! What made that boom-boom noise,” the first twin still asked.
“Yeah, what boom-boom?” The second twin, having been bested in birthing by 15 minutes, he had been following his brother’s lead ever since.
Having instantly forgotten her former concern about poisonous outside influences, Mrs. Carlton wished she had allowed her husband to spring for a mini-van that had one of those backseat DVD players. In lieu of directly addressing the fuzzy speed bump behind them, she switched on the radio.
“Walking in Memphis” began to come over the speakers.
“Now security they did not see him, they just hovered `round his tomb.”
“Wow. That’s ironic, don’t you think, Mom?”
She gave no other initial response than switching off the switch. She thought, “How quickly one can go on offense to defense.” Mrs. Carton kept starting a mental treatise on rhetoric, but it always collapsed before she could put syllables to words.
Fortunately for her, the backseat twins had already moved on to one of their favorite subjects: food.
“I’m hungry, Mommy? When we gonna eat?” said the young ringleader.
“Yeah, hungry. When eat?”
Mrs. Carlton was no fool and seized upon this graciously offered out.
“As I told you when we first got in the car, dears, we are going to the store to pick up food for Daddy’s barbeque.”
Her eldest son noticed his mother’s escape attempt and with a chutzpah only found in adolescents, decided to bar the exit.
“It’s too bad that squirrel didn’t know we were looking for meat elsewhere. That makes it kinda a redundant self-sacrifice, don’t you think?”
“Sqwirl? What sqwirl? I want to see the sqwirl, Mommy!”
“Yeah! Want see sqwirl.”
In lieu of her eldest’s attitude and the poor enunciation of her youngest, Mrs. Carlton briefly considered rolling the vehicle.
She took a breath, however, and tried to think positive.
“Mothers are supposed to be supportive,” she thought. “There are supposed to act as nurturers and protectors.”
“And the mortgage won’t be paid off for another six years, still.”
“What’s that, Mom?”
Mrs. Carlton hadn’t noticed she’d started to vocalize her thoughts, but that last bit of verve helped her find her backbone. Teenagers aren’t the only ones who can employ attitude.
“Honey, did you ever think of your allowance as a right or a suspendable privilege. With your answer, please keep in mind your recent actions and the impending school trip to Florida.”
And then she gave him a toothy smile that reminded him that, in nature, some mothers eat their young. This was the first time he could remember his mother winning a verbal bout, and as much as this thought pained him, his brain refused to come up with a final retort in the pearly glow of that grin.
For the rest of the trip to the store, and the subsequent voyage home, the teenager was silently submissive, even lugging the groceries into the house without being reminded.
With the final point, it was game-set-match for Mrs. Carlton.
“And all it took,” she thought, “was one squirrel being sent to it's divine reward.”
“Or maybe Hades,” she said.
She giggled at that thought. And then, after making sure no one like Ida May had heard her, she went into her house to finish getting ready for the barbeque.
