23/03/2014 – tnkerr-Writing Prompts and Practice

22 March 2014

The prompts are:

It looked soft and supple
Shortbread
We all had to do it

Begin Writing
We had three prompts for the group today. None of them were very inspiring but we all had the same ones. We all had to do it. We all had to write.

The first prompt was “It looked soft and supple”. I rejected this one almost immediately, too easy to get myself in trouble with this unless I wrote about water balloons or something.

The second was “shortbread”. Now this one had some promise. I decided to run with it.

So I did.

Little Mary Ann Johnston donned her green uniform and grabbed her order form. She yelled as she headed out the door, “Bye Mom, I’m going to sell cookies.”

“OK dear don’t forget about your tennis lesson at one.”

“Got it Mom, have fun with your garden club.”

Mary Ann had mapped out her route in detail before she began. Elm Street was where she was to start today. She headed that way.

The first door she knocked on was the Jones house. They were always good for at least three boxes of shortbread.

“Good morning Mary Ann,” said Mrs. Jones as she swung open the front door.

“Good morning to you Mrs. Jones. Its cookie time again, our favorite time of year. Shall I mark you down for shortbreads? How many boxes would you like?”

“Oh Mary Ann, I just bought five boxes not more than 20 minutes ago. I couldn’t possibly get more than that. Why, I’d get as big as a house. The girls were from your troop. I thought you had sent them here.”

“That’s OK Mrs. Jones. They must have gotten confused. Thanks for supporting the scouts.” Mary Ann smiled and turned back towards the street.

When she got back down the walkway she was steamed. Somebody was moving into her territory. This meant war.

Mary Ann went back to Third Street. She decided to check the perimeter of today’s grid and find the interlopers. She did not have to go far. On Apple, just two streets down she saw them. It was Helen and Barbie. They were pulling a wagon with Barbie’s little sister, Skipper.

Mary Ann picked up a branch from beneath the Larson’s persimmon tree and headed towards the other girls.

Helen saw her first and elbowed Barbie in the ribs. Both girls stopped and watched Mary Ann advance, slapping the branch into her open palm with each step.

“Hi Mary Ann,” said Helen with honey dripping off each word. “What are you doing here?”

“The question is not what I’m doing here,” Mary Ann said, “It’s what are you doing here you snotty bitch? This is my territory, you can’t sell here.”

“Can too”
Time is up. Put down your writing implements and step away from the paper.

Daily Prompt: Mr. Sandman

What kind of sleeper are you? Do you drop off like a stone and awaken refreshed, or do you need pitch black and silence to drift off to dream?

***

Electronics Technician First Class R.V. Winkle finished his breakfast, put his plate and cup in the window for the Mess Cooks to wash, and headed to upper level on the after ladder, to ESM. He needed to calibrate one of the display units there and Chief Irving had promised to meet him, be his “Safety Watch”. There was 15,000 volts running around in that display and RV didn’t want to be sticking his hands in there without a safety watch.

“Mornin’ Chief” RV said when he slid the door open and spotted his Division Chief snoozing on the bench.

“Hey Rip, how was breakfast today?”

“Pretty good, I guess. Petey’s cookin’ but even he can’t fuck up powdered eggs any worse than they already are.”

The boat had been at sea for almost two months, and the crew had been eating powdered eggs for breakfast a while now. Actually the boat had been gone from port longer than that, but they had been underwater for almost two months, this time.

“Who’s got the watch Chief?” RV asked.

“Beauford does,” Chief Irving said. “He stuck his head in here a bit ago then went to Control to plot the NavSystem offsets.”

ESM was small. The space for a crewmember to work was about six feet long and less than three feet wide. The outboard side was all electronic equipment that the ET of the Watch would operate when the boat was at Periscope Depth. The inboard side of the room had a three foot long bench, where the Chief had been napping, and a safe. There was a work table that could be folded down from the inboard wall. When it was folded down there was about fourteen inches between the edge of the table and the face of the arrayed electronics. The bench was unusable when the table was deployed.

The Chief stood up, stepped aft and turned sideways. RV slid forward, past him. This was a dance the entire crew knew well. You did it every time you met someone in a passageway. Space is limited on these Anemone class boats.

The calibration did not take long and when completed they secured the equipment. Chief Irving headed to the goat locker to catch some rack time. RV went to control to check in with Beauford and found him talking with the Quartermaster looking at the charts. He looked at the depth gauge and saw they were deep.

“What’s shaking Beauf?”

“Not much man, I’m exhausted. Worked on quals the entire time between watches but made some good progress.”

RV looked at him and could see he was tired. “Why don’t you go hit the rack, Beauford? I’ll take your watch”

“I can’t do that to you Rip.” Beauford said, “You never sleep.”

“My Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandaddy got enough sleep for several generations of Winkles,” RV said, “I don’t need to sleep.”

***