First off, let me apologize to everyone who has been entering a word verification for comments to my blog! I just turned it off again for probably the fifth time over the past year and can't figure out why it keeps defaulting back to the word verification! If you have read this post and notice a CAPTCHA pop up in the future, please let me know because it is NOT meant to be on this blog!
Second, due to the busy schedule of A to Z, I am finding it difficult to keep up with judging and posting #WeekendWritercize results, so I have decided to suspend it for the rest of the month of April. Look for a strong comeback in May! For those unfamiliar with the #WeekendWritercize, it is a flash fiction competition that starts Saturday morning and closes Sundays at midnight Pacific time. Check out the tab for more info.
Ok, now ... onto the meat of the linked challenge.
Sometimes we run across two items or people that clearly do not look like they belong together.
For example, I found a clawfoot bathtub in an open field while hiking at the foot of the Alps. Very odd.
Or think of Hugh Hefner and his teenage bunnies. Were he not famous, an elderly man nuzzling the neck of a young buxom vixen would certainly prompt some questions.
How about a cowboy at the Opera? Or a Ferrari at a rodeo?
For today's exercise, think of a couple of things that don't quite fit together and find the link between them. You can come up with the two unrelated items or people on your own, or you can pick from a few prompts below.
writercize: Find and explain the link between two seemingly unrelated people or items found together.
Here are a few options to get you started:
- wedding ring in a shoe store
- wine glass in kindergarten classroom
- yuppie and hippie
- homeless man and soccer coach
- cassette tape at Apple store
- baseball bat in bowling alley
- textbook and picture book
- scarecrow on skyscraper rooftop
- indiginous amazonian tribal member on great wall of china
- Queen of England and American farmer
Pick any of the unrelated pairs above, or create your own, and create a reason they are together!
Post as a comment, and be sure to link to your blog so that I can visit!
Click "read more" for writercizer sample response.
writercizer sample response:
Despite 35 years in the big city, J.B. Jones couldn't shake the feeling that a part of him would have fared better staying back home in Wyoming. The first thing he did upon arriving in New York was to abbreviate his name. Jay Bob didn't go over well in investment banking circles; J.B. sounded much more professional and like the trust fund kids he wished to emulate.
He moved forward, forgot about the fields and endless horizons and set his sights vertically, looking up the sleek walls of the skyscrapers for inspiration instead. But millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours of work later, Jay Bob knew what he really needed was another horizon.
When he bought his Central Park penthouse, he made sure there was a rooftop garden.
The garden didn't need flowers or fruit trees like the rest of the rooftop gardens in New York. It didn't need lounge chairs or wading pools or organic gardners. It needed a taste of home. So when J.B. moved in, he went to the rooftop, planted some wheat and put up a scarecrow.
Lying on the ground, he looked up at the scarecrow and saw nothing but the heavens above, stretching out to eternity, just like the horizons of his youth, and he knew that his days of looking up had ended. It was time in his life to look back and bring the young man he had left so far behind to meet and calm the greedy, fast-paced middle-aged man he had become.
Shucks! I thought I had it all together but the story kinda got wacky, lol. Still, here's some stuff that I tried to conjure up for this particular exercise:
ReplyDelete10 minutes away from the morning school bell, Mrs. Preston adjusts her navy blue skirt in a panic. Like a true champ who is accustomed to never getting caught with her guard down, she manages to prep the days' lesson on multiplying and dividing numbers, bring the student desks back to order and borrow a gray blazer from the administrative office's lost-and-found to freshen her day-old wardrobe and prevent suspicion.
As Martha and Brady enter the room -- one with excuses for not completing homework and another searching for a missing article of clothing, Mrs. Preston knows that she's run out of time but feels confident in her ability to keep the days' focus on those upcoming Standardized State Exams. More students fill their seats while Brady tries to negotiate some extra credit. Martha, however, is curious to know why Mr. Preston's neck tie is on her seat -- especially when his Science class is located two floors below theirs in the building.
Just as Mrs. Preston tries to offer Martha a reasonable explanation for the tie, her young and most promising pupil diverts attention to this oddly familiar gray blazer. Curiosity builds within Martha's eyes and demeanor. Outside, Mrs. Preston is trying to hold cover while inside, she regrets agreeing to the last-minute anniversary surprise that now has her potentially going down for theft.
If this wasn't bad enough, an ever-so mischievous Brady is taking a sip of what's left in the wine glass that his Teacher of the Year forgot to remove from their classroom's windowsill.
Standardized state exams aside, Mrs. Preston never thought that a day would come when she wished that her students couldn't do the math!
The end.
~Nicole
Blog: The Madlab Post
@MadlabPost on Twitter
Very clever! What a great exercise to spark my imagination. I'll be thinking about this one - wine glass in kindergarten classroom. Something is bound to come to me and when it does, I'll come back and share it.
ReplyDeleteThank you to tell us so much useful information. So nice sharing. I’m glad to read it.
ReplyDelete