Flash Fiction #6

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:

Image courtesy of jenny downing via Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

 Here's my piece: Element of Surprise

Obviously she wasn't dragged. There were her footprints, long toed and slightly clawed. They moved steadily in a column. She was either a willing member of this party, or had decided not to resist.

They must have her flanked by the big girls--Thunderfeet. The footprints are wide and close set, pressed deeply into the sand.  He wasn't sure what they were, exactly, but they were tanks.  Hard to kill. He'd need some serious firepower and some luck. It would be like killing a polar bear. What doesn't kill it, pisses it off. And there were two. He missed Angelique. They used to do this sort of thing together. "You want the one on the left or the right?" Famous last words. May the Spirit Guard her Soul.

There must be a robot of some sort with them, too.  Something with a narrow track. That meant that they already knew he was coming. Downwind makes no difference to heat sensors and long range tracking. There would be no element of surprise.

Moreso than the robot, though, he was worried about the tiny holes in the sand. Those tracks came later and were intermixed among all the other tracks. There were a lot of them. Someone else was tracking them, too. He suspected their intentions were even less honorable than his. If it was who he thought it was, none of them were coming out of this alive.

If he could get her back, he was planning to sell her back to her family.  The Thunderfeet group probably wanted her for a breeding camp. It would kill her eventually, but she'd be treated well enough till then.  The Slashers probably didn't know or care who she was. They just liked to get at what was inside, to pull apart the soft things and study the pieces. 

Suddenly, he stopped. His entire body tensed. He whirled, just in time to dodge the first blade. The tracks must circle around up ahead. Damn he missed Angelique. No one had his back this time. Maybe he could surprise her in the afterworld.

Flash Fiction #5

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:

Image courtesy of Rakesh Rocky via Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

Here's my piece:

Look at him up there. Really somebody now, huh? With his club patch and his shoulders all pushed back. The press loves him. They love to tell us how he grew up poor and worked his way through university cleaning swimming pools. A real rags to riches story. American dream shit.

They leave out the part when he was terrible at it.  Half the time he was late, the other half of the time he didn't show up at all.  They do the work when you're not at home, you know, so sometimes we thought he'd been then when he hadn't. A dirty pool doesn't show right away. 

We fired him when my little sister ended up with a bacterial infection that we traced to the swimming pool he was supposed to be maintaining for us.  I saw him sometime after that and threatened to kick his ass. He deserved it--him not doing his job sent my little sister to the hospital! But my friends tugged me away before I could get a good swing in. Probably a good thing. I'd have felt better then, but it would've opened a whole different can of worms.

His side of the story? I've heard it. It's not about race or class. I couldn't care less what color he is or where his family came from before they lived here. I hate him, but it's not because of any of that stuff. I just say that if you take on a job, you do it do the best of your ability. I don't really care that he can run fast or that he's good with the ball. To me, he's just the guy I fired. I hope he gets his ass kicked.

Flash Fiction Piece #4

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is: 

Image courtesy of TheDreamSky on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

My piece:  Falling in Love

It had come to that moment.

It had been an excellent dinner full of light banter and flirtation. She'd been pleased to find that the step between "friend" and "date" hadn't been as awkward as she'd feared. She could still eat in front of him like a normal person and laugh at her lack of grace with chopsticks. He still ducked his head when he said something witty, just as he always had in all the years of their friendship. If anything, it was less awkward now. They could acknowledge the subtext.  It was the first time they had both been free at the same time.

After dinner, they decided to walk a bit. He offered his hand, and she took it, pleased at the way her fingers fit into his. His hands were very warm. Hers were usually cold. It was nice. It felt so easy. It scared her at little. Love had never been easy. She worried there would be a catch.

He suggested a direction leading to an overlook, a view of the city below. She wondered if he was staging a kiss. She hoped he was. She knew him to be a man of romantic gestures, a man who thinks about things like lighting and ambiance, who holds snapshots of memory in the deep pockets of his heart. She giggled a little nervously.

He began to swing her arm, like they were children skipping together. She laughed again and, looking up into his face felt a lurch, a tug somewhere in the depths of her. It was then that she tripped. He followed her a step later, stepping into the same hole. Somehow they didn't end up on the ground, but  standing holding each other's arms for support. The world stopped and they breathed together, still giddy.

If this had been a movie, they would have kissed there. But, this is real life, and they both felt suddenly shy, so they linked elbows and walked around the hole in the sidewalk together, to the overlook. Standing, looking at the lights of the city and its bridges below them, she slid her hand around his waist in an easy way, as if she'd always known how to fit their bodies together. "You think that's why they call it falling in love?" she quipped.  He laughed. And that was when he kissed her.

Flash Fiction Project: Piece #3

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:


Image courtesy of radcarper on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

My piece: Lucky Bastard

My brother has always been the lucky one. We went to the same schools and earned the same degrees, but who scored the prestigious job right out of college? We played on the same teams as teenagers, him two years ahead of me. I was the one to make all-state, but everyone remembers the homecoming game that he won with a last minute mid-court shot. It was true even when we were little kids and Mom would give us quarters for the gumball machine. My quarter would get stuck and I'd get nothing. His would spin and the machine would spit out an extra prize. 

It's not that I haven't had successes of my own. I own my own company. I won the John Fritz Medal--the bragging rights alone will keep me in jobs until I retire even if I never have another good idea.  I'm the one who got married to the right girl, stayed married and has three amazing kids. But I didn't get here by luck. I earned it. 

Even Max's worst luck is lucky. After his first marriage ended, he took a trip around the world to find himself and ended up in India, out of money and phoning our parents for a plane ride home.  It was the lowest point of his life, he says, even while spinning adventure tales for my daughters after Sunday dinner. On that trip, he saved the life of the millionaire who employs him now. This spring he's going to marry that millionaire's daughter.

So, when we took the fishing trip, I admit to being more than a little competitive. It was ridiculous really, how important it was to win. I wanted to catch the biggest fish, the most fish, to have the best story about the one that got away.  I'm surprised Max could stand to be with me I was such a pain in the ass. 

I was going on about something, bragging probably, when Max fell off the boat on the third day. He didn't resurface for one long second, then two, then three. I jumped in before it could be four. He had gotten tangled in a piece of netting, and was hanging upside down beside the boat, flailing. Lucky for him--I had my knife on my belt. 

When I told him later that he's always been a lucky bastard, he laughed. "You are my luck, Steve," he said. 

"So does that mean that I'm the bastard?" I asked. 

"Guess we'll have to ask Mom."

Flash Fiction Project: Piece #2

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is: 

Image courtesy of Martin Burns on Flickr Creative Commons. (Attribution Link)

Here's my piece: 

It had been a very good party indeed. Ralph was a little wobbly, so Ted and Dan decided to walk him home. Ted promised to pick him up in the morning and get him back to his car.  

Ralph walked with his head down, watching his feet. He had not dressed for a cold snowy walk and regretted now his shiny shoes with the slick bottoms and the absence of a hat. Even a ballcap like Dan's would at least have kept the snowflakes from obscuring his glasses.  Ted's dorky anorak now seemed much less dorky. Ted wasn't freezing his ass off because his coat actually repelled the moisture.

But Ralph had hoped to make an impression on Jenn, who worked at his office. so, he'd worn the dressy coat an ex-girlfriend had told him made him look like he came from money. Not very warm. Not very practical. But quite nice looking. Of course, he hadn't even been wearing the jacket when he saw Jenn, so he probably could have worn his usual barn coat and been more comfortable now.

Between the alcohol and the snow, Ralph was finding the walk a little too 3-D for his taste. So he trusted to his friends to steer him true and let his thoughts wander back to Jenn. She was very pretty, but not in that untouchable, over the top way.  He hoped she wasn't out of his league. She'd looked lovely in the soft white sweater and grey skirt. He'd told her so and she had smiled. He wondered now if commenting too specifically on the sweater put off a gay vibe. But it seemed too pushy to comment on her body directly. It was so hard to make sure you made the right kind of impression.

 Ted grabbed Ralph's arm at the corner, stopping him from wandering out in front of delivery truck that was taking the corner a little too tightly. They were just across the street from his apartment now. 

Ralph thanked his friends and turned to salute them after he got the door unlocked. He had just closed the door behind him when his cell phone rang.  "Hello? Oh! Hello, Jenn!" 

Yes, it had been a very good party, indeed.

Stretched Thin

So I found out today what my current limit is on single parenting (four days, for the curious).  I found out because there were plans in place to give me two hours to myself. The plans fell through and I fell apart. (I'm not permanently a single mom, BTW; my husband is just sick).

Like lots of Moms, I suffer from feeling pulled at all the time. Any time I get to make my own decisions about (without regard to to others) comes in small increments--seven to thirty minutes on average. Getting those few minutes usually requires organizational gymnastics that should qualify me for the Cirque du Soleil. Like lots of Moms, I contribute to the problem, by having a hard time prioritizing myself and my needs.

And, right now, I'm a little burnt out. I guess that makes sense. I've been in the Mom game for seventeen years. (Yes, I know my oldest is only twelve, but the years with two kids count twice each, and maybe should count for four each). That's longer than most people do anything. Think about it. seventeen years is longer than a lot of marriages last. Seventeen years is longer than a lot of people stick to a job that pays in dollars. In some fields, I'd be up for retirement.

Couple this with my career for money (Ha!) choice: teaching. That means, that on most days, I have somewhere between 130 and 150 people who want my individualized attention. There's just not quite that much of me, so I get stretched thin. When I get stretched thin enough, I puncture easily.

So, that's why I'm eating these cookies now. I'm stretched too thin. I must need to thicken up a little. 

Teaching with One-to-One Laptop Initiative

My school district jumped headfirst into technology this year, purchasing a laptop for every student in grades 6-12.  It's been exciting and frustrating and wonderful and awful. I've finally got a few minutes to jot down some thoughts about implementation:

Exciting and Wonderful!

• No more "I left it" anywhere!  If the document is digital, it's with you. Even better, since the kids all got google accounts, it can't even be saved in a incompatible format or on a different thumb drive, or any of the other millions of excuses I've heard in seventeen years of teaching.
• Differentiation (edu-lingo for making different versions of the work based on the needs of individual students) is so much easier!  I can share different documents with different kids and with them all focused on their individual work, no one even has to know that they're not all doing exactly the same thing. I can provide extra resources to only some students with a couple of quick clicks. It's beautiful.
• Collaboration with my colleagues and among my students has never been easier. We can share our work with each other so easily! It doesn't matter if we're ever available at the same time or not (which is good, because, mostly, we're not)
• We're cutting the digital divide. No more have and have-nots. Every kid has access to the same technology and has a chance to develop facility with the various ways we use technology in adult life for work, networking, organization and play.

Frustrating and Awful!

• There's really been no provision to educate kids about using their computers. It's been a hard uphill battle for kids who aren't particularly tech-savvy. I've got at least five ideas for how to address this . . .but the horse has already left the barn and no one asked the people who might be able to predict trouble areas: the teachers.
• Lots of trouble-shooting that didn't happen in advance and could have. Even problems I directly asked about because I anticipate them were ignored.
• Distract-ability.  I guess I should have, but I didn't anticipate the degree of the problem. Most students are so good about using their computers for schoolwork, but there are those few who think that having a laptop in front of them is a ticket to play games all day.  It's been much harder than I expected to pull their attention out of the individual work stations and into the collective space so we can have those whole-class experiences that are so central to education. It shouldn't be surprising--I know plenty of adults who can't get their noses out of their smartphones for four seconds in a row, and these are kids!

Overall, I'm so glad my district took this step.  It's been a hard semester because of it--it's turned teaching into almost a first-year experience again, with the need to create everything anew to make use of our new tools.  But I anticipate an easier semester next semester and it's already easier to draw on the work I've done past years thanks to google's excellent search functions. 

Now, next time, if only they'd ask us to troubleshoot before the trouble shoots us.