Five Minute Friday: REPEAT

I'm linking up with Five Minute Friday, writing for five minutes on a given prompt. This week's word is REPEAT.

A few years ago I wrote a children's story called "Peter Repeater."

It's about a little boy named Peter who repeats everything other people say. 

He repeats what his parents say.

He repeats what his older siblings and his baby brother say.

He repeats what his classmates say.

He repeats what his teacher and principal say.

He annoys EVERYBODY with his repetition, and he won't stop.

I said, he annoys EVERYBODY with his repetition, and he won't stop.

Then one day his teacher takes the day off (trust me, she needs it) and his class gets a substitute teacher.

Peter tries his repeating ways on this new teacher -- but he gets more than he bargained for. The teacher says so many long, complicated sentences, with such big, silly words in them, that Peter can't keep up. Finally he has to admit he's met his match. His new teacher just isn't repeat-able.

There are lots of people out there doing what everybody else is doing. But you can stop others in their tracks by being original.

Thinking outside the box.

Going where no one has gone before.

It's so freeing when you realize you can just BE. You don't have to be a repeater.

Writing prompts: Light at the End of the Tunnel, and Random Acts of Kindness

Each time our writing group meets, we share our own work and give feedback to one another. Then at the end of the meeting we do a ten-minute freewriting exercise based on a word or phrase as a prompt. It's always fun to see where the prompt takes us and how different our responses can be.

Now and then I share a couple of these freewrites here on the blog; below are two I wrote recently. I hope you enjoy them!

And if you're interested in reading some of the ones I've posted in the past, here are the links:

An outing with Mommy; choosing baby names
Empty pockets; park bench
Cats and phones
Hardware store; train station


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The prompt was "Light at the end of the tunnel." 

Susie's parents were as different as night and day.

 If her father said the cup was half full, her mother would say yes, but it had coffee in it, and she wanted tea.

If her father brought home roses for Valentine's Day, her mother would say they were pretty, but roses lasted such a short time; carnations were really more practical. 

If her father said, "It's been a long, cold winter, but I think we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel," her mother would say, "That's an oncoming train, dear, and we're going to collide with it."

Susie knew the expression "Opposites attract," but she wondered if it always went both ways. She could understand her mother being attracted to her father -- he was cheerful and handsome and lively. But what did he see in her mother, for whom every silver lining had a cloud?
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She put her hand on her father's. "Dad, they're about to close the casket."

They got up and walked to the casket. Her mother lay in stiff, cold repose, her lips firmly pressed together.

Her father touched the cold, lifeless face. "My sweet grumpy-pants," he said.

He turned, teary-eyed, to Susie. "I'm the balloon, and she was always holding on to my string, keeping me close to the earth. Close to her. Now I think I might just float away without her."

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The prompt was "Random act of kindness."

It was "Random Acts of Kindness Day" at Kristy's high school. As she rode the bus, she tried to think of some kind deeds she could do for other people. Which, when she thought about it, meant they really wouldn't be random at all. Maybe they should call it "Carefully Premeditated Acts of Kindness Day."

When she got off the bus and headed up the school steps, Kristy saw Mitzi Moorehead standing outside the door with a huge tray of fresh baked cookies. People were grabbing a cookie as they passed by.

Right ahead of Kristy was a very dweeby guy named Randolph Smithers. "Not you, loser," said Mitzi Moorehead to Randolph.

"Hey," said Kristy. "This is supposed to be Random Acts of Kindness Day and you're telling somebody they can't have a cookie and calling them a loser."

Mitzi shrugged. "You can have a cookie if you want one. Just he can't." Randolph just stood there red-faced, looking humiliated.

Kristy wanted to slap Mitzi right in the face. Instead she lifted her hand sharply underneath Mitzi's tray, and the cookies went flying in the air. Mitzi screamed. A couple of football guys grabbed several of the cookies off the steps -- "Five-second rule," one of them said -- and walked away eating them.

Kristy's heart was pounding. She couldn't believe what she had done. Yet somehow she felt she had aced Random Acts of Kindness Day.

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Five Minute Friday (uh, make that Sunday): PLAY

This is the second time in three weeks that I completely forgot to write my Five Minute Friday post on the actual Friday. Fortunately the linkup is still open, so here is my contribution for this week.

The word is PLAY.

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One thing we like to do in our house is play a game Allison and I invented when she was little. It's called "The Three-Letter Game."

This game is best played with two or three people. We use the Scrabble Junior tiles, which have no point values on them. The first person picks three letters. If your letters can make a word, and you want to make that word, then you make it and set it aside. Then the next person picks three letters, and you just keep taking turns, picking three letters and making words if you can.  Your words must be three letters long or more. Names are only allowed if they are also words, like SUE or ROD. Once you have made a word, you can't rearrange its letters, though you can add to it: you could make PAN into SPAN or PANG.  In a two-person game you will probably end up with 12-15 words; in a three-person game, 8-10.

But now comes the really fun part of the game:  you have to tell a story with your words. So that can affect what words you choose to make: for instance, ONE is a lot easier to use in a story than EON. Here's an example of a story that a player might come up with:

"ROD and EVE left their cul-de-SAC and went to the KEG on ELM Street.  They ordered ginger ALE and scrambled OVA.  But the waiter, who had a ZIT on his chin, ERRed and brought them corn on the COB instead.  Eve began to CRY-- and Rod, who had an enormous EGO, was filled with IRE.  He got in a fight with the waiter, but the waiter had rock-hard ABS and won the fight.  Rod made a VOW he would never go to the Keg again.  The END."

If you and your family enjoy playing games, you might want to try this one. We've been playing it several times a week for years, and it's always good for some laughs.