Sadie Hawkins Dance

I decided to take one of my favorite songs and turn it into prose.

“He’s so cute!”

“I know.  I think I’m going to ask him to the dance on Friday.”

“Not if I ask him first.”

The giggles left the bathroom as I walked by warming my ears.  I knew they were talking about me.  I looked around to make sure that nobody was around and began playing air guitar was I made my way to class.

I love the Sadie Hawkins Dance!

My next class was English and I had to give a speech.  I spent a couple of hours the night before finding the right joke to start off.  To say that it went over well is an understatement.  Man, I had the whole class laughing.  I was basking in so much light I could have been in a tanning bed.

This was going to be a great day.

After class was lunch.  I got my food and looked around for a place to seat.  There was an open one next to the cheerleaders that I heard in the bathroom earlier.  I decided to go ahead and give them the opportunity to fight over me and sat down.

“Hello ladies.”

There was tap on my shoulder.  I looked up and saw the quarterback of our football team glaring at me.

“Are you looking for a beat down punk?” he asked me.

“I think that’s one thing I won’t be needing,” I said and immediately jumped out of the seat and took off running down the hall outside the cafeteria.  Smart?  Maybe.  Cunning? Oh yes.  I turned around to make sure I’d lost him.  As I turned my head back around I ran smack into someone.  We both toppled onto the ground.  I looked up to see who had gotten in my way and to both my pleasure and embarrassment, it was a girl.  And she was stunning.

Maybe this day wasn’t going to work out after all.

“You’re a smooth talker,” she said.

“Uh…thanks…sorry I ran into you.”

“Come with me to the dance on Friday.”

“Uh…ok!”

“What are you going to wear?”

“My khakis probably.  And maybe a sweater.  Do you like sweaters?”

Creating Worlds - Daily Writer (1/25)

Prompt: Begin creating a world on a single page.  Choose any setting you wish.

It starts in a small town.  There are quite a few buildings but most of them are homes.  There is one store near the entrance gate of the town.  There's also a chicken ranch further in (though the chickens are always getting loose).  The buildings themselves are mostly made of stone with either large leaves or a mixture of straw and mud for the roof (some houses have a combination of both).  There is a small graveyard at the back of the town.  The people mostly work from the home (even the shopkeeper lives above his store).  Though there is some currency floating around, most of the villagers barter with each other to exchange both goods and resources.  They live complacently with their daily lives, not realizing that there may be more to life than this small town or that everyone outside of the town simply sees them as beggars.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Music and music videos can be fantastic storytelling devices.  The song "Sleigh Ride" in and of itself is an OK song in my opinion.  I don't hate the song, but it's not one that I have to listen to every Christmas.  Until I heard this version and saw this music video:

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

The second part of the history of the Fox Ahoy's:


Apparently, my mom had told her mom about my interest in these cookies because when Christmas came and it was time to visit her, my grandmother had a fresh batch of them waiting to be devoured.  Unfortunately, she didn't view the nuts as optional as my mom did, but I enjoyed them anyway and was able to ask her about where she got the recipe.
"I got it from my mother actually."
My eyes got bigger at this revelation and I said excitedly, "So this is an old family recipe!"
"Well, I don't know how old it is, but it is a family recipe."
Images of this recipe being passed down from generation to generation, having arrived on the Mayflower began swirling around in my head.  For all I knew, Moses could have known about these cookies before he parted the Red Sea.  What my nine-year-old mind did know was that I had to get to the bottom of this ever-growing mystery.
Unfortunately, I would have to wait because my great-grandmother lived out in Oklahoma (while my family and I lived on the East Coast)  and we only visited her once a year during the summer and, as stated earlier, this was Christmas.
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months until it was finally time for our annual trip to the Midwest.  There's not much to do where my great-grandmother lived so I had plenty of opportunities to ask her about the cookies.  The one I took was during a meal.
"Where did you get the recipe for those homemade chocolate chip cookies Grandma?"
She thought for a moment as the magnitude of this mystery reached its climax.  "Oh yes, I remember now."
"Here it comes," I thought with so much anticipation I could hardly stand it.
"I found that recipe on the back of a can of nuts."
"Really?" I asked in disbelief (I was too young then to appreciate the irony).  The recipe began and my quest for the truth ended here, in Medford, Oklahoma with my great-grandmother.

I left that vacation quite disappointed at the lack of grandeur that this story had.  But the cookies continued to be very popular.  Whenever I would return to college after visiting my parents for the weekend my friends would swarm my room in hopes that my mom baked some Fox Ahoy's for me to take back.
But something was still missing.  These cookies were too good to not be epic.  So I decided three things: originally, I wanted the recipe to go the way of Truett's Chick-fil-A and the Colonial's herbs and spices by becoming a secret family recipe.  Then, I realized that it would be better if I shared the recipe and allowed it to be shaped and molded as others brought their own flavors and ingredients to the mixing bowl.
And the third thing?  Well, every good epic needs a story...

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

A fresh batch of Fox Ahoys.
Some of my favorite traditions during Christmas are the sweet treats that my family makes.  The most famous of these treats are the aforementioned Fox Ahoys, homemade chocolate chip cookies made by my mom.  Because of their continuous popularity among my friends and family, I wanted to write a short history of these cookies based on my own recollections.

Part 1

"Son," called my mom from the kitchen, "Would you like to learn how to bake my cookies?"
I looked up from the T.V where I was watching the latest episode of Power Rangers and hurried into the kitchen.  This was HUGE!  I was about to learn how to make my mom's homemade cookies.  These sweet morsels from heaven were a success wherever she took them - especially at our church where, thanks to one of my friends, they came to be known as "Fox Ahoys" (my family has a thing for foxes).
As I looked excitedly at the ingredients set before me, my mom began to explain the difference between salted and unsalted butter and that adding nuts to the cookies was optional (which was fine with me because I've never cared for nuts in my desserts).  While she began mixing the ingredients together I asked, "Where did you get this recipe?"
"It actually came from your grandmother actually."
"Meemah?  So, this is an old family recipe?"
"I don't know how old it is, but it is a family recipe."
As images of my grandmother toiling over the cookie dough, knowing somehow instinctively how much of what ingredient to add to the mix danced in my head, I made a mental note to ask her about it during our next visit, which would be soon because Christmas was coming.

On the forth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

"Scary Ghost Stories and Tales of the Glories..."

One of the Christmas traditions that has confused me the most this season involved that line from the song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." What do ghost stories have to do with Christmas? I have no idea.
I love Dicken's classic "A Christmas Carol" which is both a ghost story and a Christmas story. And, ironically enough, Santa brought me a book about South Carolina ghost stories this year. If anyone has thoughts, please share them. Until then, I will share with you one of my favorite ghost stories that came out of Savannah, GA:

A woman who lived to the age of 103 years was transferred to a personal care facility at the hospital. There she was given a call beeper to be worn around her neck so she could call the nurse at any time. The woman had a wry but gentile sense of humor, and quickly became a favorite of the staff. She unfortunately passed away due to natural causes shortly after arriving, however, expiring peacefully in her sleep.
Her son came to the hospital to collect her personal effects. Included with her items was her beeper, since technically it was the property of the personal car service which as stationed at the hospital, and not the property of the hospital itself. The son slipped the beeper into his jacket pocket and left the room, which locked behind him. Halfway down the hall, he realized he had forgotten his umbrella in her room. He tried to find someone in charge with no success. Not finding anyone to help him, he finally remembered the call beeper. He pressed it once, and when nothing happened for several minutes he pressed it again. Frustrated, he walked a short distance down the hall, hoping to find someone there who could unlock the door. It was then he heard a commotion coming from the direction of his departed mother's room.
Two personal care nurses were standing in front of her door, both with keys. They were arguing. As we walked back to them, he overheard their conversation:
"Look, she died. There's no way she could press the call button."
"Well, I'm not going in. You go in there, she's your patient."
"I'm not going in. As soon as she dies, she's not my patient anymore. You check on the dead lady."
The son laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks and he decided that the loss of the umbrella was worth letting his mother have one more good joke on the hospital staff.

I have a confession

I'm 25 years old but up until a year ago I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.  Looking back on my life I can see that storytelling has been my desire since the beginning but it wasn't until recently that I decided that writing and storytelling was what I wanted to pursue.  That said, obviously I've never published anything.  Anytime a writing contest presented itself I ran the other way.
 Sometimes I feel like the culture says that's a recipe for disaster.  That waiting until I had a quarter of a century under my belt to start something like this is ridiculous.  But after multiple discussions with me wife and learning that C.S. Lewis being in his forties when he cranked out his Narnia books and the guy who wrote the screenplay for Braveheart also being in his forties I must politely disagree with culture.
The opposite extreme that the pendulum swings to is the thought that I've got plenty of time to start this career so I'll just hold off for now.  Insert x number of reasons (read "excuses") for waiting whether legitimate or not and you'll find yourself years down the road wondering where all the time went.
So this is my attempt to start something.  My goal is to post about three times a week.  I've got some story starting tools that will help generate ideas as well as stories that I've already been thinking about.  I will also probably post short stories and essays that I really enjoy that I want to share.  I would love to hear your thoughts both positive and negative about my stories.  Maybe I'll even find ways for us to collaborate.  Who knows?