Tagged: child

#649 – A Friendly Neighbor…

…whose child is best friends with your own is picked up on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing.

We were all mystified when we got the news.  People were confused and outraged that something like this could happen in our neighborhood.  Everyone kept talking about how Clint was such a sweet quiet boy who never showed any signs of anti-social behavior.  Straight A student with a free ride to university, he was the main reason why my son was able to graduate with honors, with long nights of studying and tutoring.

Phil was taken it hard.  Nobody wanted to talk to him really.  The police questioned him, wondering if he was connected somehow.  His wife left him, angry about the media circus their life has become.  I felt bad for him.  He’d always been helpful, lending me a hand whenever I needed to fix or move something.  It was hard to watch.

All the neighbors wanted to know what led up to it.  Nobody had seen Clint for days now and rumors were flying.  He was shipped off to a government facility.  He was being tortured for information.  He was already dead.  He’d escaped and was now hiding with an anarchist group plotting their next attack.

My son was taking it the hardest though.  He refused to come out of his room for days.  It was devastating for him to learn something so horrible about his best friend.  All the suspicions on him didn’t help.  Lots of people thought he was in on it too.  Which was ridiculous, really.  He would never go along with something like this.  Then again, I suppose everyone thought the same thing about Clint.

The only thing I wondered at the end of the day.  One unasked question I didn’t dare voice.  How in the hell did my plans got into his backpack?  Now I have to start over from scratch while the law watches over us even closer.  This doesn’t make things easier, but the job must be done.  The establishment must fall, even if I have to die to do it.

Behind the Random: Not much to say on this one.  The twist came to me just a few minutes before I started writing it and it feels a little obvious.

#324 – Pick One Pop Song…

…you loved as a child.  Listen to it and write for at least five minutes without stopping.

When I was a kid, I loved the song Thriller by Michael Jackson, but not for music.  It was the music video that got me hooked on it.  Even when I was little, I loved zombies.  Which was a little strange, because I hated being scared and, I’ll be honest, the music video scared me a little bit.  Still I watched it though, because it had dancing zombies in it.

And now I don’t know what else to write about that.  Maybe I should just move on then.  I could talk about Vincent Price and his iconic voice in that video.  That man was made for horror movies.  Still, I never really cared for his roles, especially in Edward Scissorhands.

That movie though is a bit of a wash for me anyways.  I don’t quite understand why so many people are so in love with it.  Maybe it’s the whole outsider thing that teenagers can relate to or something, which should apply to me as well but it just doesn’t.  Personally, I feel the whole movie is dull and slow with only a little bit of comedy to make it tolerable.  It could also be Johnny Depp.  Actually, that probably has more to do with it than anything else.

Oh, and look at that.  Time is up.  I would have thought I’d have more written after 5 minutes but I guess not.  I did pause a few times to try and think of something to write.  Aw well.  On to the next one!

Behind the Random: When I was younger, I didn’t care for music.  I wasn’t raised in a home that played a lot of music unless my parents were cleaning.  So I kind of associated music to housework, which would explain why I avoided it for the first 15 years of my life.  I’m still not to musically inclined, but now I find that I like to play music when I clean too.  Weird the habits you pick up from your parents.

#299 – List the Places You Liked to Hide as a Child

My first favorite hiding spot was under the doorsteps in the backyard.  Of course, I learned it wasn’t a very good hiding spot after I accidentally lit the carpet on fire and sought refuge there from my father.  It didn’t take him long ferret me out.  As time went on, I tried closets, crawlspaces, and cupboards, but none of them really worked that well.  Then I remember reading a comic book, I believe it was an issue of Spider-Man, that pointed out that people never look up.  So then I began using the highest locations I could.  Garage roofs, trees, RVs, concrete barriers, whatever was higher than 6 feet became my cloak of invisibility.  And it worked great.  I became a champion of hide and seek.

Unless they never actually went to look for me…

Behind the Random: When I was a kid, I always thought the smaller the space, the better the hiding spot it was.  Turned out I was wrong and that just made me easier to spot and tag since I was wedged in place and couldn’t get away (if you played those rules of hide and seek).  You might think that being high up would have a similar problem, but not really.  The trees I climbed were big enough that I could easily get past someone climbing up to get me, assuming they were brave enough to try in the first place, and there was always more than one way to get off a roof.  Not that I ever was in a position to use them…

#226 – Explain Death to a Three-Year-Old.

Life is like a storybook.  There’s a beginning, when you’re born, then there’s all the things you’ll do.  Every page is another moment in your life.  All the adventures you have, places you go, people you meet, and laughter and tears you make are in this story.  And every story has an ending.  That’s when the book closes and it’s time to turn off the light, climb into bed, and go to sleep.  It could be a long story or it could be a short story.  You never really know until you reach the end and you can’t change it.  However, you can make it a great story.

Behind the Random: This one was practically written in my head the second I read the prompt last night.  Easiest post I’ve done in a long time.  This is actually how I describe life to some adults going through hard times and it’s worked, more often than not.  it’s a little more optimistic and simple than I’m used to in order for a young mind to really grasp the concept, but I think the main idea transfers over pretty well.