roaming_kate23

Today’s creative writing prompt is: What scared you as a child ?

We had a set of Time Life books about the great artists,one of them being Michaelangelo. I became obsessed with the detail of the Last Judgement from the Sistine Chapel.(which I have actually seen in person.)

Not sure what made it so scary to me-Catholics don’t really go in for the whole fire and brimstone thing but once a year.When you’re a kid there are a lot of things that are scary and that was one of them!

Today’s prompt is:Take a trip to the thrift store or think about your latest thrift.Pick one item you find interesting and imagine who its past owners was.How did they use the item?Why did they wind up donating it to the thrift store?

My item is a Buddha statue.

The owners..I think they were avid thrifters.It was a good deal and they bought it,among other things.

As far as what they used it for:Primarily decoration.

Why did they get rid of it?Downsizing(they’re my parents’ age and realising they need to get rid of some of the stuff they own..or they’re moving into n a retirement community(which is what quite a few of my parents’ friends have done.)

Today’s prompt is:What if your pet could only talk to you at midnight for an hour?

I thought of my sister-in-law’s Cocker Spaniel puppy.He would have a lot to say in that hour.He would be very stream of consciousness and not sure if that is him being a puppy or something else .I’d ask him if he listens to me when I tell him no.He’d probably have a snarky reply!

Today’s prompt is:

A tornado is forming and your character is in the worst possible place they could be at the moment.Where are they and how do they handle the situation?

My character is in a car on their way to visit family when they get a tornado warning on their phone. There is thunder off in the distance, and then they notice that there is a tornado that is coming closer and closer. So they pull underneath and overpass and quickly get in the back of the car and covers themself with a blanket that they had in the car.

 Start your story with a character  finding a piece of tech they don’t recognise.

“What is this?”

”it’s one of the original  Apple computers. They were considered top of the line back then. But they were expensive “.

”They’re expensive now”.

”True that”.

What television commercial do you find irritating?Why is it irritating to you?

The ads for the continuous glucose monitors that are supposed to be a better option than sticking your finger if you are a diabetic.

Here is the thing:You have to do it through an app.One of the things that annoys the SHIT out of me is that so many things need an app.Add to that is that Bobby Parrish uses one(and he’s not even diabetic but is out there like he is some sort of expert about diabetes(spoiler alert:he’s not.) and about nutrition in general.

An asteroid is hitting Earth in 3-6 months.How do you spend that time?

Hang out with family/cook them a big dinner.

Eat at all my favourite local restaurants,

Take out all of the money out of my bank account /get a loan which leads to:

At the last-3 weeks or so-travel as much as I can and then hunker down with my Vienna sausages and Spam.

Today’s prompt is:what should schools do to deal with the bullying problem?

Do their due diligence for one thing and actually look into what is going on,for one thing.Too often the kids who are doing the bullying get away with it. Make the bullies wear some sort of tracking device.That will clear things up REAL fast.

There should be punishment, too. Is charging kids with assault too much?Given how bad bullying can get, I don’t think so.

Today’s prompt is: Write a letter to your 14-year-old self.

Dear Katie:

It might seem like things are really shit right now but believe it or not you will look back on all of this and laugh.Yes,the persons of authority in your life are assholes(mot my parents;talking about teachers specifically although there were exceptions to that rule as well;I had a teacher who got my love of Duran Duran because she had been a Beatles fan back in the day)

You won’t always be a “friendless wonder”(yeah, I didn’t have the best self esteem back in the day) and there’ll be something called “the internet” where you’ll make friends from all over the world(and even a few enemies but I could(and will) do a storytime about that.)

Someday you’ll be 50 years old and you’ll have had a TON of experiences that not everyone has had. That is a good thing. That started when you went to England last year and you enjoyed that, right?(yes, I did.) You’ll have challenges but you will overcome them and amaze everyone you know by how you handle things.You’ll be so glad for Prozac.Once, you took it and didn’t think that you needed it but then you got to a critical stage in your life when you needed them and..it was like night and day. Now you can’t imagine life without them.

I guess that’s all from me.

Love, 50 year old Katie
(That was a lot more emotional than I thought it was going to be.)

Another I started out to write one thing and became another posts. Originally this was a creative writing post with the prompt of “Write a letter to your 14-year-old self”. Boy is that ever a loaded subject.I would say that the years between 13-16 were some of the worst of my life.

Outside of school it was great-I credit my mom and dad for being the way they are and being supportive beyond what most parents do.This is before I knew that I had Asperger’s and I was a weird kid(I had someone who knew me back in the day say “I thought you had autism”. They’ve probably come to that realisation since because there is a lot more information about autism and Asperger’s than there was back then. Like I said, I had support from my parents ,but most of my teachers, except for one thought I was obsessed with Duran Duran(and looking back on it now,I was but it was my form of rebellion .The one teacher who supported me had been a Beatles fan back in the day so she understood. I wish that my teachers and the rest of my classmates did.I wished that I went to a school where there were more Duran Duran fans but just my luck.And I got a lot of shit for liking them, believe me. Looking back at it,I exasperated the shit out of my teachers but like I said I probably pushed the issue way more than I should.But I loved Duran Duran.A lot.But when I quit liking them I did it full bore. Ripped down the posters and pictures I had up. I never quit liking their music though and have lots of their music on my iTunes.

Apparently I am a target because I came in for it(from both classmates and staff-I’ve told the story about the creepy school nurse who had a crush on me.I realised that it was creepy, even then.And the initial experience I had with her got me in trouble-I walked out of there because she was asking me some seriously weird questions .It was making me feel a certain type of way.

I went to two different schools and I would say that I had the better experience at the second school. Between the creepy nurse and some bullying I would not say that it was a pleasant experience.I took a art class where there was someone who was a really good artist in the class.They openly made fun of me.Well, not everyone can be Picasso.OK maybe not the best example because he did abstracts but you get what I’m saying. I actually wound up working with him at my first job out of school and he was just as insufferable then as he was in high school.