Month: June 2014

Bite-Size Memoir Prompt: Childhood Illness

/ wantonwordflirt / 14 Comments

On my toes, a clumsy pyjama clad ballerina, neck stretched back, head tilted with mouth wide open trying to catch my balance and the bright light over the bathroom vanity long enough to see the back of my throat. Scratchy and raw for days I had an urgent need to see what was happening back there.

Finally a glimpse; crimson with tiny thickened white splotches scattered about my throat. I was eleven years old; old enough to know it was not good.

“Dad, look in the back of my throat. I think I have an infection.” I blurt out the diagnosis as I throw my head back to open wide in front of my Dad as he makes his breakfast.

“That’s just bread crumbs.”

“No it’s not. It’s infection.”

I convince my Mom to take me to the doctor, get antibiotics for strep throat, and begin my lifelong health vigilance.

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To learn more about “Bite-Size Memoir” (memoir of no more, no less than 150 words based on a weekly prompt) please visit Lisa Reiter’s blog “Sharing the Story”:

http://sharingthestoryblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/bite-size-memoir-no-7-childhood-illness/

 

Big money, little glamour!

/ wantonwordflirt / 14 Comments

Opening up the white business envelope to see my first paycheque nestled inside was a thrill not to be forgotten quickly. Though minimum wage, it was still three times what I was paid for babysitting kids in our neighbourhood, which was one dollar per hour.

I thought the salary was glamorous, but the work was not. I was one of six students hired to do janitorial work after school each day at my high school.

Every day immediately at dismissal bell we headed over to the janitorial room to pick up our heavy industrial vacuums and rolling carts of cleaning products to get busy vacuuming classrooms, emptying wastebaskets, dusting, cleaning blackboards, and worst of all scouring the washrooms.

The only real perk was the privilege of reading the graffiti on the walls of the boys’ washrooms before we had to wash it off, always hoping never to see our own names.

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This was yet again another morsel of “Bite-Size Memoir” initiated by blogger Lisa Reiter.

Each week a prompt is given for a 150 word ( no more, no less) piece of  memoir to be written.

Check out more here: http://sharingthestoryblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/bite-size-memoir-no-6-first-jobs/

Once in a Lifetime!

/ wantonwordflirt / 6 Comments

Four 14 year old girls dropped off on their own with an old green canvas tent at a campground thirty miles from home for the weekend. What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently many things. According to my parents who absolutely forbade this camping excursion to happen unless they were to accompany us. My parents agreed they would park their RV several hundred feet away well out of sight.

Dropping us off, we excitedly set up the tent, threw our sleeping bags inside, and opened our cooler to have a wiener roast supper over the campfire. How cool were we?

Not as cool as at four a.m. when we woke in the pouring rain to discover we had set up the tent downhill from an incline, sleeping bag, and pyjamas soaked through.

To their credit my parents never came to rescue us. Forty years have passed; I never tented again, ever.

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This was again a piece of bite-size memoir from Lisa Reiter’s prompts, read more about it here:

http://sharingthestoryblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/bite-size-memoir-no-5-camping