It doesn’t have the same flawless cadence as “Call me Ismael,” does it? Herman Melville followed that first sentence with 209,114 more words about following a whale.
I’ll be satisfied with 200 on Rodrigo S-C’s October 7 prompt on perfectionism.
Speaking of Rodrigo, what would a professional photographer say about my attempt to capture the essence of my coffee mug in the photo that leads the story?
By the way, I loved that misshaped mug the first time I saw it.
An irregular shape
With two blue paint splotches
And the pentagon-shaped bottom that collects coffee and tea stains.
It reminds me of you. And me.
We’re all works in progress, aren’t we, with a smear here and a crack there?
Would a pure writer need Grammarly to help him decide whether the previous sentence required a ‘?’ I’m still not sure!
Knowing their limitations, the not-so-successful Scottish duo Steelers Wheel1972 song Stuck in the Middle honed in on this little bit of folk wisdom:
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.
Isn’t that perfect? We’re all either clowns or jokers or stuck between the two.
Doomed to coming up short.
That’s why I love my mug.
It’s beautiful despite its flaws, perhaps because of its flaws.
Mr. Headline analyzer says my title has no pizazz.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
And will include the phrase “as soon as the words…”
Ask a question about someone or something in the picture.
This question often produces an imagined conversation.
That includes Fiction Short’s daily random word.
My last two Drabbles, here and here, illustrate this technique.
As does this one.
Today’s random word is tiny.
Drabble
Me: “Do you like being tiny?”
Benji: “I’m not tiny. I’m small. Humans are always calling me little. I’m bigger than a rabbit. You’re not so big for a human.”
“Yesterday, we met another Terrier on our walk around the pond. But you were standoffish.”
“I’m a Biewer, purebred. She was not.”
“You seem to have a bit of an attitude — my mother called it feisty.”
“My mother called it knowing who we are.”
“Is it hard being a dog?”
“Would you like to wear a collar and be led along at the end of a leash?”
“Some days, yes.”
My Drabble History
I started writing Drabbles on January 22, 2024. Sixty-four of my 388 Medium stories are Benji-sized. Somehow, luckily, I found my way to Fiction Shorts. Before that, I didn’t know what a Drabble was.
At first, I wondered whether I could write fiction.
But then I realized nothing is ever really made up. Every work of imagination is projected biography — even War and Peace.
“What’s that Benji?
I’m just finishing a story. But you pooped two hours ago. Oh, sometimes I get those barks mixed up. You say that in that story, Tolstoy had diarrhea from the quill.
Too many adjectives and adverbs. Big is not always the best.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
The last sentence will be, “What the hell were you thinking?”
She offered a small smile to Bill. “I’m interested. Tell me more.”
He fidgeted on the stool and looked into the mirror across the bar. “I needed to belong. I was afraid to say no.”
Betty liked his eyes. They were sad and kind. And his hands. Even the ragged index finger. She thought he could be saved. “Did you know what he meant by ‘we’ll just lie about what they did?’”
“I knew they would be attacked. I didn’t have the balls to walk away. My mother warned me about being too pliable.”
This Fiction was based on accounts by election officials in Arizona and Georgia about how they were harassed because Trump administration officials in 2020 and 21 lied about how the votes were not counted properly in their jurisdictions. You can read one account here.
I’ve been a young man, a father, and a “grand friend.” A straight-shooting partner is essential to growing up.
This story was published in Medium’s Six Word Photo Story Challenge.
The winner is…We, the People.
We live on one of the busiest corners in our town in northeast Iowa. With front and back porches, we enjoy being on the border of each street, close to the sidewalks.
Tens of walkers, runners, bikers, and skateboarders pass by each day. Most do their own business, and some stop to chat about this sign.
I posted it a month ago after seeing another NOPE symbol in Boston. If you like it, you can purchase it from Amazon here.
I’ve lived in this house for 24 years. Every election cycle, I put political signs up. In case you’re wondering, I’m Blue.
I can’t remember anyone ever stopping to talk about a political symbol until this year. And no one says anything about my Harris/Walz or Vote Blue, Save Democracy displays.
But this one yielded comments.
Love it.
Right on.
Where did you get it?
What does it mean?
I like it. It’s gentle.
Where’s the red tie?
I’m scared.
Surely, someone will steal it.
No one has yet.
Nope.
Blue is my party, not my feeling about the election. I’m optimistic. We’re going to win this one for America. For all the people.
To my Blog readers. This story was published in Medium’s Good Vibes Club. It is a reflection on my writing experience on the Medium platform.
Prelude
However, occasionally, like this morning, as I sit down to write story number 403, I imagine my Medium residence looks like this shack just around the corner from us.
Photo by the author
Old, tired, collapsing, plant and animal infested — abandoned. A small number of readers, few reads, and fewer comments. For example, story 401, about 9/11, got five reads and two comments.
You may identify with this discouragement, regardless of the size of your Medium audience. I recall being on a friend’s 50-foot yacht in Chesapeake Bay and catching a glimpse of a 240-foot ship moored off to our right, thinking, “There’s always a bigger boat.”
We’re never satisfied, are we?
On Sunday, I went to church, something I rarely do. I should do it more often. It was a Presbyterian service. The Pastor admonished us not to “Covet our neighbor’s house.”
Of course, I spent the next minute in a visionary rapture over the magnificence of some of my Medium friends’ homes.
They get 1000s of claps, 100s of reads, and 10s of comments.
I had no idea what to expect when I joined Medium three years ago. In 2018, when I retired from forty years of teaching Politics to college students, I started writing a blog.
I disliked the third-person academic writing I had to do to get tenure and promotion. It was too far removed from exploring my immediate world, which fuels my Medium stories.
My blog tales were like this one, triggered by something that jumped up and bit me usually the day before. In this case, it was a combination of Pastor Jay’s chide, my jealous response, and that crappy shack I walked by for the hundredth time. And, of course, disappointment at the woeful response to my September 11th story.
But I wanted a bigger readership than the family and friends who faithfully followed paulmuses.com.
There are so many more. Each has helped me grow as a writer. For example, before I joined Medium, I never used photos in my stories. Now, often, a visual image starts the creative process. It’s the seed. That’s how the shack in the second photo worked — it externalized my disappointment over the few reads for a story I believed deserved more.
Honestly, I don’t want a larger house. Occasionally, I think I should add another room or build a garage, but my house and yard would become too important. And I have other things to do, other vital things in my life.
Small is beautiful!
Postlude
I’ve been fortunate to have two Medium stories boosted. Each time, I rattled around in the mansion for a few days.
You can take the boy to New York, but you can’t take Iowa out of the boy.
I could not wait to return to my tiny, funky, beautiful Medium home.
This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
Today’s Drabble will begin with “I heard a story about a Dragon.”
In this fiction, I’ve imagined a musing by Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. I’ve included references to some of their popular songs in this order: Puff the Magic Dragon, Early Morning Rain, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Lemon Tree, Stewball the Racehorse, I Dig Rock and Roll Music, Blowin’ in the Wind, 500 miles, If I had a Hammer, and Don’t Think Twice. Here’s a link to their greatest hits.
This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
And will include the phrase “as soon as the words…”
Yesterday, I played golf by myself on an unoccupied course. My usual links buddies were unavailable.
“It happens every year in September. Even on a beautiful day like this, the place is empty,” said the clubhouse guy.
As you can see from the first photo, there is no other living person on site.
Alas, today was not Judgment Day. Or, for fans of the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, imagine the undead moseying up that sidewalk to form my gallery.
Photo by me
I wanted someone around to appreciate the high-arc fade that led to this close-to-the-hole Tigeresque result pictured below. I used a five-hybrid club to hit 150 yards over a valley that bounced two times and rolled up on the green for a gimmie putt if you’re playing alone.
Photo by me
Or to see me try to maneuver my ball between these trees.
Photo by me
I used a five-wood to lift the ball over the first tree on the right. Unfortunately, it tipped an unforgiving top branch and dropped behind the tree’s trunk — one more inch and perfection. As it was, you would have appreciated the vision and the effort.
That shot was as hard as a transition sentence or two in this story between solitary golf and writing. But first, one more audience example.
Studying
I just finished teaching a Lifelong Learning seminar on the American 2024 Presidential Election. The course was attended by 35 mostly retired community members. We met for three hours each Wednesday in September. Below was my freely captured audience.
Photo by me
During my forty-year teaching career, I loved creating new courses. Teaching forced me to keep learning, and my summers were full of days of exploring and preparing.
My college’s Lifelong Learning program helps keep me in the game.
Without it, I’d be like that solitary golfer performing for gravestones.
Writing
Who wonders, “What’s the point without a witness?”
Would I have read all those political books last summer without the promise of a packed room dangling in front of me?
Writers are told to write for their readers. I’ve never understood what that means. But that’s different from the question, would you write if you had no readers? Does writing give you enough sustenance to do it without anyone else paying attention?
I’m not sure golf does it for me. I took many photos during yesterday’s round and subconsciously thought about this story. Two political books are lying unread on my desk, which I did not get to before I finished my class. Maybe I’ll finish them. Maybe not.
Would I complete this story if I knew no one would read it?
This question makes me uncomfortable. Needing an audience seems a baser motive than loving golf, the study of politics, or writing, regardless of externalities.
But is it less pure?
I’m not so sure.
I love the camaraderie of playing golf with one or two friends. So much socializing comes from the game’s challenges, commiserations, and rare opportunities for transcendence, like the shot in photo three and the almost shot in photo four. Perhaps it’s the game that brings us together.
I love the back-and-forth of a diverse group of people collectively thinking about America’s political life. In a way, we’re doing the thing we’re studying.
Finally, I love the possibility of a reader of this story asking herself, “Do I need an audience for whatever I am passionate about?”
Humans are social. So, everything we do can be sparkled by the need to reach beyond ourselves.
This story was published in Fiction Shorts as a Drabble.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
Today’s Drabble is 150 words.
Setting: A Denny’s Restaurant in Eugene, Oregon.
Janet: “Have you ever walked out of a movie?”
Bob: “Five Easy Pieces, in 1970.”
“You don’t look that old. What’s your secret?”
“I don’t eat eggs.”
“Who doesn’t eat eggs?”
“It’s the texture — the same with peas. My mom made us eat everything, but I’d gag whenever I put an egg or a pea in my mouth. No egg or pea for sixty years.”
“I loved Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. Why did you walk out?”
I did walk out of Five Easy Pieces in 1970. I’m not sure why. But I suspect twenty-year-old uptight me saw too much truth in Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea character. I loved The Shining and Here’s Johnny. I hate eggs and peas and once, politely but firmly, asked a server in a London pub to take back my fish and chips because the peas, which I had said I did not want, touched the fish. Finally, the Five Easy Pieces diner scene was filmed at Denny’s restaurant in Eugene, Oregon.
