This is a photo of a 50-year reunion of friends from the St. Ambrose College class of 1971; the author is second from the right in the second row.
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A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count. This Drabble is written for Fiction Shorts.
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The Trembles?
Nah, that doesn’t sound right.
The Tomatoes?
Have you ever heard of a group named after a fruit?
A tomato is a vegetable. Look, here comes Sharon — name tags help.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count, and you won’t feel guilty. This Drabble is written for Fiction Shorts.
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Fish: You’re not from around here.
Man: I saw the brook from the bridge.
Fish: So, are you lost?
Man: I’m late for work, and my wife’s mad at me. I also need to mow the grass and call my mother, and it’s all becoming too much.
Fish: I’ve heard about guilt but don’t know it.
Man: Can I give mine to you? One tiny moment. I promise I’ll take it back.
Photo by the author of Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, at The Courtauld Gallery in London
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A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count, and you won’t be among the guilty ones. This Drabble was written for Fiction Shorts.
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Painting: Are you judging me?
Viewer: I’m not. Or any of your friends.
What are you thinking?
Why do the men have their clothes on, and you and your friend don’t?
I’m an exhibitionist.
What do you mean?
I’ve nothing to hide, especially among friends and nature.
On the wall opposite you is a naked painting of Adam and Eve before they ate the apple. Like you, there is no shame in their eyes.
The new foundation for our front porch. Photo by Matt Downing of Ragarack Construction
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Please stay on the page for 30 seconds so your read will count, and you won’t be among the guilty ones. This Drabble was written for Fiction Shorts.
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Joe strode through the door and settled into the front-row window seat. He placed his pen in the table groove.
Just before the bell, Jim slid into the desk in the back row and slumped down. His cap bill camouflaged his eyes.
Jim had sat in the back of a classroom for as long as he could remember.
Joe always felt comfortable in the front.
At parent-teacher conferences, their mother said her task was to lay the foundation for success.
Message to my readers: This short piece was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts. It is a Drabble of precisely 100 words using the random word SWEEP. It is written as a “genetic conversation.”
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Look at the sweep of my hand. Isn’t it beautiful?
What will you do with your hands today?
Applaud my good intentions.
Do your plans include helping others?
Why do you care so much about others?
They are part of your little world; you might need their help someday.
I saw a wheelbarrow full of dirt in Ed’s backyard.
Grab your shovel.
But I passed him on the street yesterday, and he didn’t ask for help.
Maybe he’s like you. And doesn’t have a mirror.
Oh, I could use his ladder to clean out my gutters.
Grammarly doesn’t like that “perhaps.” Too tentative, it tells me.
It’s probably right. Flip’s judge is looking over my other shoulder, nodding its head.
The faces of my internal interlocutors have changed over the years. My mother, 103 in spirit, is still there, occasionally. My dad, not so much. He told me something once and then let it go. Maybe he’s behind the curtain.
Every teacher, coach, mentor, colleague, brother, lover, friend, and American President has taken their turn, except one. No, not him. He’s too busy with real-life judges.
I’ve projected their verdicts onto innocent and not-so-innocent pooches.
And onto you, too. I clapped and commented something nice on your recent story. But really, did it need to be six minutes long?
I’m a little tired of this gavel part of me.
Even Catholic priests retire at 70.
I’ve had 75 years of judging.
Maybe God doesn’t need my help anymore.
It’s long past time for that part of me to recede.
Why do I write stories?
A friend recently asked me why I write stories. It’s a good question. This is Medium story 300.
“It just seems natural,” I replied without much thought.
Of course, with reflection, it’s nothing of the sort for me.
Writing stories came late and coincided with my retirement from teaching Politics in college.
Knowing my friend, I’m guessing he was asking why I write the kind of stories I write, personal reflections, and not essays with the heft of my scholarly expertise.
I know it sounds trite, but I’ve discovered from this three-year 4- 6 a.m. writing routine that it feels good to get things out to you and out of myself.
What kind of things?
Ask yourself:
Do you need another essay on Donald Trump by a so-called expert?
Be honest, wouldn’t you prefer a dog poop story?
With a moral of some sort that may connect to your life.
To Get Over Myself
What about me? What are the things I need to get out of myself?
In a terrific essay I link below, Rick Lewis writes
Life only works when you can get over yourself quickly in the moments that count. Writing is how I get over myself.
To get over my criticality, I need to take it out and see it in the light of day.
Writing helps.
It reinforces awareness.
There it is, on the page.
It’s also over there in how I look at that slightly off-kilter picture frame.
And in my expectations for my son.
It’s everywhere I am.
If I can see it, I can change it.
Judge-Paul, Be Gone.
Third Person Thinking
Some, perhaps my friend, would call this story navel-gazing.
My shirt is tucked in.
But there is a danger.
The late Indian Jesuit priest Anthony De Mello wrote in Awareness about the difference between self-absorption and self-observation.
Self-absorption is self-preoccupation, where you’re concerned about yourself, worried about yourself. Self-observation means to watch everything in you and around you as far as possible, as if it were happening to someone else.
DeMello says the key is not to personalize things.
Even when one is writing about personal things.
Third-person journaling has trained me to distance myself from my anxieties, worries, and problems to manage them better.
I live in the first person.
I write for you in the first person.
But the act of writing helps me think in the third person.
The late sage Jimmy Buffet said laughter helps us through life’s challenges. He wrote my title and placed it at the end of Latitudes and Longitudes, which you can listen to here.
You’ll feel 10% better after you listen.
Steve’s story will bump you another 10.
I hadn’t talked with Steve in fifteen years, but I had seen him walking gingerly around town.
“Are you still playing golf?” I asked during a break in a Lifelong Learning class we were taking.
Yesterday, I sat next to wheelchair-bound Harland Nelson at a lecture.
Last night, I dreamed I was sitting in a Lazy Boy with a quilt over my legs and an empty coffee cup resting on a braided coaster.
All of us were 99.
My college friend John told me his mom Loretta was still sharp as a tack and comfortable in her six months in the nursing home, surrounded by photographs and mementos.
Harland said that lately, he’s been seeing images of his late wife Corinne for the first time since she died five years ago.
In my dream, I’m scrolling through the photos on my phone with a peaceful countenance.
Knowing I have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to see.
This was not a nightmare. I felt at peace, blissful.
That’s what was so weird.
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I won’t bore you with the details of my retirement schedule.
There’s nothing special about the quantity or quality of what I do: writing, volunteering, reading, walking, bicycling, coffee-klatching, traveling, and, occasionally, thinking.
If you’ve been retired for a while, you have your list.
Something else is on my mind.
I’m 74, and my partner Rebecca is 72.
We’ve been retired for six years.
At the end of most days, we’re pooped.
Even without dog-walking on our daily calendar.
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My mother lived to 96, and her sister lived to 103.
Genes and lifestyle give me a reasonable chance to reach 99.
Twenty-five more years.
I’ve considered retirement years like the Men’s and Women’s Senior Golf Tours.
After the first ten years, your chances of winning plummet.
So, I’ve tried to fill up my retirement coffee mug in this first decade.
Doing is winning.
In a senior frenzy.
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A few days ago, I joined another book club. A week earlier, I agreed to teach a Life Long Learning seminar this fall on the 2024 American Presidential election.
Two more things.
At the end of each day, as I settle under the covers, I tell Rebecca I’m glad to be tired.
But I’ve begun to allow another perspective to surface, represented by my dream.
We spend most of our adult lives feeling we have to justify ourselves through what we do.
That’s how we earn our keep.
Six years ago, I discarded my job, but not this notion.
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I’m not ready to be 99.
For the end of my days.
But I wonder.
When will it become OK just to be?
Can I integrate this perspective into my daily life?
My Medium friend Rodrigo S-C wrote, “A photograph will ask a question.”
I’ve strolled through my 74 years with unanswered questions about many of the 39 million moments of my life. For example, at age nine, did Becky and I hold hands as we walked alone in her backyard in Cedar Rapids, Iowa?
Photos pause moments, allowing the questions to catch up and linger.
When they do, the past comes alive.
But not just for the photographer. Rodrigo also suggests that images can start a conversation.
My partner Rebecca and I spent January in San Miguel, Mexico. It was our first visit. Every moment was precious.
Here are five frozen in time, with questions and stories that awaken memories.
Perhaps, for you as well.
The Aldama two-step: Do these sidewalks help nurture the habit of gentleness?
On our first morning, we walked up Aldama Street from our apartment to San Miguel’s city center, guided by the steeple of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcàngel Catholic Church, as you can see in the first photo.
After walking these narrow, cobbled sidewalks for about a week, we developed the habit of attention, which required our heads to swivel — up to see who was coming and down to watch that we were not too close to the sidewalk edge.
When you behold, you make room. Since you must share a narrow space, gentleness becomes the norm. Another Medium friend,
Look at the subtle two-step with Rebecca in the cap and her partner making room for the other in that tight space, with a slight tilt of their shoulders.
It was a half-mile up Aldama from our residence to the city center, and we performed that two-step hundreds of times, going up and coming down. It became a habit to accommodate and to be accommodated.
Returning to our apartment late the first Friday afternoon, we followed a Mariachi Band walking single-file down Aldama. The band was at the end of a procession of well-dressed people of all ages who turned into Párque Juarez.
The Wedding Celebration at Parque Juárez: Are you tired yet?
Photo by the author of a wedding party at Párque Juarez
Once inside the park, we accompanied the parade as it stopped four times in its 45-minute public festival. At each pause, the participants formed a circle around the married couple who danced to the accompaniment of the Mariachi Band and the Mojiganga figures.
I’ve never seen anything quite like a Mexican wedding celebration. This article includes an excellent description with a video clip from Párque Juarez.
I took the photo just before the celebration ended. We had watched the couple you see in the middle joyfully twirl around four times, always encouraging others to join them. I tried to understand the couple’s chemistry, how well they fit together, and what the future might bring.
I got lucky.
The answer is in the image.
Jardin Watching: What do you think about tourists and ex-pats?
Photo by the author
The Jardin, a central city park across from Arcángel Church, was one of our daily walking destinations. San Miguel, a central Mexican city of 70,000, has 10,000 expats, primarily from Canada and America, and over a million tourists each year. Most mornings, I observed this lady with the cane watching this favored photograph location in front of the church.
I wanted to ask her what she thought of all these visitors.
In 2018, Rebecca and I traveled to Morocco with college students. Our guide, Mohammed Oujrid, repeated every morning of the eight-day visit,
Be a traveler and not a tourist. Travelers get to know local people.
When I see her next January, I will join her on the bench, at a respectful distance, and ask:
Qué piensas del tourista?
A visit to an Otomi village: Dona Maria, what advice do you have for living a full life?
Photo of Dona Maria by the author
Dona Maria lives in an Otomi village, Augustin Gonzales, 20 minutes outside San Miguel. She is a mother, grandmother, and potter. The 93-year-old showed us a “first-draft” pot and the finished creation on the left in the photo.
The lady extending her arm, part of our Rancho Tour group, knew a bit of the Otomi language, so she was helping our guide, Patrick, in the ball cap with the translation. Patrick moved to San Miguel from Alaska twenty years ago.
On the way back to San Miguel, Patrick told us that if his wife died, he would want to live out his life in this village. He said:
They would take care of me, and I would take care of them.
Dona Maria, a lifelong resident of the town, exuded serenity.
I wondered, what does she know that we don’t?
Serendipity: What do you see, Buzz Lightyear?
Photo by the author
I again got lucky. I wanted an image of Arcàngel Church from its front and how it dwarfs the Jardin and San Miguel’s plaza. Instead, I got a look-alike for my favorite Toy Story character.
When friends asked us what we would do in San Miguel for 31 days, we didn’t know what to say. We’d read Julie Meade’s excellent guidebook but mostly planned to explore.
A few years ago we spent four days in Paris. My favorite story from that visit was that we never, not once, even saw the Eiffel Tower. We had nothing against Paris’ number-one tourist attraction but filled our days wandering its neighborhoods and museums.
The San Miguel moments, photos, stories, and questions I’ve shared with you were unpredictable before we lived them.
Photo by Robert Scriver of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and dog memorial from Wikimedia Commons
Ignorance is not bliss.
I — Political Science — had just settled in at the retired professor’s breakfast table on Thursday.
Dale, Ruth, Uwe, Alan, Marv, and Dennis — Chemistry, French, Accounting, Communication Studies, History, and Physics — took turns holding court.
I was surprised to see a full plate of sausage, gravy, and biscuits placed in front of me by the waitress with a bare midriff. Fifteen minutes earlier, at the counter and thrown off by her intriguing belly button, I had ordered the full instead of the half portion.
Walking through the restaurant to our reserved breakfast room, I noticed another female server similarly attired and wondered whether I should bring this observation to the group.
Once my sausage, biscuits, and gravy were gobbled, my attention was torn from midriffs to a lively conversation among my colleagues about a person I had never heard of.
Everyone knew about this Shoshone woman who accompanied the explorers Lewis and Clark on their western expedition to map the Louisiana Purchase lands. Not only that, but each added something new to the discussion.
I was dumbstruck.
When I got home, I quizzed Rebecca about Sacagawea. Of course, she gave me chapter and verse.
