Category Archives: writer’s challenge

sibling rivalry, writer's challenge

How I Broke …

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It is time for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge once more. This week the prompts are:

  • If you were starring on American Idol TONIGHT and HAD to sing, what song would you choose and why.
  • Take a picture of yourself right this minute without primping and explain to us why it is you have not washed your hair today.
  • I just asked Pat to help me with a writing prompt so here’s his: “What do you think about the NBA All Star game”…blech.
  • What’s your number one pet peeve? Develop a punishment for anyone caught in the act.
  • Write about something mean you did to a sibling growing up.

I chose to write about being mean to a sibling. It’s the obvious prompt for a pair of brothers. But first a bit of background:

My brother and I survived childhood without once killing each other. That was a miracle in and of itself. We were OK with battling each other to the death over trivia but were there for each other when someone else tried to horn in on the fun. Pretty much the standard sibling stuff carried to the extreme. Part of the issue was that my brother is only slightly younger than me. We were close enough in age to practice sibling rivalry as an art form. The other was that we were diametric opposites forced to share a room as we grew up. He was a slob, I was a neatnik, etc. Because we both were very bright and enjoyed games, we were competitive to the death with almost any game. We’d quickly eliminate the other players and then concentrate on getting each other. That led to Mom banning many a game from our use because it led to spats between us. It wasn’t until I had been away at college for a bit that my brother and I became closer. That distance and freedom from each other was important to both of us in becoming more tolerant of each other.

With that dose of background, you are ready to hear

The Story Of How I Broke My Brother’s Arm

One Sunday we were out playing in the yard after a family event. There were a few cousins and others about, even my friend G from here and here. My brother and I have never lacked for the ability to come up with some new game utilizing the items we found at hand, especially if it was a bit off-beat and allowed head to head competition. This was to be no exception.

We invented a game using a couple of cinder blocks and some lumber sitting around the yard. It amounted to a game of see-saw chicken played on top of the concrete slab in the yard. We put the lumber across the cinder blocks like a teeter totter and then the two opponents stood on each end of the wood beam that formed the teeter and gyrated to make the other player fall off. One of the “legal” moves in our set of ad hoc rules was that you could jump off the wood beam and if your opponent then fell, you won. However, if the opponent rode the wood beam to the ground and didn’t fall, you lost. We didn’t like to leave victory to a chance vagary of rule interpretation, so we covered all eventualities in a similar manner.

Of course my brother and I were eventually matched as opponents. Through the first few rounds we were about even, one or the other of us touching a foot to the ground from time to time and losing the “joust”. Finally it came down to the final joust: my brother versus me for the championship. We both wiggled and feinted and jerked and faked. Then I made the fateful decision to dismount and see if my brother could ride the beam down. He tried valiantly. Unfortunately he lurched off the beam crookedly and fell hard on his arm. Really hard. Really really hard. On concrete. Not good.

None of us kids wanted to get in trouble, so we were trying to convince my brother to hold it down as he is sitting on the ground howling. After a while that plan of action was dropped as futile and we journeyed into the house to expose all to Mom. (Or at least the minimum amount of information we could get away with. Pain and injury was one thing, being in trouble with Mom was an entirely different beast.) Off to the hospital Mom and my brother went. Broken wrist was the emergency room diagnosis.

There you have it. How I broke my brother’s arm without really trying. Don’t you wish you had boys like us?
(And you don’t even want to hear about the episode wherein my brother ate a minnow cooked over a match in the outhouse on a dare when we were aided and abetted by the older neighbor boys.)

Edited to Add: Mom reminded me that it was not a Sunday, but Thanksgiving day the this transpired on. She remembered because we were supposed to go to Uncle H and Aunt O’s house that evening and instead of the ER. Even better.
ASIDE: I plan to remove and recreate anew the feed for this site sometime Saturday to try and clear up the reported problems with the site not showing up in dashboard and/or some readers. The problem seems to be related to having two feeds as a result of some template changes a while ago. So on Sunday (or Monday), please resubscribe in your reader after deleting the old subscription and/or if you are a follower, unfollow and then follow again. Hopefully this will clear up all the problems. Thanks.
cowsills, history, writer's challenge

Writer’s Wednesday

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Once more into the breach dear friends. (With apologies to Firesign Theater and the infamous “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers” album.)

It’s time once more for Mama Kat‘s Wednesday Writer’s Challenge (which shows up on Thursday). This week the prompts are:

1.) What was the first CD (or record or cassette) you ever purchased? Write about the way that particular album made you feel then. Write about how it makes you feel now. writersdigest.com

2.) You were recently laid off. Instead of moping around, you’ve viewed it as a chance to start fresh. Pick a new career and write about your first day on the job. writersdigest.com

3.) List your five most recent favorite things.

4.) I’m hungry. Share your very favorite recipe!!

I choose to write about #1.

The very first vinyl (yes vinyl) record I ever bought, excluding the selected Donald Duck records I had as a little kid, was The Cowsils‘ “Indian Lake” single. This record, aka “Indian Lake”/”Newspaper Blanket” (MGM 13944, 1968), made it up the charts to US #10. As a further hint, 1968 is near the end of my junior high school career.

That album, with the rather simple thrumming bass line and the plaintive lyrics greatly appealed to my younger self. In the midst of the pubescent angst and other agonies of my life the time, it served as an oasis on the edge of the harder rock that I would discover in a year or so. A few years later I was reminded of this song by Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summer Time” as bubble gum headed toward funkifacation.

I find that the music continues to speak to me even now. In spite of the fact that it is a forerunner of bubble gum pop, I like it. It gets crammed in there between the earlier Iron Butterfly “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” and the later Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven” in my set of musical road markers of the journey that is my life. In fact, way back in October, I waxed rhapsodic about “Indian Lake” and some of the impact it had on me. Click here for the highlights.

Strange how an acid rock afficianado like me could like a bubble gum song like “Indian Lake”, but there you have it. Just no explanation for good taste. {*grin*}

country bob's, friday high five, weather, writer's challenge

Friday High Five

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Angela invited me to take part in the Friday High Five and so …

My choice of five things to post about is:

Five Things I Am Thinking About
  1. A co-workers father died last night. It was not unexpected, but it is still sad and brings back memories of the sadness when my own father died several years ago. I know he will be tied up with his family and his mother and I can’t do anything to help him, but it just seems like we ought to be able to help our colleagues in need.
  2. Country Bob’s sent me a couple of bottles of All Purpose Sauce and I can hardly wait to try it out. I have sone custom recipes in mind, but first I think I might try meat loaf made with Country Bob’s. I’ll let you know what I try first and if some of my germinating ideas turn out edible. You know how it is with my experimental cooking. (I’m just amazed that Country Bob’s thinks I can cook!)
  3. I’m still in shock about how many comments I got on my variant haiku for the Writer’s Challenge in this post. The most comments ever in the history of this blog! (Although I really think that the phrase “Idiots abound” is what people liked.)
  4. I keep wondering just how windy it is going to be here Sunday afternoon. All week has been really unseasonably warm (65-70 in Colorado in the winter?) and it is all supposed to change Sunday afternoon to a week of highs below 20. So I expect a lot of wind as the front rolls in.
  5. Should I bump my daily walk up from the current 5 miles to 7 miles? I’m sure Molly the wonder dog would like it.

So what are you thinking about?

haiku, trains, water, writer's challenge

Writer’s Wednesday

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The Mama Kat Writer’s Challenge is upon me once more. The challenge for this week offered the following choices:

1.) Tell us about a lie you told that you later regretted.

2.) Choose a task you’d like someone to complete and write a poem asking them to do it.

3.) Describe a talent you have.

4.) Write a list of ten things on your mind this week.

I decided to do the poems of request for my challenge this week. To make it really challenging for the wordy person that I am, I decided to do them in variant Haiku style. (I disclaim all responsibility for anyone who dies reading this!)

On the subject of getting the train whistles to calm down:

Sorrowfully wailing

Noisy train near

No whistling here

On the federally mandated water treatment:

Sparkling water clear

Federally mandated

You pay for it

-or-

Eight million years OK

One senate session not

Idiots abound

Now it is up to you to do your own challenge.

dick, opera, writer's challenge

Dick, The One-Legged Opera Singer

7 Comments

It is once again time for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge . I have already written about most of the prompts, and as a mayor,  if I decided to write a letter to all the people who annoyed me in the last week I’d never get done. So what I have chosen to do is modify prompt number 1 to read

1) Tell us about a stray animal you took in.

The deletion of that one word is critical. It means I can write about Dick.

The Story of Dick, The One-Legged Opera Singer



When I was a graduate student, I often spent a pleasant Friday afternoon drooling at the wonderful array of equipment in the local stereo and record store. Yes, it is true, there was once an age when music was sold on a mythical material called vinyl and entire stores were dedicated to selling audiophile stereos. No TV’s, no computers, no … The normal watering hole for the grad students and professors was across the street, so I’d get to the store an hour or so before the weekly watering hole event to drool and dream. With the passage of time, I became a friend of the stereo store manager and would help customers with information if he was swamped. In return, he offered me discounts on equipment I could not otherwise afford as a poor graduate student.

One Friday as I was drooling and dreaming of a particular tuner, I noticed a very distinguished looking  gentleman acting very confused as he stared at the array of stereos lining the walls. The only other thing that stood out about the gentleman was that he was on crutches and was having issues with the crowded aisles of the store. Since the manager was tied up with another customer, I asked him if there was something I could help him find. It was like I had opened the gates of heaven. His entire face lit up and it was clear he felt that someone had just thrown him a life preserver. He was “just looking”, but he hoped to get a system he could listen to his opera records on. He introduced himself as Dick and we talked for a bit waiting for the store manager to get free. I gave him some advice about what to look for and then  introduced him to the manager. I never figured I’d ever see the Dick again.

Several weeks later, Dick once more wondered into the store and immediately sought me out. We talked for a bit and decided to get coffee next door so we could talk in peace and quiet. Stereo stores at the time were noted for playing loud rock and roll, usually several different songs at the same time. Not a good place to attempt conversation. As we talked, the subject of Dick’s opera fanaticism and my own stereo equipment fetish came up. After a bit more discussion, it was clear that I knew as little about opera as Dick knew about stereo equipment. So a deal was struck – I would attempt to educate Dick about stereo equipment and Dick would attempt to teach me a bit about opera.

One of the San Francisco classical radio stations broadcast a weekly show that featured operas from around the world (if memory serves me right, it was produced by the Met). So we made the arrangement that Dick would come over to my place and act as a docent for the opera and then we would talk stereo stuff for a while.

I still vividly remember the first Sunday meeting. The opera was Massenet’s Thais . Dick’s commentary was like looking into a whole new world. I had never listened to opera before, but with Dick’s insight it was entrancing. The combination of the music and Dick’s scene by scene description of what was happening on stage and what the motivations of the characters were and … was simply stunning. It was great! In fact, I felt a bit like a piker, exchanging my dry technical knowledge for this panoramic vista of art and music.

Over the course of the next few months I learned a tremendous amount about opera and Dick learned enough to buy the stereo he wanted. But even more interesting, I learned Dick’s story. He had been an opera singer with the San Francisco opera. That explained his in depth knowledge of so many operas and the particular stagings. He had been there and sung in some of them! He had been involved in an accident involving a car and a street car, resulting in the loss of his leg. That had ended his on stage opera career, since as he put it “there aren’t many roles for a one-legged tenor in all of opera.” So he had moved to the university town where I met him and gotten on with his life, giving voice lessons.

So the next time you see someone looking confused and lost, adopt them. The stray you take in may open up whole new vistas for you.