The Silly Short Story I wrote yesterday was the first time in a long time I had fun writing. I have a million other writing projects in various stages of progress but yesterday was just fun. So I did it again. This one is in the same Hemingway style and has typos and wrong grammar since I’m writing it in the voice of someone who is trying to sound like someone else so hard that they’re not good at it.
I only point this out to avoid messages from concerned friends sending well meaning writing tips and corrections. It’s fun to be silly and ridiculous. Enjoy!
just add water
A new day on one of the rocks Hemingway probably transgressed on his way to the furthest western Key has been a lesson in physics. Specifically about thermos dynamics I believe it’s called. The one about heat.
For the same water that can open the bouquet of the finest petrol station whiskey can soften the potatoe and harden the egg to the consistency of a fresh mud clot texture. Water can do all that. On this morning water made the fresh hot coffee for myself and loving wife and made the lemonade for loving child.
Unsated with her station in life loving child demanded one or both of us entertain her despite our own wants and needs. For clarity, loving child’s standard of what is acceptable currency to be considered play is playing “family” or “pet adoption” with her movable feast of travel stuffies. I, being the loving provider I pride myself greatly on, fell on loving child’s tiny sword and offered myself as tribute to her volcanic god of play.
Someone, who is dead now, most likely a Greek I cannot bring to mind at the moment, once said, “hell is other people.” I beg greatly to differ. Hell is in fact compulsory make-believe play with a five-year-old who fluidly changes the rules, plot, and characters at speeds unmatched on this mortal coil and fills with anger when every point of the session is not immediately recalled in photogenic memory detail.
Once loving child was sated with her play and the animal stuffies had been adopted an untellable number of times she was hungry. As is her wont she was not hungry for anything that existed in the refrigerator. No. She was hungry for some untellable morsel, possibly mythical, that she would only reveal to us if we guessed correctly. Not unlike a mythical being charged with guarding a bridge.
It was a battle of the minds. However, in the end I won and gloriously so. I took from the refrigerator a piece leftover pizza pie and warmed it in the microwave for exactly 16 seconds. Outraged that I would dare nourish myself before her, loving child demanded the portion of pizza pie and devoured it like a feral koala bear eating a really good leaf.
Checkmate.
The need to acquire further rations and necessities was obvious to loving wife and myself and we made a plan to venture out on the Key. After stopping for a coffee to bolster our spirits, an iced Cortado if you must know, we traveled to a grocers. Not the kind they have up north. No. We made intention to shop at a chain store only found in the south.
I fully expected it to be a cultural experience akin to anthropological field work but was equal parts disappointed and overjoyed when the only real difference was the name of the store brand tortilla chips. During our shopping, loving child grew increasingly restless and agitated. So much so that even chocolate covered ice cream novelties on a stick in the shape of the head of a cartoon mouse would not soothe her building rage.
In a moment of gesperation - that is desperation that ends up being a genius move - I told loving daughter that we could go in the pool as soon as we got back to the house but we had to finish our grocery shopping first and if we finished quickly she would have more time in the pool before dinner. Loving child took a beat to consider my pledge and an instant later the glow from the angelic halo that appeared above her head was blinding. Our shopping finished we returned to the house. Loving child jumped into the pool and was greatly overjoyed.
Later, loving wife asked how I had thought to offer the promise of the pool as a way to calm her down. I said to loving wife, “I recall something I heard attributed to a wise old woman who said about babies and children loving water and thought to myself, ‘papa, just add water’ and it worked.”
Loving wife, tired from all the activities of the day, looked at me and said, “ah yes, just add water.”