Category: Free For The Taking
For Sale Price:
Older Maple captain chair
needs tlc a little bit weathered and needs glue. Sturdy chair, worth fixing up.
call 6am-7pm or email
I haven’t been to my mom’s
house in over a week, I walk in the door “Mom what are you doing?”
She is a little out of breath
from dragging this chair out of the basement.
“I need you to get the camera
and take a picture.”
I roll my eye while she’s not
looking “Of what?”
“Of this stupid chair, what
did you think?”
It was pointless to not just
get the camera and do what she asks. But this will be no different than the
other times.
The stained queen size mattress
that lay on the front lawn for a month till the garbage man took it out of pity.
The 5 piece matching lamp set
that we only had two of the shades; we got over 5 calls that time but no one
wanted them without shades. I ended up selling two of them giving the rest to Goodwill.
The 10 piece silverware set
that wasn’t silver or matching. I spend a whole Sunday at the house while
people came to see the set, only to all leave. She took it as a sign to keep
it. Back into the basement it went.
I make my way to the den,
find the camera and ten minutes later I made it outside to take the picture.
After I take the picture I look over at my mother she has that smile that she
gets every time she put an ad in Uncle Henry’s
This prompt almost always gets good writing in response, and your piece is no exception: the portrait of the mother laid out by describing the junk she is trying to sell is devastating. Very clever writing.
ReplyDeleteAnd that last sentence really nails both the mother and the daughter's relationship to her.
I realize that this prompt pretty much insists on a 162 no-no, fiction, but the imagination and versatility you show here have real carryover to nonfiction.