Suprise Me

A Day on Campus by
10
(12 Stories)

Prompted By Lost in Space

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A normal day shattered by disaster.
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Three-Ring Circus by
200
(346 Stories)

Prompted By Stress

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Three-Ring Circus A working woman who’s also a wife and mother can often feel like a juggler in a three-ring circus. I was working at a job I loved when I discovered I was  pregnant,  and I happily applied for a maternity leave to start two weeks before the baby was due.   (See My Brown-Eyed…
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The Cafe by
200
(346 Stories)

Prompted By Imagined Lives

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The Cafe Recently at a neighborhood cafe I saw an attractive older couple deep in conversation,  their hands touching on the table.  (See West Side Story)    Both wore wedding rings,  but their body language told me they weren’t married to each other.  I’ll never know their backstory so I imaged this one for them.…
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Passover Present and Past by
200
(298 Stories)

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When we got to reciting the ten plagues during our Zoom seder, I know all of us were thinking about an eleventh one that kept us apart this year.
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You Do What You Can by
100
(141 Stories)

Prompted By Favors

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She had been taken to the ER after attempting suicide, and would be in there for some days. Would we take care of her dog?
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What to do about those quarantine-gray roots? by (4 Stories)

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  Back in the annals of hair history (say, the fifties and sixties), showing dark roots was considered tacky, slovenly. It went hand-in-hand with wearing matted, fuzzy slippers to the grocery store, a cigarette bobbing between lips smeared a garish orangey-pink. Then, that same look became an actual, sought-after hair style, sexy and young – the reverse ombré (well, minus the slippers and bobbing cig). Now, with the closure of hair salons due to the need for social distancing, a new take on the reverse ombré is having its day. Rather than dark roots on light, it’s light roots topping any shade under the sun. 
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Drifting Away by
200
(359 Stories)

Prompted By Ex-Friends

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I don’t really believe in “ex” friends. There is an ebb and flow to friendships, but once established, they can usually be revived, even if dormant. Some can be intense for a while, then circumstances change – one of the parties moves away, changes jobs, or life interferes (I have seen an instance where politics…
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The Chinese Supermarket by
100
(165 Stories)

Prompted By Supermarkets

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My mother always had a fondness for the scroll of hand-painted figures, dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, carrying produce or hawking other wares.  They were framed in pieces and hung on the wall along with other mementoes from her time in Peking (now Beijing) in the late 1940’s.  She lived in a neighborhood of classic…
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Close analysis of a close call by
25
(25 Stories)

Prompted By Close Calls

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  Close calls can be close only because of a chance occurrence, thought, or action. Like the so-called “Butterfly Effect” they often yield their own legacy, and in my father’s case, raise questions in my mind as to luck, responsibility, and personal values. When I was a young teen, my father related, as best I…
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Pardon me while I have a strange interlude by
5
(7 Stories)

Prompted By Comedy

/ Stories

Comedy, for me, is reified in the Animal Crackers scene when madcap Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) steps away from staid Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) and  Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving) saying: “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”  You know, recently I’ve favored cremation over burial, but burial’s preferable if I can have Groucho’s line carved…
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