Tuesdays are fast becoming my favorite day of every week. I don't hide in the house on Tuesdays. I'm always out for lunch with Rotary and I'm usually out with the writers group in the evening. On good days I do both. Today was one of those good days. The Rotary program this week was a talent show, and it turns out we have several musically gifted members in the club. We had singers, instrumentalists, and one brave soul played a saw. Yes, the kind dads everywhere use to cut planks of wood in half. A saw. It was great fun listening to everyone. My buddy had been challenged to twirl a fire baton, but she opted not to. I wish she had done it. Or at least twirled a non-flaming baton. Maybe next year I'll come up with something I can do. Perhaps a dramatic recitation of a piece of flash fiction that I write for the occasion.
Yesterday, the leader of the writers group called me and said that she had a different meeting to attend, and she asked could I lead the group in her stead. She already had an activity planned, and the instructions ready to go. I jumped at the chance. Of course I'd be willing to do it! Not that I was looking to usurp her awesome cosmic power, but I was very excited to get to direct the goings-on for a night.
Our activity was as follows: take 3 index cards. On the first, sketch out a character in one or two sentences, and pass the card to the person on your right. On the second, briefly describe a setting, and pass that to the person sitting two seats to your right. On the third, write out a new year's resolution, and hand it to the person on your left. Then, write a piece of flash fiction with the details you are given. I thought my prompts were fairly good. My character was a 68 year old crazy cat lady, whose 7 cats are all named after philosophers. My setting was a doctor's office, right after a doctor has told his patient that he/she has been declared lymphoma free, in total remission. My new year's resolution was to live boldly, take risks, refuse to live in fear. I was fascinated by how these details played into my friends' writing. The prompts I got were "Randall was about to finish his graduate degree... He was about to move out of his parents' house," "It was an island like no other. The detonation of 13 atomic bombs in the WWII era had had its toll. Palm trees waved, but there were no people to see them. Fish abounded in the central lagoon, protected from the open ocean," and "Get things done every day." In less than twenty minutes, this is what I came up with. It has no title.
*****
The sailboat bobbed in the shallows, just off of the island. Randall pondered his options. He was running low on fresh water, and he was getting heartily sick of PowerBars for every breakfast and fish for every lunch and dinner. If his GPS coordinates were correct, he wasn't going to find much in the way of provisions on this island. It had been bombed into irrelevancy back in World War II, with something like 13 nuclear detonations in the surrounding area in a ten-year span. The last test was in the early 1950s, but no one was willing to move back there to set up camp now. Randall eyed the fish darting through the lagoon. He knew these little guys were undoubtedly safe, bearing no relation to their irradiated ancestors. Still, he half expected to see a three-eyed fish swim by.
His graduate thesis in marine biology depended on the data he was gathering on this trip. Without his degree, he wouldn't be hired by the oceanic studies think tank in La Jolla, and without that job, he'd never have enough of an income to move out his parents' basement in Bakersfield. He had to get out of that house, out of that town. He didn't want to end up like his dad, content to do nothing but work in an office every day, and sit in front of the cable news on TV every night. Randall had resolved to be the complete opposite of dad -- he was going to do something meaningful every damned day, and this job was the start of that.
Wishing for a Geiger counter, Randall dropped anchor and threw his legs over the side of the boat. As he splashed into the waist-deep water, he repeated his favorite mantra, "Dr. Van Owen. Call me DOCTOR Van Owen"
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