Bernie’s writing club shares a randomly selected list of six words each week. The members have a week to write something using those six words. It can be a sentence, a poem, a story or anything else. Writers can use plural and alternate tense forms of the words. Club members suggested Bernie publish his stories, so that is what you’ll find below. The six words appear at the top of each story. You can try it yourself.
Six Words: disappointment, quantity, stay, ex, harsh, fairy
Is there a difference between a fairy and an angel? It is a question that I never thought about before getting this list of words, but now I stay up at night thinking about it. The quantity and quality of my sleep has been impacted. I’d like to just ex the thoughts out of my mind, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t just make yourself stop thinking about something.
It has gotten worse as the days went by. Is asking “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” the same as asking “how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin?” Would the quantity be the same? And remember Tinkerbell? If people didn’t believe in her, she would fade away to nothing. Would it be harsh of me to stop wondering about fairies? Would they fade away too? I don’t want to be the source of disappointment for any of you that do believe in fairies. But I also need to be able to sleep at night.
Six Words: skilled, continuous, moon, inspiration, gem, vision
The moon has revolved around the earth continuously since it formed, perhaps by being a chunk that broke off from the Earth in some cataclysmic collision. A collision so cataclysmic that it is hard to envision. Since time immemorial, the moon has not only affected the tides, it has also affected creatures on Earth. Many people are affected emotionally, but as far as I know, there are only a few creatures that are affected physically. We’ve heard wolves or coyotes howling at the full moon. If we haven’t heard them ourselves, we’ve heard about it.
Men are affected by the moon, and so are women, but they are affected differently. Some of those differences have changed as people changed, from being roaming hunters and gatherers, to shepherds and farmers, to gathering in towns and cities. Some of those differences go back to our earliest beginnings, before people wrote poems and songs or looked through telescopes. When did ancient humans first notice that the moon shrinks and grows and shrinks again about every 28 days? When did people, especially women, realize that the moon isn’t the only thing on a 28 day cycle? Only a few other mammals have such a recognizable experience. The great apes do, and so do some monkeys. So do bats, elephant shrews, and spiny mice. Gravity explains why the tides have a 28 day cycle, but why mammals? It’s not going to be important to this story, but why don’t lions, or tigers or bears react to the moon. Or birds? Or fish?
Men are affected by the moon in a way that doesn’t occur on any regular cycle, nor even to all men. Some – and not only men – skilled and unskilled, write poetry about the moon. Some men see the moon as an inspiration, as a gem floating in the sky. John F. Kennedy inspired the nation in a speech to Congress on May 25, 1961. You will all remember the words: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” At the same time, he asked for increased funding for defense and foreign aid; and for economic recovery, including job training programs and measures to combat unemployment – things that help people. Later that year, at Rice University, he said: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
He wasn’t the last president to lay out bold and noble challenges. There have been others since, and there will be again. I can hardly wait.
Six Words: forget, sculpture, army, praise, boat, waste
The weather was beautiful the last weekend in June. We were able to spend all day out on the lake in our boat. The slow moving clouds were striking, looking like sculptures in the sky. The slight breeze was comforting. The boat is big enough so that Aunt Jean and Aunt Beth were able to grill hot dogs right on the boat, and we all praised the two Aunts for how good everything tasted.
After several hours in the sun and an occasional dip in the water, we headed to shore, packed everything up and headed home. The aunts don’t always come with us, but that last weekend in June was so good that they came with us again the following week. We started transferring things from our car to the boat, and that’s when Aunt Jean yelled “whoops” and ran back to the car. She discovered that we’d forgotten to take the waste off the boat last week and our Aunt wasn’t the only one that got on the boat. An army of ants were already there, cleaning up what we had forgotten.
Six Words: Kidney, Eyebrow, Unit, Protest, Quantity, Pupil
Once upon a time, a small boy lived on a small farm alongside a small road. Being a small boy, the small farm seemed big to him. Very big. The sky at night over the small farm alongside the small road seemed even bigger, because, of course, it was bigger, much bigger.
The sky at night was black. Very black. The quantity of stars that were visible at night to the small boy on the small farm alongside the small road were uncountable. Because it was so dark at night, the pupils in his eyes grew very big. He could see even more stars than his parents, who lived with him on the small farm alongside the small road under the very big sky. The eyebrows of his parents, especially his father, sometimes got in the way when they looked at the stars in the very big, very black sky over the small farm alongside the small road.
One day, not at night, but during the day, the small boy on the small farm alongside the small road saw a package on the counter of the small kitchen in his small house on the small farm alongside the small road. The package said “kidney bean packets enclosed, 12 units”.
He remembered a story that his parents had read him at bedtime when the very big sky was very black over the small farm alongside the small road. He took a kidney bean, just one, and planted it in the dirt outside his window. He watched it and watered it every day. Soon it began to grow. And grow, And grow. It grew taller and it grew wider. The kidney bean plant reached his window sill. Then it reached the top of his window. Then it reached the roof of the house.
His parents told the small boy that his kidney bean plant had grown too big for their small farm alongside the small road. They told the small boy that he was going to have to harvest the very tall, very wide kidney bean plant that was outside his window in the small house on the small farm alongside the small road.
“No!” protested the small boy using a very big voice. “My plant is going to reach the stars in the very big, very black sky over our small house on our small farm alongside the small road. And then I will climb all the way to the top of the very wide, very tall kidney bean plant and I will catch a star.”
His parents smiled. They remembered a story too, about a boy who planted a bean and climbed it to get to a pot of gold. The parents said to the small boy on the small farm alongside the small road, “OK, you can keep the bean stalk Jack.”
Six Words: Squeeze, Freshman, Possibility, Spit, Picture, Crevice
We all know that college students, especially if young men are involved, sometimes do foolish things. Fraternities are especially known for this.
One group that I heard about, drove to a spit sticking out into Lake Travis, with their freshman brothers to check the possibility of squeezing all of them into a crevice in the rocks that formed the spit. Can you imagine if someone had gotten stuck? Would the rescuers have had to spray them with WD40 to get them out. Can you just picture it? Maybe they should have coated them with Crisco before squeezing them in.
Six Words: Established, Feedback, Frog, Franchise, Charter, Single
It started out when I captured a single frog and kept it as a pet. Feedback from friends, over many years, led to the idea of opening a pet store that specializes in frogs. It was a success! The business grew and I had to expand into a larger store, and then a larger store with a pretty spectacular pond.
The frog business was so successful that I thought about establishing franchises. The first step in the franchise process was to write a charter for the stores, so that every store would have the same goals, policies and practices. One of the policies was that anyone asking for a recipe for frog legs was immediately ejected from the business and their photo posted on our wall of shame. But we never told them to go croak.
Six Words: Ash, Vegetarian, Era, Sensitivity, Outline, Shift
We are living in a time of shifting sensitivities. That’s no secret. But can we say that we are in an era of shifting sensitivities? Has there ever been a time when sensitivities have not been shifting?
When did people start becoming vegetarian? Or vegan? Or concerned about animal rights? Or women’s rights? Or race? Or religious bias? What happened to the actual ERA – the Equal Rights Amendment?
Could we draw an outline around the time that we’d say we our sensitivities have shifted more extremely? Was there a difference between the sensitivities in the Obama era compared to the Trump era? Was one better than the other?
Is it time to cover ourselves in ashes like Job or the king of Ninevah as a sign of repentance? Instead of ashes, can we repent by voting.
Six Words: Invasion, Victory, Hardship, Evolution, Equinox, Arrangement
As the spring equinox approached, and the hardships of living in a war zone because of the Russian invasion continued to evolve, the family made arrangements for their children to live in America until Ukraine achieved victory.
Six Words: Problem, Artificial, Prove, X-ray, Wound, Steak
It didn’t take an x-ray to prove that the wound was a real problem, not an artificial one. When the clothing was removed, it looked like raw steak. The injured person couldn’t see the injury herself, so she didn’t understand why her roommate fainted.