Kick Off Word Sprint

Before NaNoWrimo officially kicked off, everyone took a challenge from the hat and wrote for 15 minutes.  My challenge was “write a flashback in another genre”.

Looking down from the spaceship as it leaves the remains of Earth., Cassidy remembers the first time he saw the sunrise over the horizon.  It had been after a long night of writing, and the prospect of seeing Odessa again kept him awake.  He rode his bike to her apartment and climbed up her fire escape with flowers.  As he sat there on the seventh floor fire escape he saw the sun start over the horizon in downtown Manhattan.  The hustle and bustle of New York City melted away when he saw the sun.  He always equated the sunrise with Odessa’s face through the kitchen window, so surprise to see him out there.

“I thought you were working late,” she gushed while she opened the window for him to climb through.

“I finished early.  You’re worth staying up for.”  This ended the conversation with a passionate kiss, and he didn’t see another sunrise for quite some time.

But the last tine he saw Odessa’s face it was a spaceship window separating them.  Him on the inside, being whisked away to safety, while her face raged with the plague that eventually killed the Earth itself.  The planet was no longer inhabitable and he was one of  lucky few that could start a new colony on Mars.  Lucky, right, Cassidy thinks.  He doesn’t want to go on without her, but there is more on the line than his feelings.  The fact that he was able to be saved, especially with Odessa infected, makes him lucky again.  What was it about his immune system that kept him from getting the disease after living in such close quarters with O.  Is he already part of a superior race?  What will they be starting on Mars?

Return to High School

What instances of your past would you rewind and redo? Write about the changes you would make and the outcomes you would expect.

 

As my 20^th high school reunion approaches, I wish I would have done high school better.  I have no desire to attend said event, because I feel I still wouldn’t “fit in”.  I was actually surprised to learn I was friend with 16 people who attended high school at the same time I did. I attended Jr. High with 2 of them, and grade school with 7 of them.  But in a class of close to 800 and a school of over 3,000, perhaps more than 0.5% of the population wants to stay friends with me.

I would say I wish I had more friends, or that I had tried harder to stay friends with people after I left the area over 12 years ago, but friendship is a two-way street.

Could I have lost weight in high school to make myself more attractive to others? To which I answer, why would I want friends who look at me on such a superficial level. I have two great friends from college, where I was still fat.  And I was fat when I made most of my adult friends in my new location. As an adult I’ve learned real friends would come get you out of a ditch (or at least bring you gas when you’d run out so many times that even AAA wouldn’t service you again).

I was in honors math and science classes in high school.  A lot of popular people were smart.

Join more clubs.  I actually could make an argument that I would have made more lasting friendships if I had been a joiner.  I was in freshman class council, because another friend of mine wanted to run for office.  I don’t remember what exactly we did.  Senior year, I tried out for and made the speech team, but being a novice as a senior put me in a different category than the kids who had been on the team all four years.  But 3 of my Facebook friends are from speech.

I guess what I’ve learned from this exercise is that I didn’t want to change my high school days, am glad that they are over.  One of my recurring nightmares is being in high school, but I don’t have my schedule/don’t know where to be.  In the dreams, I know I’m an adult and I don’t have to be there.  I am an adult, and I don’t have to go back to high school, and I’m glad to be moving on.