My short story, The Bench at the End of the Dock, is the winning entry in the 2016 Jacksonville Magazine Fiction Writing Contest. It is featured in the October 2016 issue of Jacksonville Magazine. You can read it here!
Winner! 2016 Jacksonville Magazine Fiction Writing Contest
My short story, The Bench at the End of the Dock, is the winning entry in the 2016 Jacksonville Magazine Fiction Writing Contest. It is featured in the October 2016 issue of Jacksonville Magazine. You can read it here! I think my answer to this question has changed over time. During my school years, staying up late was fairly easy. Getting up early was less so. When I was a practicing attorney, I had to do both – get up early and stay up late. At that time, I didn’t have much choice in the matter, so I just did it (not without complaint, if I’m honest). Today, I seem to struggle with both. Getting up really early is challenging and unpleasant, unless it’s done with copious amounts of coffee. Staying up late is easy enough to do once in a while, but it’s not a sustainable routine for me. If I had to choose, I’d prefer to get up early – not because it’s painless, but because I feel like I can get more done during the day than I can at night. Given that I am increasingly fond of getting a full night’s sleep (does that mean I’m getting smarter or just older?), I try not to stay up too late or get up too early. And so, I’m left wondering if it is possible for me to be neither an early bird nor a night owl. I don’t think I naturally prefer either one, and neither is feasible as a long-term routine. It does make me look forward to retirement (many years from now), however, when I plan on sleeping as little or as much as I want and keeping whatever hours I please. I must confess that I am obsessing about food at the moment. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been battling a minor stomach ailment. It has meant medication and a very limited menu. After weeks of nothing but easy-to-digest foods such as rice and applesauce, I have been craving all my favorite foods. But, could I pick only one of those foods to eat at every meal for two weeks? It didn’t take me long to get sick of rice and applesauce, but something yummy like pizza or chocolate cake? That might be a different story. Regardless of how much I love a particular food, I think I would probably get tired of eating it every day for every meal. However, I’d be willing to test that theory with ice cream. I am always in the mood for ice cream, but that may be because I don’t actually eat it very often. I’ve never eaten ice cream for breakfast, but I’m sure I could get used to it. And, it would have to be a simple flavor, like vanilla. Anything too fancy or complicated would get old fast. It would be a fun experiment to run, if only I could suspend the effects of all the sugar, fat and calories. One of my least-favorite childhood memories is closely tied to the favorite childhood memory I wrote about last week. Ferdinand the Donkey, my favorite stuffed animal, had pride of place on my bed when I was growing up. Over the years, he became worn (well-loved) and bald in patches, but he was still my favorite toy. When I was about 10 years old and my brother was 3 (about the same age I was when I was given Ferdinand), I caught him playing with Ferdinand. More specifically, he was covering the poor donkey’s face with lipstick – bubble-gum pink lipstick. I guess the donkey’s sweet face was too much to resist, and my brother must have thought that it would look even better with lipstick. I don’t think my brother meant to do any harm, but I was devastated. My favorite toy was ruined. I mourned for weeks, if not months. Maybe even years. Eventually I got over it, and Ferdinand continued to have pride of place on my bed until I went away to college. I also forgave my brother, begrudgingly and not right away, of course, but I’m happy to report that we can laugh about the “incident” today. I still have Ferdinand. He’s in a box in storage – his sweet face undiminished by time, love and bubble-gum pink lipstick. One of my favorite memories from childhood is the day I received a special present from my grandparents. When I was about 3 years old (or was it 4?), my grandparents came for a visit and brought with them a stuffed animal wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with a huge bow (yellow, I think). The stuffed animal was a donkey with an oversized head on a little body and large ears that stuck straight up from the top of its head. It was seated, with its back legs curled around its front legs, and it had large, brown eyes and the sweetest face I’d ever seen. I fell in love immediately and named him Ferdinand. When my grandparents arrived, I’d been reading The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. (To be honest, either my mom was reading it to me or I was reciting it to myself, since I knew it by heart. I can’t remember which.) The Story of Ferdinand, my favorite book at the time, is the story of a bull who wanted to sit and smell the flowers rather than fight in the bullring. Why not name my new favorite stuffed animal after my favorite storybook character? I knew that donkeys and bulls weren’t the same thing, but this little donkey’s ears sticking straight up off the top of its head looked a little bit like a bull’s horns – so close enough. After writing a draft of this post, I purchased a copy of The Story of Ferdinand and read it again for the first time in (many, many) years. It’s still a great story. I thought this would be an easy question to answer, and then I tried to answer it. First, limiting the answer to three words is tricky, given how many wonderful words there are in the world. Second, I wasn’t sure what I wanted “best” day to mean – an actual, specific day or just a really good day in general. (For this blog entry, I decided to think of a few specific days that stand out in my memory, ones in which I felt fully alive and everything seemed to go my way.) And, third, there are a lot of words I would love to use to describe myself, but they wouldn’t really be accurate – even to describe me on my best day. Therefore, limited by word count, specific memories and honesty, I’d have to choose: creative, focused and energized. When I am all of these things on the same day, the result is usually a very happy and satisfied me by bedtime. Those days are great days, and I feel like I am the best version of myself. |
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