Category: Non-fiction

Writing prompt: personal essay

Being the typical Irish-American, I sunburn. I am as pale at the end of summer as I am at the beginning. My own Mom once asked me if I was wearing white nylons under my shorts, that’s how pale I am. Not only do I burn easily, but I’m also allergic to sunscreen. This combination creates some unique challenges. Big hats and shade trees are my friends.

I make regular visits to a dermatology clinic for preventive maintenance. We live in a small town in a rural area, so the nearest dermatologist is over an hour away. During a routine checkup the doctor found a suspicious spot on my forehead and scheduled an appointment to have it removed. He told me it would be a topical numbing agent, so I wouldn’t need to bring a driver.

Unbeknownst to me, this routine procedure was going to be performed by his physician’s assistant-in-training. The first thing they did was numb my forehead. Shortly after the physician’s assistant started, a heavy unexpected pressure pinned my head to the chair and something wet trickled down my neck and into my ear. The PA whispered to the nurse to get the doctor. I could tell something was wrong and started to feel a tingle of apprehension. The nurse ran out of the room and rushed back with the doctor.

I realized the wetness running down my neck was blood and the pressure I had felt was the PA trying to get my head to stop bleeding. She had nicked a major vein and as we’ve all learned from TV shows, head wounds bleed, a lot. It took them awhile to get the bleeding stopped. By the time they were finished, I needed eight internal stitches and six external stitches.

A bandage had to be taped on and then wrapped in gauze to keep it from falling off or getting wet. By the time the doctor was done I was sure he had used an entire roll of fabric. Everything but my face and the back of my head was fully covered. I was three loops short of being a mummy. He then told me he called in a prescription and that I needed to leave for home immediately because in about an hour, I would have the worst headache I had ever had. He also gave me a note excusing me from work for the rest of the week.

The look on the other patient’s faces in the waiting room was priceless. When I entered the room, all eyes were on me. As I hobbled out to my car I could see their heads turning to watch me as I made my way across the parking lot.

The drive home was even more interesting. I received the classic double-take numerous times. I drove home as fast as I dared and when I passed cars, the drivers would glance over, then stare at me slack jawed, eyes wide open when they realized that the person who was overtaking them had her head wrapped in gauze like an escaped hospital patient.

In my imagination I heard the 911 calls to dispatch. “There’s an escaped hospital patient driving down Interstate 84. Her head is wrapped up like a mummy and she’s speeding.” Luckily, I made it home without incident. My husband picked up my prescription and met me when I got into town, so I wouldn’t have to go into the pharmacy.

The doctor was right. I had the worst headache ever. Blood had soaked into my hair and dried. It was stiff and crackly, and my scalp itched like crazy.  I had dried blood in one ear and down my back.  I wasn’t supposed to shower because I had to leave the wrap on for three days and I couldn’t risk getting the bandage wet. I knew I was going to stink. This was not a welcome development.

To add insult to injury, two weekends prior to this, I had been in a horseback riding accident. I had road rash all over one shoulder, a bruised face, and had to use crutches to walk due to a severely sprained ankle.

My boss was not pleased when I stopped by to show him the results of the day’s activity.  I knew he wasn’t going to believe it unless he saw it first-hand. He had the same look as the drivers I had passed on the way home.  I had already missed work the week prior because of the horse wreck, and now this. He mumbled something about how one person could be so unlucky. I worked at a mortgage company at the time and we had a big file review coming up. The timing was not optimal, but what’s a girl to do. These things cannot be planned.

When I got home, our landlord was walking by as I was getting out of the car. I received the now familiar double take from him and he asked what happened. He shook his head in disbelief when I told him my story.

I still go to my yearly dermatology appointments. I go to a different doctor. I consider myself fortunate that I made it thirty-eight years before ever needing stitches.

12 August 2018

Writing prompt: Persuasive essay

Is the book always better than the movie?

Action comes across better on the big screen and character development comes across better in a book, so the book is not ALWAYS better than the movie.

As a child with an overactive imagination, books opened an entirely new world for me. The fantasy felt like reality and I lived in that new life. When a particularly good book ended I was SO disappointed! At night when I couldn’t sleep I would pretend I was the main character and play scenes in my head. I ate, drank, and breathed books. At every meal I sat with a book propped in front of me because I couldn’t put it down. When it was bedtime, the nightly ritual consisted of “just three more pages, pleeeeeease……” until I reached the end of the chapter. If Mom wasn’t paying attention, I would continue into the next chapter.

As I got older I didn’t have as much time to read so I turned to movies to fill that void. What might take days to read could be watched in a few hours. As time management became an issue, trying to balance adult responsibilities with “me” time, movies became a new way of escape where books had provided that release in the past.

I remember reading The Hobbitby J.R.R. Tolkien as a child and watching the cartoon version of the movie. The newer movie trilogy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armiesare much better than the book. The book was originally written in 1937 as a children’s fantasy novel whereas the three-part movie is an adult action adventure with scenes that would give a child nightmares. The action and the scenery that are in the movies would be impossible to pass on to a child.

Imagine trying to describe the scenes in written word that the movie makers were able to achieve through visual effects. At times there was so much action going on, an author would be hard-pressed to convey it all succinctly on the written page. After re-watching the movie there is still more going on than would be easily described in book form.

When a movie is adapted from a book it tells a story in a different way. It needs to be told in a way that is going to appeal to more audiences, such as the love story in the Hobbit movies but not in the book. In the book there are no strong female characters, but in the movie, there is. This gets a better response from more people.

If a book has lots of action in it, a movie may be able to show that action better than the book does. It takes a lot of detail to describe action scenes and if a reader has a short attention span the movie will suit the viewer better than the book.

Another instance of the movie being better is if the reader has never been to a location. They may not know what the waters around the Maldives look like so either the author has to describe them with great detail where a picture, or movie shot, is worth a thousand words.

A movie has the ability to show good action, great scenery, and beautiful people, but it can’t convey as well what the characters are thinking and feeling. With a book, the reader gets to know them intimately and has more time to relate to them.

If a reader has the ability to hear the book’s characters in her head, the book becomes like a movie. When I am reading a good book, I can close my eyes and see the scene unfolding before me. I can hear the character’s voices. The reader can read the thoughts whereas in a movie, the creator has to find a way to show what is going on in the actor’s minds.

One book that comes to mind in this instance is P.S. I Love Youby Cecelia Ahern. With the exception of being able to look at Gerard Butler in the movie, the book is much better.

For one thing, the book takes place in Ireland and the movie takes place in Manhattan. The entire setting changes the way the characters act and behave. The family dynamic of the main character, Holly, is completely different between the two deliveries. In the book, the reader gets to experience the emotions of all the characters and how the death of their friend impacts all of them individually whereas in the movie the main focus is on Holly. We miss the additional sensations the rest of her family and friends experience. Some changes are necessary to make subjects flow better from a book to a movie, but changing the main characters and locations makes for a different feel altogether.

A good book gives the reader a vision into someone’s else’s life. This may be a person the reader would never be friends with or know, but they get the chance to live their life through this character and encounter things they would never otherwise experience. Some of these feelings can’t be effectively translated into a movie.

As a reader, our opinion of the character develops as the character develops. We get to change our feelings about them as we are allowed into their minds and can read what they are thinking. A good character grows and develops as the book progresses and the reader can see and explore those changes along with them.

A book with a lot of action and scenery will come across better as a movie whereas a book with a lot of character details will be better left as a book.

29 July 2018

Writing prompt: personal essay

Saturday mornings were special occasions at our house when we were growing up. My friends would beg to spend the night, so they could be part of the Saturday morning ritual.

Mom would take out her green plastic bowl and splash in a little water, a little cocoa powder, some flour and sugar, stir it all up, put it in a pan on the stove, then she added a little milk and stirred some more.

While the cocoa was heating up, the soft dough biscuits were cooking in the oven. She made them from scratch – no boxes or mixes.

When the cocoa was taken off the stove and the biscuits removed from the oven, we would eagerly grab a biscuit and begin tearing it into bite size pieces. In our hurry to devour the world’s best breakfast we would burn our fingers. Mom would laugh and tell us to wait.

We smothered the torn-up bits of biscuit with cocoa and topped it all off with a pat of butter. The butter would melt into the cocoa, leaving a yellow smear on top. If there was any cocoa left on the plate we would grab another biscuit and mop up the remaining cocoa with it.

Afterwards my friends would go home and tell their Moms about the wonderful breakfast we had eaten and beg them to make it. They would call my Mom for the recipe, but there wasn’t one. Mom learned to make it from my Dad’s Mom, and she didn’t have a recipe either. Mom would try to explain how to make it to the other Moms, but it was never quite right.

Dad shared a similar story when he was growing up. His friends all thought he was rich because Grandma made cocoa and biscuits every Saturday morning. In the Arkansas Ozarks, in the thirties, this was a Christmas morning treat, or a birthday tradition, not an every weekend occasion.

The cocoa and biscuit mornings slowly disappeared as I grew older. Sometimes they were used as bribery if I lounged in bed too long on a Saturday morning. Mom would pop her head in my room and ask if I wanted them and I would eagerly jump up to help, or else the smell of warm cocoa would lure me out.

Many a tear was shed over these breakfasts. It was our time to sit down together and share stories, heartaches, and triumphs.

Pretty soon the “made from scratch” biscuits transitioned into biscuits stirred up from a box. Then the whole treat disappeared from the Saturday morning menu and was replaced with cereal. They occasionally made an appearance when Mom didn’t feel like cooking a “real” meal. It faded away altogether when Dad couldn’t eat them any longer.

One day Mom bought a cookbook from a church having a fund-raiser and the magic recipe was in it. It was called “Chocolate Gravy.” The recipe didn’t turn out quite the same, but it gave us a starting point for perfecting it. We worked on the perfect combination for several weeks. Each week we tried something different.

We didn’t use two tablespoons of flour like the recipe indicated, but instead two heaping tablespoons. The cocoa was also two tablespoons, but not quite heaping. The recipe called for a cup of sugar, but half a cup was plenty. Milk took the place of water, and it had to be watched carefully or it would get too thick, but finally, we had a decent plate of cocoa and biscuits.

I posted a picture on Facebook and my close friends immediately knew what it was. They started posting memories about staying at my house on Friday nights and being treated to cocoa and biscuits for breakfast on Saturday mornings. They still raved about it.

One morning on Facebook one of my cousins posted a picture of her family sitting around the table with her Mom, their plates in front of them. They had the same ritual growing up, and she had finally conquered the recipe and had made it for them. We reminisced about the Saturday morning memories and eating at little Grandma’s house in the small town of Yellville, Arkansas. We called her little Grandma because she was under five foot tall.

I started making it for my husband and myself on Saturday mornings. We seldom sit down together for meals, but the Saturday morning cocoa and biscuits became something we looked forward to before the days busyness began.

When Mom got sick and couldn’t cook any longer I made the 600-mile round trip every weekend to help take care of her. Now it was my turn to make her breakfast. Once in a while she asked for cocoa and biscuits and we laughed at how I was cooking for her now. Sometimes it was even used as bribery to get her out of bed.

Now I make cocoa and biscuits in Mom’s green bowl and can see her comforting smile in my mind’s eye.

28 July 2018