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Write about how a person’s perspective on an event from their childhood shifted in their adulthood.

Posted in Adults on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 31 stories

Sent to a Farm.

Shortlisted for Contest #11 ⭐️

I turned off the bitumen and the tyres bit into the gravel with a familiar crunch. It had been a dry summer and the road to my grandparents’ place dusted my windshield with cream talc. I wondered if old man Patterson would be on the phone to my parents, complaining I was going too fast. But he'd have been dead ten years by now.A fortnight prior, Grandma had passed away and I was back at the family home to help in some way. Not in any administrative capacity—I’m famously challenged in matters of logistics and organisation—but my back’s still ...

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House of Clouds

Shortlisted for Contest #11 ⭐️

The man smells of laughter, his cheeks are grease-stained, his eyes a hue so softly gray it could have been pencil-drawn. He is at my front door. “I can fix your house,” he says. He’s holding his breath, like a starving child gazing at the displays of a bakery. “I . . . I don’t think so.” I am blocking the doorway so he wouldn’t be able to see the dark inside. “You think I can’t?” He licks his lips with cautious hope. “You can trust me, I promise I’m good.” I shake my head. “I know you can fix houses.” I don’t know how I know this. I just do...

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No Wounds like Old Wounds

Submitted to Contest #11

I watched him lying on his bed. This once super-human force, my father, now lay still, an empty shell, small and vulnerable. Almost unrecognizable. Formerly bigger than life itself, how could this be the man who dominated my puny life? The bed appeared to swallow him. I spent my life waiting to see him exposed and weak. I felt empty.I could touch his hand. But an impossible, impassable distance separated us. How does one bridge a chasm created through the span of life?We hadn’t spoken in years. Answering the phone, he’d pass me to my mother....

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Stranger

Submitted to Contest #11

   Curiosity. Innocence. Laughter. All that existed in my mind as a four-year-old who rarely got out. It was an early morning and the minimart was quiet. Hand in hand with my mother, I took in my surroundings as a zoo-bred tiger would when released into the forest for the very first time. As my mother was paying at the counter, someone caught my eye.     It was that very second, when the barrier around the only world I had ever known crumbled down, and I was introduced to a whole new concept - differen...

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One Line and Sixty Years

Submitted to Contest #11

March 13, 1952 Hell found her. Yes. It had surely found her. It was Doreen’s eighteenth birthday, but instead of celebrating, she stood, alone, in a dim-lit pantry, staring at a line on the wall. An ordinary line it could’ve been, should’ve been, only now it bore the mark of desperation, sadness, and a bitter battle waging in the pit of her stomach. Red crayon, no more than hen scratching, “five-foot-two inches, thirteen years old,” etched a fire into her heart, the heat now spreading to her lungs. Her graduation awaited. In one week, she’d ...

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Grave Sight

Submitted to Contest #11

The once imposing stone monoliths now stood as mere bookmarks in the grass. As I entered the graveyard, I mused how 25 years could change ones' perspective significantly. I remembered feeling confused then, and empty, but now a sadness swelled from within my gut, erasing all trace of my smile. Memories of my last visit here came to mind: a pink ribbon, shiny shoes, a daisy chain... Unsettled I kept walking. Past the oldest tombs marked with lichen, as though they were contagious with grief, I kept walking. I kept walking until I stopped in t...

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Marci & Rascal Go To College: Chapter 7

Submitted to Contest #11

              The next morning, Marci wakes up while it’s still dark out to the sound of Rascal scratching at her dorm door; she unlocks it, opens the entranceway enough for him to enter and she immediately lets the latch lock as it normally does without impediment.           “Oh Rascal,” Marci begins as she sniffs. “I had the worst night last night; I cried myself to sleep.”        ...

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CATALYST

Submitted to Contest #11

A Picture is worth more than thousand words… was the tagline used by Gopakumar’s company for the ‘Drawing and Painting’ competition conducted exclusively for the teenage students. The contestants were required to submit their entries through schools or colleges. There was good response. He could easily select and keep aside the prize-winning entries. One particular entry from a school student was really eye catching and stood apart from the rest. He had a genuine doubt whether it was done by the student or anybody else in their name. The cla...

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The Last Day

Submitted to Contest #11

When I was little, I used to think the only light that could be brought upon me was to be from the Sun. So every morning until I turned 7 I would sit in front of my window and watch the Sunrise and Sunset. I would think to myself that all of the light that I would ever see is gone. That is what I went to bed thinking every night. My mom would always think I was crazy for thinking those things, and nobody ever really took me seriously when I told them that one of these nights will be your last.  I would go around saying that li...

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The Green Room

Submitted to Contest #11

Attached to the wall across from the mahogany imitation dressing table was the floor to ceiling mirror mounted in a black plastic frame that looked into the room and criticized everyone who waited to go on the air. At least that was how Anthony felt. Like a mannequin, he stood motionless in the center of the Green Room fixated at his reflection until he pulled his golf shirt down in an attempt to cover the ripples around his midsection. Not a six pack. He saw just flab. No matter how he tugged his golf shirt down or ...

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Jack

Submitted to Contest #11

Television interviewers often ask their celebrity guest, “What advice would you give yourself as a child?”I remember myself as an insecure twelve year old with a bad stutter and an equally bad complexion making my way, on weekends and holidays, down to the beach with my trusty Boxer dog.As we walked, half ran, both getting excited, through the foreshore and over the sand dunes, I would unclip him and let him bound into the waves while I stood on the edge and let the sea breezes blow away my frustrations. I would shou...

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Loved or Feared: Preschool Edition

Submitted to Contest #11

I received my first death threat at age 4 and ⅙. I suppose I was what you would call the “Godfather” of Westside Montessori Preschool. I knew the kindergarteners who shared our playground. I was on good terms with the teachers. I even smuggled in my stuffed penguin, Penguinian, ⅗ days a week. Everyone wanted to be my friend to avoid the dismal converse. And what is a mob boss without her most trusted comrade? My favorite minion: Vera. She was the perfect alliance. She was small with auburn hair and freckles and the chubby cheeks that adults ...

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The endearing enthusiasm of the inexperienced

Submitted to Contest #11

Dark clouds loom ominously over a hill, a cottage, and a chestnut mare. A masked man treads stealthily across the roof, arms outstretched. He has a rose between his teeth (but if he were to speak, he would sound Mediterranean). He somersaults, lands noiselessly onto a balcony and smiles. He lives in a remarkable world of sword fights, adventure, and intrigue, and he has finally reached his destination. This is a familiar story, but it is not our story. Our story is set in Wootton Bassett, population 4,401, ten-mile stretch of drive-through...

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Heart of Stone

Submitted to Contest #11

I stare into the crowd of familiar faces, scattered laughs rising from their throats as they tear into some blackened chicken, hot dogs, and beans over conversations ranging from scandalous to flat-out boring. Everyone is having a good old time of course and I make a conscious decision to cut through the ocean of family and friends to greet Mom. Of course, my body tenses up, my heart races and my hands turn clammy instantly at the sight of Aunt Malina stepping through the sliding doors to the backyard to nurse a beer beside her. As dizz...

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The Red Shoes

Submitted to Contest #11

The house was deadly quiet as she looked through her books. She loved the smell of that big edition of fairy tales. It had a large font and colorful, detailed illustrations, not simplified, as in most kids’ books with huge-headed characters, but realistic and shimmering with ornaments. In a few, there were moving elements, like a window that could open or a clock with a moving pendulum and Mary was mesmerized by them.Cheerful, happy world, dangerous, but in its dangerousness a perfect, logical world of excitement and clarity. If you love, yo...

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