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Write about a time you approached a situation with one strong feeling or belief, only to have your perspective shift completely by the end.

Posted in Nonfiction on Nov 8, 2024

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✍️ 42 stories

Entertaining Arthur

Submitted to Contest #276

Yesterday’s Christmas family gathering felt like a year ago as I waited for Arthur in a soggy meadow, wrapped in my new woolly hat and scarf. My father once described Arthur as an eighty-year-old jazz fan whose eventful life read like a boys-own adventure book of twentieth century history. He had a lifetime’s worth of exploits and wasn’t shy about recounting untold anecdotes. I admit Arthur was amusing, it’s just that I questioned everything when I was thirteen-years-old. I thought his stories were far-fetched and made the mistake of sa...

51 likes 32 comments 32
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The Social Worker

Submitted to Contest #276

The Social WorkerNames and places have been changed. Some who played a part in this are not included, but in essence this is a true story.Whatever I was expecting, Mrs Lauren wasn’t it. An older woman, well spoken, with not a hair out of place, wearing heels and a power suit, she didn’t fit my image of a typical social worker, whatever that was. The first time I saw her; I didn’t think she’d be much help.***A voice called from the half-open door where my favourite teacher Mrs Swanson was conferring with the school secretary.“A quick word, He...

39 likes 55 comments 55
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Christmas in Lockdown

Submitted to Contest #276

I had one job, and I had to get it done, failure was not an option.  With only two days to go, I had to get the impossible-to-find gift by Christmas Eve, or I would ruin a 4-year-olds Christmas. My family goes crazy over getting Christmas gifts, every year we all scramble for the perfect gift, and usually at the last minute. And I get it, presents are an amazing and heartfelt way to show how I care about those I love.  I remember the light in the eyes of my kids when they first saw the brightly lit Christmas tree, with colorful wra...

36 likes 27 comments 27
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Twisted

Submitted to Contest #276

My father and I had a complicated relationship. He had a family with four children to raise. I was the third son. From my narrow perspective, I felt like an also ran.A good provider, we were always housed, fed and clothed. We lacked for nothing material. But Dad always did things his way, in his time. He was an entrepreneur. When opportunities arose, he took them. The family followed. He saw many opportunities. We moved often. Dad planned to move the summer before I entered seventh grade. He listed the house for sale without telling our moth...

30 likes 35 comments 35
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Put It On My Tab!

Submitted to Contest #276

I met him when I was twenty.I dropped out of high school ran and away from home at sixteen.I got married at seventeen. By nineteen, I had two young daughters.I was a collection of banal statistics.My husband, Jim, had hair that hung straight down his back, parted in the middle; the color, two drastically different tones. You could catch him walking hurriedly across campus clad in vertically striped bell bottoms, an old t-shirt, and no shoes. He wore square, green-tinted, ironic little gl...

27 likes 22 comments 22
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Kaleidoscope

Submitted to Contest #276

I have always believed that holidays have colors. Thanksgiving, which is rapidly approaching, is a bright yellow, vibrant orange, deep green, rich brown, and sometimes a muted gold – the colors of vegetables spilling out of a cornucopia, also known as a “horn of plenty.” The colors are many and varied, but they are all in the autumnal family. The colors are reflected in my Thanksgiving decorations. These are the things I pull out every year in late October/early November – my yellow patterned tablecloth with turkeys on it, a welcome mat...

19 likes 19 comments 19
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Eureka

Shortlisted for Contest #276 ⭐️

(This story discusses prison conditions, violence, and human suffering. Reader discretion is advised.) A local university was seeking a writer for a year-long position in its prison education program, and as part of the job, I was to go into the Facility—a century-old maximum security prison—three to four times a month and visit with incarcerated students, many of whom had been incarcerated for decades and would continue to be well after they graduated from the program. Some, I learned shortly after taking the job, would never leave. Until I...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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The Day the Rabbit Died

Submitted to Contest #276

Mom and Dad:I have been thinking about what you said and I want to present my argument to you in writing so I don’t miss any of the points I think are really important. I know I’m only 12 but I believe what I’m arguing is right and I hope you see that.I am the youngest in this family and I’ve only had 12 years of Easter baskets. That means that Rob and Scott will have more years of Easter baskets than I will. It’s not fair to just cut off Easter baskets and I get gypped because Dad thinks we’re too old. I’m not. No one asked me what I though...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Candy Thriller

Submitted to Contest #276

Candy Thriller When I was about 11 years old, I was paying my weekly visit to my Dad and today he took a childhood friend of mine, named Bud and I to the movies for some cheap entertainment.  Bud and I had been friends since grade school and we both liked going to the movies especially during those days when the slasher films were pretty much the thing. We both climbed into Dad's beat up,old green Nova, with the ceiling cover that was sagging in the center, and headed south to the theater near Antioch. I always got a thrill watching th...

14 likes 16 comments 16
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Milk Chocolate Summers

Submitted to Contest #276

When I was younger I told my friends I liked dark chocolate—bitter dark chocolate, eighty-five percent cocoa. I found dark chocolate was sophisticated and elegant, so having an affinity for it decked me with maturity. Although I boldly conveyed my unique interest in the bitter and dry taste, somewhere buried inside, I truly loved milk chocolate. Not just any milk chocolate, but the most simple and effective kind. Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. It was the very taste that imaginarily lingered on my tongue during the car ride Mummy and I took fr...

13 likes 12 comments 12
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The Photograph

Submitted to Contest #276

They originated from India, the lowest caste, the untouchables even there when they left a thousand years ago to begin their search for a better world, a world of acceptance and integration. Though nothing for them has changed, not even here in France where the motto ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ supposedly exists. Not a single one of those numerous countries they travelled through on their way ever learnt who they were or who they could be. And I wonder how many people have really tried to understand their ways, to see them as beautiful p...

13 likes 15 comments 15
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Team Building

Submitted to Contest #276

Team Building As the workday dragged to a close, my phone pinged with a text message: “Bob. Stop by my office before you leave.”  I couldn’t resist punching the air with a triumphant “Yes”! before striding from my bullpen cubicle to the Director of Marketing’s glass-walled office. Keeping his phone at his ear, the Big Man beamed a welcoming smile and motioned toward a chair in front of his desk. I walked in and sat as he concluded the call. We indulged in a minute of everyday chitchat. He praised my work and asked me to say hello to my...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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My Father; Then My Sister

Submitted to Contest #276

This memoir is about the Vietnam and Iraq wars.It was 1969, and I sang and twirled and imagined my dad sitting in the green, oversized wicker chair in my grandparents’ kitchen listening to a tape recording of Judy Collins. “My father always promised us that we would live in France.” The song, “My Father,” kept my dad, who was serving in Vietnam, nearby. “I’d sail my memories of home, like boats across the Seine.” I was in the second and third grades and couldn’t find Cu Chi, Vietnam, on a map and wasn’t aware that Dad was in danger. I was aw...

12 likes 3 comments 3
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Lost and Found #reedsyencounter

Submitted to Contest #276

Life in the closet was never easy, I hid myself from the world and I hated myself because of what, who I was. The world seemed so scary, so scary in fact that I’ve never told anyone about who I really was. Growing up in a strict Christian household didn’t help much either. The church told me God thought people like me were an abomination, something that was against nature. I was unnatural, something that was undeserving of Gods love. Hearing these things all my life I pushed parts of me down, so far down into my subconscious that I w...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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Willoughby

Submitted to Contest #276

When you die, you die. Your once warm, pulsating heart putters out, your once ballooned lungs leak air, and the unit that had operated as a whole perfect machine of parts and pieces ceases to be. The blood inside your veins stops moving. The electricity in your brain fizzles. And then it’s just a matter of time until the rigor mortis, the decomposition, the “dust to dust” exit from Earth. It’s science.  Or so I thought.  I was raised Catholic, and brought up with the ideas of Heaven, Hell, angels, and the afterlife. If you were goo...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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