Three Minutes Running the Bases

Normanday #75: Buy me some peanuts and a red Ferrari.

Write for three minutes about…

…playing baseball.

Email what you wrote to woof at bright dot net by the end of the day May 12 (put “Norman is a Power Hitter” in the subject line). I’ll post as many of my favorite entries as I want next Monday. Include your first name (or, even better, use a pen name) and age (unless you’re tortoise-old). If you’re a published children’s or young adult writer, include a biography to be posted with your entry.

Here is the single entry from last week when I asked you to write for three minutes about…

…a discovery.

Morzant

It was a gift from Bigfoot. I examined it carefully, recording the most prominent characteristics: boxy, shiny, electrical. There were two rectangular slots on top. Along the side was some sort of sliding lever mechanism and along the bottom were two dials that rotated. There were Arabic numerals circling the dials. Bigfoot seemed so proud to give me the gift that I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t know what it was. I thanked him and set off to my lab to discover the purpose of the device.

I plugged it into the Earth-style sockets I had installed in my lab. That part was obvious, but what the electricity was needed for eluded me. I considered at first the gift was an electric mirror, but no matter how I turned the dials, my reflection never altered. I tried pushing down the lever next and noticed heating elements inside the top slots. It occurred to me then that something was meant to go in the slots, but what? I searched for days for objects corresponding in size and shape to the slots. I found: bar soap, wallet, sponge, paperback book. I put each of these objects in turn into the device and pushed down on the lever. Turning the numbered dials resulted in these objects being burned. The lower numbers caused mere singeing, the higher numbers scorched the objects. I spent untold hours examining the burned objects to no avail. There were no discernible improvements. Aha! The moment of discovery had arrived. The device was an incinerator! I immediately wrote a thank-you note to Bigfoot, as is the custom on Earth.