Three Minutes Past Bedtime

Normanday #36: The squirrels are throwing a party on the lawn.

You’re in bed, about to fall asleep, when you hear a commotion outside. Write for three minutes about…

…what you see when you look out your window.

Email what you wrote to woof at bright dot net by the end of the day July 15 (put “Norman Could Compete in the Olympics as a Synchronized Swimmer” 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 a terrifying entry from last week when I asked you to write for three minutes…

…about something that’ll scare the socks off your fellow campers when you tell stories around the campfire.

Seriously. It’s really scary. You might want to skip reading this and go make a macramé pot holder instead.

Cranberly

Alright, fellow campers, gather ’round. I am going to tell you a tale of something truly frightening. One day, in 30 years from now, you will turn 40. It doesn’t seem like a big deal at first. I mean, yesterday you were 39 and today you are 40. One day doesn’t make a big difference, right? But then you begin to notice little things. You may go away for a weekend and you don’t sleep so well on other beds. You find that your back hurts. Then your knees make funny noises when you go up and down stairs. They started to hurt too. Not a lot, but just a little. Sometimes, you have cramps in your fingers after working for awhile. They start to get stiff. Okay, you tell yourself, I can take some ibuprofin. No big deal, right? Then, one day, you start calling things by the wrong name. “Gamebox” instead of “XBox,” “Johnsonville” instead of “Thomasville,” “Myface” instead of “Facebook.” Then you find that you skip concerts because they start at 10 p.m. at night and the main band won’t be on stage until 11:30 p.m. and that’s too late for you, even though it’s a Friday night and you can sleep in on Saturday. But you CAN’T sleep in on Saturday. You want to, but you wake up at 7:00 a.m. because that is what time you get up everyday, for work. And you don’t work someplace cool, like you thought you would. You aren’t even a scientist or a rock star or an artist. You do something mundane that you have to do every day because you have responsibilities. Most days, you are tied to a desk staring at a computer. Your eyes ache. And your eye doctor tells you that you may have to get special reading computer glasses and in a few years you will need bifocals. Then, one day, you take a walk during lunch, grabbing just a salad because anything else goes right to your hips and stomach because your metabolism went away a long time ago, and you see two eighteen year old girls and they are wearing skirts that are way too short and you feel irritated by their lack of modesty and then you realize... you have turned into your mother!

Wait? Where did everyone go?

I was expecting ghosts or maybe a couple hungry zombies. Cranberly really knows her way around “scary.” I think we’ll wrap up early today. As it is, you’re probably all going to have nightmares.