Writeriffic Assignment Lesson 2: Complete the prompt

The assignment was to choose one of the provided prompts and complete it- with as much of a twist as we could muster.

I chose the prompt: "Looking at Paris in this light..." 

Looking at Paris in this light, Adkins could almost forgive the rookie his dumb mistake. Almost. 

Like the flashes of amber waxing and waning over them from atop the ambulance, Lieutenant Michael Adkins alternated between looking at the shape of his mangled partner on the stretcher and out into the fog-drenched darkness of Seabridge Avenue. Too terrible to look at and too terrible to ignore, Mike's reflexes kept snapping his attention to Jimmy's face and just as quickly away. 

On the stretcher, Officer James 'Paris' Frenchy, lay unconcious and bleeding. His badge dangled from his uniform and his left eye socket was empty. 

 Adkins sighed heavily into the thick night air. Tonight's shift already felt a year and a half long and he hadn't even begun the paperwork. So much paperwork, and tonight, it would all fall to him, obviously. 

Whether Paris pulled through or not two things were certain: tough conversations must be had, either with Frenchy or his sweet young bride and paperwork was still the piper who would be paid. 

Adkins mindlessly pulled the pen from his shirt pocket and, turning toward the open ambulance doors, gave it a decided click. 

It was time to take names. 

The Grinch At The End of This Story

Once upon a time, someone I know was having a very bad day. In fact, it had been a rotten week, and a rotten month, and come to think of it, when had anything ever really been a good at all?! He couldn’t remember. And so, because holidays can illuminate our prickly branches, and because the opportunity was sitting right there amongst the branches like a shiny wrapped present for the taking, my friend threw the Christmas tree, who for the record, was not being much help, down a flight of stairs.

Throwing the tree, stubborn as it was, didn’t fix anything, in fact, it broke more things, including the fragile ornaments shaped like children’s hearts, but for all of three seconds, my friend was focused on something other than his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad life. 

For the rest of the season however, he was secretly known as The Grinch. 

What can one say? 

CindyLoo Who calls it like she sees it. 

She hasn’t learned nuance, yet. 

But they are only alike to a point.

In the end, the heart of the Grinch grew.

He was a totally changed Who. 

In the case of my tree-tossing friend, he simply hasn't come to the end of himself... yet. 

whitney

I woke up with a name clearly formed in my head: Whitney
Oh, I think I remember... wasn't the girl who sat behind me in Pre-Algebra named Whitney?
Whitney Bowles...
Bolles?
I am picturing her vaguely but perhaps she is an amalgamation of the many faces that never solidified into friendships throughout my ever-changing educational landscape. Perpetual new kid didn't lend itself to perpetual friendships, at least, not before social media came along to shrink the world a bit.

"I will have to try to look her up when I get a second. I wonder how she's doing and if everything is okay. I wonder why she's in my head".

Six hours and a lot of busy-ness passed by before the memory of the lodged name reoccurred to me. I had been busy packing suitcases for our short trip to lake country.

'Oh yeah, I was supposed to look her up. I'll get right on that...just as soon as I get the car loaded'

Four hours of driving later, I had still not typed her name into a search bar or searched my groups online for a potential member named Whitney who may need an extra dose of encouragement or something. I'd forgotten again, It was the kind of thing that would probably surface time and again until I at least gave a cursory effort at making sense of waking with a specific name in mind.

We unloaded the car and decided to grab a quick bite before all three local restaurants closed for the night. 10 PM is for city slickers. 

"Hello, my name is Whitney and I will be your server tonight."

What the actual heck?

...and so, I made sure to 'people' with Whitney. I made jokes and asked to hear more about the little personal details she let drop- her 5 year old son TJ, her long commute to this job...later, I prayed for her. And I will pray again for her every time this little puzzle dances across my mind, which to be honest, is pretty constant at the moment. That I should pray is the only thing that makes sense in the whole scenario. God must want me to love on and pray for Whitney and now I know where to find her. What's so mysterious about that?

 Everything.