Writing Prompts

Father’s Day happened just a few days ago. The majority of my children came over. We went for breakfast, then adjorned to the house for dessert and gifts. I have to admit that the gifts are often times unexpected, and that was true this year.

One of the gifts I received was a journal called “Grandpa’s Story.” My daughter explained it was actually going to be for my granddaughter and will be given to her when she grows up. She wanted me to chronicle things in it that I wanted to pass on.

The book is hardcovered, and the space to write isn’t really enough to write in at least in some cases. That’s the only downside.

But, from a human and writing perspective think of it as a journal with writing prompts. Things like “Where you were born”, “The town you grew up in,” and so forth. It’s built so you can indulge in an odyssey of reflecting on your life.

Part of the problem right there is my handwriting is a very complicated form of shorthand. No one can read it. Even I can’t read it at times. It’s almost like a code. It’s so bad, that if you submitted a sample to the NSA and they ran it through their code cracking machines, it would spit out “What the hell is this” at the end the run.

That means, most everything gets typed on the old computer. And since I’ve an idea or two what I’m doing, I decided to go one better and include pictures. So, those few sections that are written out, I’ve had to pay very close attention to in the hopes it’s legible.

Here’s a prompt from the book. “What was the house like you grew up in?” The short answer is I had three houses in my youth. Remarkably, they all still exist. One I went looking for was the house I spent the first several years of my life in. Then I went looking for the others. Getting up on Google Maps, I was able to get street shots of all but one. The remarkable part is how much has changed and how little has changed.

My first house I grew up in hasn’t changed much. It even appears to be the same color. The only change I notices is that it now has a metal roof.

What has changed is the area.

Next door was where my grandpa lived, and also had his store. There was a large concrete island with a gas pump on top of it in front and places for parking. The island is long gone, and where there was once parking, the house has been bumped out. But the biggest change is across the street. Across from where I’d lived, my cousins lived. Their house is gone. Down the block was a bar/pool hall that a woman named Mercy ran.

Now it’s a vacant lot.

Here’s a tough one. “Describe yourself as a teenager.” Everybody wants to be suave and cool. I had few illusions of being suave and cool when I was teenager, but let’s be honest about it. I was a complete and total, card carrying, USDA certified GEEK! If you looked in the dictionary for the definition of that word, you’d find my picture next to it.

The term “Geek” hadn’t even been coined yet, but I was already a poster child for the word. What else would you call someone who hung out in the library, didn’t have time for sports (too busy running a ranch), scared of girls, and reinvented algebra at age 10 because the “New Math” made things harder.

I’d call that person a Geek.

“What was you first job?” – Well, I’d been making money since I was nine years old, but if you wanted the first job that wasn’t from a relative, then it was being a janitor at the Elementary school in La Jara. It was the same school I’d attended from 3rd grade through 7th grade. My supervisor was a man named Sal Lucero and he was the father of a young lady a few grades behind me named Monica.

I looked up my old school and saw it’s changed also. An addition that hadn’t existed in my time has been added, but they had a least retained the art-deco flavor of the building.

It looked better than ever.

There was a moment or reality in this hunt though. In the course of looking through the Internet for pictures, I stumbled across the announcement that my class was having it’s 50th reunion. I’ve never gone to a reunion. Either no one knew how to get hold of me, or I was busy off on some adventure or other, or perhaps they thought I was dead. More than likely, they realized I wouldn’t show anyway, and the invite was a waste of good stamp.

But they had pictures from the last reunion and that was sobering. My old classmates had gotten old. But then that happened to me as well. I wondered if I showed up, would they even recognize me.

The last half of the book is dedicated to “Whatever.” It’s a place to put in words of wisdom and so on. Here’s a few that I’ve included so far:

>Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see. Best advice my dad ever gave me. These days that later half is down to 1/4 of what I see.

>For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

>It all works out.

>I’ve been dead before. It’s very liberating!

I’m including a number of life lessons in it from this blog. Stories like “The Gospel according to MASH,” of “The Minefield,” and “The Second-Best meal I ever had.”

I’ll probably finish it up by burning my novels, pictures, blogs, and podcasts to CD and putting them at the end.

All in all, these kind of writing prompts are good things. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow, and this helps us to bring into focus what our lives looked like, and maybe, just maybe, leave something worth passing on for future generations to grow on.