Tag: childhood

Wands

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The White Mage volunteered at the local school as the band instructor. A welcome break from experiments with potions and wands.
He put away his projects, picked up his baton, and headed out the door to make the trip to the school.
Servants follow the children of the nobility into the recital hall, bearing instruments of all sizes.
They find their seats while the Mage tapped his baton on the lectern for attention.
Fireballs flew out the end, incinerating the strings section.
“No wonder why that wand wouldn’t hold a charge,” he said, servants attacking the flames with water buckets.

The Ducks

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When I was little, we would go to the Volkswagen offices and feed the swans at the pond.
We’d take a lot of white bread to the pond and crumble it up and toss it in the water.
It would float until a swan would swim over to it and gobble it up.
Repeat that for a half an hour, with occasional swans swimming around each other trying to get the bread.
No fights, though. They all worked it out somehow in swan-talk.
My brother and I, though, we fought like hell for the last of the bread to throw.

Caution

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Caution was her name, taken from the yellow tape across the door of the abandoned nursery they found her in.
You would think someone would realize the tape was there as a warning, But most folks are soft-hearted and assume all babies are safe.
This one certainly isn’t Whoever left her there, hoped she’d die.
She didn’t.
The rescuers naming the baby Caution, well, that takes a special kind of stupid.
Stupid makes for easy mind control.
Caution giggles and points to the roof.
“Jump!” she squeals.
We all giggle along and climb out the window. This will be fun!

Virtual Class

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Imaginary spitballs fill the air. Roger Washington’s back to pulling pigtails. Stacy Miller shimmers and falls to dust.
Third one today. There must be something out of sorts with the holographic system.
I check the diagnostics while Stacy’s parents are threatening to sue the school.
No red lights, so I order a check of the Miller’s unit and read the manufacturer alerts.
Aha. Bad firmware update last night.
I send out an alert to the parents, and I remind them to remove all headsets before performing this flash.
No sense risking a spark and wiping a kid. Even little Roger.

Bleachers

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I live under the bleachers.
They store the concession stands under here when the season’s over.
Of all the stands, I wouldn’t choose it, but it’s what I’ve got, and I’m happy for that.
I shower in the locker rooms, get food in the cafeteria.
At night, stray dogs roam around, looking for food.
I keep the stand closed and shuttered.
They paw at the door, even though there’s no food in here.
Besides me, I guess.
I could go home, but I kinda like it here under the bleachers.
And the students always know where to find the principal.

The Code

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They talked in code, a quiet series of taps and gentle coughs that went undetected by the teacher.
Questions… answers… who’s kissing… who’s not seeing each other anymore…
Every year, they change the code so that teachers can’t decode their messages.
Out on the playground, Seniors teaching the pre-schoolers the basics… cough… tap… a click of the tongue…fingernail tap… fingertip tap…
Every so often, a new signal is added, like tapping a wristwatch. Or an archaic one is removed, like the sliderule swish.
At reunions, conversation is polite.
But the code?
She’s twice divorced… he’s so fat…
Oh, so brutal!

The Movers

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When I was little, seven or eight, we moved from Chicago to Columbus.
Everything was packed into cardboard boxes. The boxes each got a numbered sticker. Then, they were put into trucks, and arrived at the new house a few days later.
My brother and I collected all of the stickers.
Red.
Blue.
A few yellow ones.
I can’t remember the highest numbers. They were in the hundreds.
But in the end, we never did find the sticker with the number one on it.
Meanwhile, our parents were trying to figure out just what the hell is in each box.

Homesick

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Professor Rickhoff pulled down the map and shouted “WE’RE HAVING AN ADVENTURE TODAY!”
The class jumped from their seats and cheered.
“WHERE SHALL WE GO?” shouted the Professor.
The class responded with all sorts of exotic places.
“Home,” said a voice.
“QUIET!” shouted Rickhoff, and the class lay still.
He walked up to the homesick student and stared into her eyes.
“This is your home now,” he said. “When you are here, you are home.”
The student smiled, curled up in a ball on the floor, and went to sleep.
The Professor rolled up the map and dismissed the class.

Tuck Her In

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Sally.
Every night, the robot would tuck in Sally, kiss her on the forehead, and say goodnight.
The robot then would sit in a atomic-powered recharging chair for the night.
This went on every night for 500 years.
Every so often, the robot would ask Sally if she brushed her teeth or said her prayers, but it wasn’t advanced enough to take verbal commands. It just asked those things as part of a routine.
When Sally’s corpse decayed beyond recognition, the robot looked for a new house in the ruins.

To The Orcs

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John’s house had a storm drain in the back yard.
To Billy, it was a tunnel to the great underground orc kingdom.
“They made it look like a storm drain to fool the surface-dwellers,” he said.
One day, Billy took a butcher’s knife and a flashlight down the drain.
“To glory and treasure,” read the note he left on the refrigerator.
He never came back.
The police asked questions, and John kept saying “The orcs got him.”
John spent a lot of time in therapy after that.
To this day, he’s always watchful, and he never goes near storm drains.