1 « March « 2012 « Alice Audrey

55 – Plenty of Room

“It’s my chair! Get out!” Lucy screamed at her brother.

“Not it’s not! It’s Grandma’s chair.”

“That’s right,” Grandmother said. “Now if the two of you will move, I’d like to sit down.”

The kids scrambled to reply. As soon as she sat down, they scrambled into her lap, one child per knee.

Always plenty of room in Grandmother’s lap.

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story in exactly 55 words. Flash Fiction 55 is hosted by the G-man, a host with the most.

A while back the kids and I played a game in which I would find a word in the dictionary and they would try to define it. Not only did they impress the whole family with their vocabulary, we all learned a few more words, and what they learned stuck.

1. Dirge (This one actually came up on a test over a year later, and was remembered from the game. It was an English class, rather than Music, though.)

2. magnetite (obviously the black iron ore, not the latest butt-enhancing exercise routine)

3. confute (I’d just use refute, but whatever.)

4. disco (You’d think this would be easy for the kids, but no. Just shows my age. Now it’s all dubstep)

5. florid (Easy for a Romance writer to remember even if it’s from anger rather than passion, but not so easy for a teenager to remember)

6. quittance (You’d think with my accounting background I’d know this one.)

7. rabbet (No, it’s not misspelled. It’s the carpentry term)

8. Suetonius (I’m not sure it’s fair to use a dictionary that includes historical figures. No way I’d have guessed the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius)

9. capo (a guitar playing thing.)

10. Acyclovir (What the heck is this doing in the dictionary? Not what I want to have to explain to my kids, though I suppose they ought to know. *groan*)

11. provide (Got to give them an easy one now and then)

12. Madeira (The Boy knew because it had already come up in a video game.)

13. fakir (great way to start a religious discussion.)