Tag: dailyprompt-1974

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Fists

Daily writing prompt
Write about your first crush.
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Pardon the title, but that’s what it’s all about, fists. I was in elementary school on Long Island and had a crush on a red-haired girl named Mary. Mary had, shall we say, a surplus of young men who found her attractive. She was sweet-looking and pleasant to talk to. But to Matt’s and my sorrow, she had a cruel streak.

Matt was my main competitor for Mary’s attention. One day, on the way home from school, Mary decided that Matt and I should fight to see who was the preferred boyfriend. Like young fools, we did. We had a fantastic fist fight and wrestling match. We had an audience of most of our class, and a few teachers hanging out of the windows.

There was just one problem. Not long after we started fighting, Mary and her coterie of friends walked off giggling and talking. After a few minutes, Matt and I stopped fighting and noticed the absence of Mary, and went home.

What came out of this was a mantra I’d repeat to myself that a girl who likes to see men fight was one to stay far away from. Matt didn’t learn the lesson and followed Mary around like a lamb in the nursery rhyme.

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A Boat

Daily writing prompt
Write about your first crush.
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A first crush? How mundane! Many of us have several first crushes. For the automotive inclined, it might be their first car; more commonly, it’s first love. Being a city boy, I did not have my first beloved auto at 16, 17, or 18, and my first crush on a girl – It’s much too embarrassing to talk about.

So the image that sprang to mind for me was my first boat. Snicker, if you will, but a Rangely boat was delivered into my hands late in the summer one year when I was young. It was needed to get around a large lake in Maine. Rangely Boats were heavily built to take supplies to the hunting and fishing camps and haul fishermen around, beamy enough for safety but agile enough for comfortable rowing even with a load. Mine was seventeen feet long with a squared-off transom for an outboard motor.

It would be kind to say that it was vitiated, and my first clumsy efforts at boat repair were spent making it capable of moving safely from one end of the lake to the other – without sinking. But oh, the feeling of rapture as you swept through the water to town for supplies. You were king of the lake and lord of the waters. Of course, you never went anywhere without your faithful 128-ounce gallon milk jug – which you needed to bail out the water periodically.

My Rangely Boat experience, like many first crushes, ended too soon. But the memory is embedded with others in the mosaic of my life.