After the Fair - Part 1

Good morning FFFs!

As you can see, I'm not shutting this blog down yet. :) So you'll at least get to enjoy it for a little while longer.

This week has been pretty good as far as getting things done. Except writing. That has been terrible! I had a full evening on Wednesday to write, but I couldn't get a single sentence of anything written! It was as though every idea I ever had ran away or hid. I couldn't write on any started story, nor could I write on any new story. Bother. So I pulled out my newly printed Character sheets (for my WriteMind Planner) and started filling in characters for two stories. The first was the Kelsey stories. Since I will probably write more of them, I needed to know all the characters names and if I said what color hair or eyes they had. So I re-read the stories and got the characters written down.

Next I turned my attention to Hymns in the Hills. That took more doing since I had more chapters (each about 4k words) to read. And lots more characters! I didn't finish it until yesterday. And then, guess what? I wrote! I wrote 656 words of Hymns in the Hills! It was so delightful!

Yesterday we had some interesting weather. When we got up it was in the 50s. My sister and I walked mid-morning because it was 58º. But within 5 minutes after we got back home, the wind shifted from the south, to the northwest and the temperature started dropping. By noon it was in the 30s. And by supper time it was 20º. And boy, was that wind strong last night! I heard we could get gusts up to 34 mph! Brrr!

This story was just something I wrote while trying to get back into writing. I'm changing the reaction buttons on the bottom of the post. So, if you don't have time to comment, if you could at least check a reaction button, that will let me know that someone read the post. :)

Enjoy!

After the Fair

Part 1

    Sitting high up on the small shelf, the brown teddy bear looked down with dark, unblinking eyes at the faces of the crowd. Its smile was stitched on slightly crooked, and one of its ears flopped just a little, but around its neck was a large, red bow. Perhaps the bear was hoping to hide its smile, for it seemed to have tipped its head just a little, its nose barely showing above the perky ribbon. The voice of the attendant rang loudly over the babble of talk around the small tent.
    “Come and try it! Only ten cents for five throws. Come on, little lady, step right up and win a prize. Everyone wins a prize. Just throw the ring over one of those pegs and win yourself a doll, a teddy bear, or one of the other fine prizes! Ring ‘em all and choose yer prize. Step right up, sir. Win something for the little lady. Here we go! A gentleman!”
    From his lofty seat right under the roof of the tent where no cooling breeze ever blew, the bear, warm from the sun on the tent roof, watched. A young man with sandy hair, scarcely into his teens, plunked down a dime and picked up the rings. “What d’ya want, Sally?” he asked the girl beside him.
    “Oh, I don’t know. Just win me something, Johnny. I’ll like anything you get me.”
    The crowd laughed a little and nudged one another.
    At this the young man’s face grew red, and he tossed the first ring. It landed over a peg and the crowd cheered. Another ring circled the pin, and a grin of confidence settled on the face of the boy. Each successive toss earned him a ringed pin. With a laugh, after the last pin had been snagged, the boy pointed up towards the top of the tent. “I’ll take that bear up there.”
    The attendant turned around and grabbed the arm of a lower bear, one with a green bow.
    “No, not him. I want the red bow.”
    “Listen, bud,” the attendant said, “you can pick which prize ya get, but that don’t mean you can decide which of them specific things ya get.”
    “Aw, come on,” a man in the crowd called, “let ‘em have the one they want.”
    “Yeah,” cried out another voice. “What’s the matter with that other bear? Got a diamond ring hidden in it?”
    A laugh went around the bystanders.
    “Come on, be a good sport and get ‘em the bear they want.”
    The attendant was growing flustered. “There’s not diamond rings or anything else different about that bear,” he snarled. “It’s jest hard ta get without knockin’ everything over.”
    Looking down, the bear saw the girl tug on the boy’s arm, and though he couldn’t hear what she was saying, he thought she might be pleading for the bear with the green bow because the boy shook his head. “It says on the sign that I could pick my own prize. I want the red bow.”
    “What for, sonny?” a man asked, pushing his way forward, the hot summer sun shining on his policeman’s badge.
    The boy shrugged. “I like red is all. My mom’s cherry pies, the red geraniums on the porch, the scarf my grandma knitted me last winter–” He gave another shrug. “Just like red.”
    With a scowl, the attendant turned back around and reached up. Snagging the teddy bear’s foot, he jerked him down. It was a good thing the bear’s head was stuffed with soft cotton because he hit it against the shelf on its way down after his legs.
    “Here.”
    The world spun a bit before the bear landed in the boy’s arms upside-down. He was quickly righted and passed into the girl’s arms. “Now let’s go get something to eat.”
    The bear wasn’t hungry, being stuffed with stuffing until his tummy was round and firm, but he didn’t mind going along for the ride.

    Soon the bear found himself seated on a table leaning against nothing. It took him a little while to get the hang of hunching forward instead of resting against something solid, but it wasn’t difficult he decided, after the boy and girl had helped him.
    The boy shoved the bow down a little and grinned. “His smile looks like he’s got a joke.”
    Laughing, the girl fluffed the bow again, careful to keep the bear’s face from being hidden this time. “I think he looks a bit like you,” she retorted, picking up her hot dog.

Have you ever been to a fair?

If so, have you ever won a prize there?

What color ribbon would you want on your bear?