First attempt at a short story - the beginning.

This is a first attempt at writing a short story. Feedback would be fun and accepted. What I'm really looking for is ideas for where to take this story or even ideas for a whole new story. I just started writing and this is what came out. No, there is no symbolism of my life or deeper meaning intended. I'm not committed to this story, but if there are ideas of where to take it, please let me know and maybe together we can take this somewhere. Now, enjoy the spout from my mind.

She sat in her usual chair, at the usual time and place - that stupid chair that seemed to be good for nothing except for irritating and making herself, already unsure, feel even more unsteady. It had one leg that was a little shorter than the other three legs and made just enough wobble to make it impossible to find both balance and comfort. Fidgeting in the chair, Anna couldn’t help but make it tip, ever so slightly, back and forth between the two settling positions, which created a tapping noise each time it settled to the new position.

Tap. Tap. Back and forth.

“Stupid chair”, she thought to herself. No one ever listened anyway. “Worthless thing has been here as long as he has and is just as aggravating.”

She had sat on this imperfect chair so many times. At first, she just dealt with it, hoping the wood would balance itself out as it cured and settled into the grooves and holes. It never did. Though, she kept just enough irrational hope alive that it someday would that she could still be disappointed whenever there was a tap.

But the chair was so beautiful. She was always embarrassed to think of it, but she knew, and so did Kevin, that she had been unusually excited to have this chair when he moved in with her. It had become a running joke between them that she loved him for this chair. She had loved sitting on it when it was still at his place. It was a natural, but unusually dark wood. Cherry maybe; she didn’t know. It was simply carved, but with a simplicity that shown as elegance. He had created it – designed, it, built, carved, and assembled it – on his own. It had been one of her strongest initial attractions to him, that he could create such beauty. She had often thought the chair, in a foolishly, overly romantic sense, represented their love – simple, but elegant and unique.

“I suppose that this still held true”, she thought.

But, at his place the chair sat on carpet, which provided enough cushion and pad where the four legs rested on the floor so that she had never noticed the difference in the legs’ lengths. It sat perfectly balanced. No tilt. No back and forth. No problems. Just comfort and beauty.

Tap. Tap. A pair of taps rang out again from the legs.

Anna let out a sharp wisp of air. Her anger was already becoming vocal and Kevin wasn’t even home yet. A few years ago, she would have thought it comical how the taps were timed from the chair - echoing her mental hatred of the sound as though in mockery. She would’ve laughed. Now, it was just infuriating. She rocked back and forth a few more times in an unnecessarily violent repositioning of herself in hopes of preventing more tapping.

It had the opposite effect. The sound waves from a series of taps bombarded her ears as they rose from the tile floor. The noise seemed to be amplified. How could a chair possibly make so much noise?! The clamor reverberated inside her like gunshots in a cathedral. The anger that rose didn’t have a chance to escape before another…

Tap. Tap. Tap.

This wasn’t going as she had planned and a second person hadn’t even entered the argument yet. Her anger was becoming hot and she had wanted it to be cool for when he got home. He rarely responded to hot anger, and when he did respond, it was either with a slammed car door as he left, or a slammed bedroom door after pushing her outside of the room. She needed to have control over herself; at least enough to keep Kevin listening for what she needed to say. He had to listen. He had to hear her out. He had to know that she wasn’t going to wait at home anymore for him. She wouldn’t be there for him anymore.

She had practiced this speech so many times before. She knew when she could get angry and to what degree and still keep him listening, even if not responding. But, she could feel herself getting red in the face already.

“Not yet”, she told herself aloud.

She rubbed her hands together and noticed her hands had become sweaty. This evening, up until this moment, she had been proud of her dry hands. She felt prepared and confident in what she would do and say, and her dry, sweat-free hands reinforced that confidence. Now that she had enraged herself – he always could make her angrier than anyone else – the adrenaline had entered her muscles and caused her sweat glands to try to cool her. It always started in her hands. If she didn’t get herself under control quickly, she will have already forfeited the night’s fight.

Tap. Tap.

Anna shot up from the chair and walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

She grabbed a glass from the cupboard, slapped up at the water control, and waited for the cold water to fill her glass. She filled her mouth, held the liquid inside her mouth, letting the chill absorb some of the heat from her head. Then she swallowed. She felt a little better. She drew the glass to her mouth again, and drained it, letting the cold run down the inside of her throat and rest inside her, cooling her insides. This always helped, and her mood was again improved until, just as she started to grin at regaining her composure, she heard the clang of small metal gears and the creak of hinges on wood. She had missed the sound of the garage door, apparently while she filled her glass and drank, and now heard the turn of the doorknob from the garage to the house. She was caught off guard. She had planned to hear the garage door open, the car pull in, his door close, and listen to each step as he walked up the few wooden stairs into their kitchen. This way she could be just out of sight but prepared and determined to execute her plan.

But she had missed the opportunity. He was turning the doorknob and entering the room she was standing in. No chance she would be able to leave the room and run to her designed place. She was here, he is coming in right now, and in two more seconds the stale pleasantries would start. Not at all what she had planned. Without even trying he had upset her plans and had an advantage over her. “He always does this, and it’s not fair”, she thought. As she clenched her hands tightly, she noticed the moisture had returned, stripping her of a little more confidence, and she watched the door open. Kevin stepped inside.

I was never very good at sports.  That's okay.  Sports are not important.

To Be Young Again...

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth.

-Sir Walter Scott

The older I become, the more I realize what I have lost.  The longer I leave my past unexamined, the deeper my memories are buried.

I became a record keeper much too late in my life.  I now have wonderful and detailed accounts of my life which date back to just after my life became boring so that attempts at recording my new history might be seen as attempts at trying to piece together meaning for the prior years.  This is not the case.  However, my lesson was learned too late but also too well.  A captain or pilot is profited little at the reception of a map when the journey is closing with the destination in view.  It does a man no good to receive answers to questions he no longer asks.

The key folly is not that we do not receive answers or directions in our younger years, though there are certainly a fair amount of that.  No, the key folly is that a vast majority of people do not give proper value to the experiential knowledge and wisdom of others older than the individual involved.  We pass through life always hoping for improvement and for the best life has to offer while discrediting and discarding the keys to what we wish for.  Why do we do this?  That is a question for the individual, but one that must be answered at the peril of many lost years.

I do not regret how I have lived my life.  Nor is this post the product of a failed discussion with a particular arrogant youth, as often as they do visit.  Consider your life as you might look back on it at dusk - from the other side of the hill.  Not all of life nor all lives are worth investigation.   All can be.  All have that potential.  Here is a chance to make yours exemplary, at least for your own purposes.

Keep a record of your life.  It is a disgrace to the ignorant that there are individuals in the world who have forgotten more knowledge than they will ever have learned.  In the same song, I may add my own verse that if I had effected to remember everything I have learned and thought, than I would certainly be a genius and much greater in my own existence.  However, knowledge is not the ultimate goal of my counsel nor of life.

Live life youthfully without the follies of youth.  If we can remember our lives - all of the lessons, all of our worthy and promoting ideas, all of our deeds which decide our path, and all of our observations and influences - we would never look back through the bitter lens of regret.  We can be young forever.  Knowledge, experience, and responsibility do not prevent us from maintaining youth.  It is loss and neglect which age our faces and dampen our vigor.  If we will learn to continually learn, remember, and examine with love and purpose, both our own life and others' lives, we will be able to age without the inexperience which youth impossibly fails to injure us with.

Learn from the children, teach the adolescent, and aid the elderly.  The adults will need to learn this for themselves.

I have a very busy and important life.

I do not start my blogging life by trying to deter my readers from interest in my future retelling of life events.  For there will certainly be many people of varying levels of importance to themselves and to the world around them, who, upon reading my first line, will think it a waste of time or "insulting for this person to think that he is by birth and accomplishment more important than I."  The forever undimmed truth is I am more important than you and this because of birth, accomplishment, and so much more noble traits and deeds than you may yet realize.  I must stress that though I may reach this conclusion without solicitation or hesitation by my own judgment, it is the remarks of others, commonly cited as dignitaries and held in high status by peoples and countries, which justifies my own expression of my worth and standing.  For when I forward praises to make me so shine as to shame the sun, I only retell praises received.  It is repugnant and ultimately vain to try to exalt oneself in another's eye.  Only the world may do so and permit fame to grow to legend.

If it will be less distracting, I could title this post "You have a very busy and important life".  However, that may be misleading and hint that the subject "you" is referring to someone else besides the author, me.  I prefer direct and honest communication, sometimes at the cost of offending the soft-hearted and unconfident.

But again, don't be misled by pride into foolishly leaving to never return.  A man looking at the sun may see it pass from east, to overhead, to west, and finally out of sight and very easily assume that he is greater than it by seeing that the light revolves around him.  This is plainly not correct.  Any learned man or one of intelligence or even ears to hear has a better notion of the correct function of the sun's movement.  Consider the analogy when you remember that it is the sun that maintains the earth in its correct orbit in the universe.  Without it, our common home would hurdle away and die within days along with even those who still are fooled by appearance.  Don't shun yourself from the light which I offer.

You will soon learn that what I offer is merely my life experience shared.  But, if you have a mind to learn, if you would drink from pure waters and live in light, if you will listen, then return.  Listen to the child within who asks questions which adults destroy.  If we can share our lives, each will be lived by more than just one.  We need not rely on self to learn or live. We can live jointly and find greater riches than had ever been considered.  We will love and will truly be alive.

Until next time or until never again, farewell.  Share, learn, love, return.