Waiting.

How many word games can I play while waiting?

Got Wordle in 4. Typical.

Connections: yellow, purple, blue, green. No mistakes.

Crossword Mini: 56 seconds. Under a minute, but, dang, not much under a minute.

Dordle. Quordle. Septordle.

Sheesh. My back hurts from hunching over this phone.

I’m tired of these games — in more ways than one.

I walk over and check the monitors. Again. Nothing is arriving at 10:45 AM. Why did he give me that time?

It’s 11:15 now. The next arrival is noon. A few folks have trickled in to wait.

Stupid games. Stupid waste of time.

I should just leave. I should go for a walk. I should call him.

No. Way.

I am NOT going to call.

“Be there at 10:45,” he had said. It’s 11:22 now.

Scroll. Scroll. Scroll.

I’ve looked at everything on my phone 27 times.

The ball is in his court. I did my part. I’m here. He needs to show up.

Or call.

Good golly — why doesn’t he call?

It’s 11:28.

I look. A few more people have trickled in.

A guy gets out a guitar and starts strumming.

Another guy pulls bongo drums from his bag. I kid you not. Bongo drums. He starts playing.

A girl pulls out a whistle and starts playing.

Wait — I know that song.

A fiddle starts.

In he walks. Singing to me, “Will you marry me, lassie, at the Kirk o’ Birnie Bouzle?”

I start to cry.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

Okay, okay — I know it wouldn’t be a guitar, but a bouzouki. And it wouldn’t be bongos but a bodhrán. A tin whistle — yes.

Honestly, I didn’t know where I was going with the story. Those really are word games that I play on my phone. I started writing about them — and the boredom of waiting.

Then about 223 words in, that song popped into my head. I kid you not.

Edit. Edit. Edit. Here’s what you get: 250 words of a marriage proposal that almost didn’t happen.

My response to the Unicorn Challenge — no more than 250 words based on the photo.

Here’s The Corries’ version of the song:

“Tell me what you see,” Dr. Moon said quietly.

She studied the photograph. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.

“What don’t you understand?” he asked.

“Any of it,” she replied. “I don’t understand the words. I don’t even know what language it is. Italian, maybe? But vente is just a coffee size at Starbucks.”

She studied the photo some more. Dr. Moon waited patiently.

“I don’t understand the picture itself. Why all the shuttered windows? Why are they closed? Why is that one open?”

More quiet.

“And the doors are closed. And the lines don’t line up. And there’s like a tan castle painted on the wall over here.” She pointed at the left side of the photo. “Everything about this picture bothers me,” she said, and handed it back to the doctor.

“Everything?” Dr. Moon asked.

“Everything,” she said emphatically.

Dr. Moon handed the photo back to her. “Look for something that you do like here. There must be one thing.”

“Well,” she said frowning, “I might like the open window. If there was a plant in it, I mean. A spider plant with lots of shoots.” Silence. “But there isn’t, so I don’t.”

“Look again,” he said gently.

“It makes me want to cry,” she said. “I don’t like that. I don’t understand.”

“This was where your grandparents hid before they fled France in 1942,” he said.

She studied the photo again.

“Can I keep this?” she asked.

This is my response to the Unicorn Challenge.

Don’t ask where the story came from. I honestly don’t know.

I DO know that a Starbucks venti is spelled with an “i” and the language on the sign is French. I am just as bothered as she is about the photo though.

There really should be a spider plant in that window. It should be an open window with a gentle breeze causing the shoots and leaves of the spider plant to sway a little. Yes, a spider plant would make everything better.

“Found him!” cried Marco.

The search party had widened and widened their area, but no one expected him to be this far afield, or at the bottom of those overgrown stairs.

The old man studied Marco’s face. “You look so familiar,” he said.

“I’m your grandson,” Marco replied. “Marco. Jenny’s son.”

The old man just stared and shook his head. “How did I get here?” he finally asked.

Marco laughed. It was a friendly laugh, intended to put the old man at ease. “We were hoping you would tell us,” he said.

“Jenny,” the old man repeated, rolling the name around in his mind and occasionally repeating it. “Son, I don’t remember knowing any Jennys.”

“Jenny — your daughter, my mum!” he said. Then he added, “You always insisted on calling her Jennifer, remember?”

“Ah, Jennifer! Yes! She should be getting home from school any minute now,” he said, smiling.

He looking up the old tree-lined steps. “That’s a long set of steps. I don’t remember coming down them.”

Marco steadied the old man, slipping his arm under the man’s left arm and gripping his forearm. “Let’s find a place to sit for a minute,” he said, peering around the lower garden for a bench. “We’ll figure this out.”

“You look familiar,” said the old man.

“I’m Marco. Your grandson,” the younger replied.

“Grandson? I’m a grandfather?”

“I’m Jennifer’s son,” Marco replied.

“Jennifer should be getting home from school pretty soon,” the old man said. “How did I get here?”

This is my (late) submission for the Unicorn Challenge. The challenge is pretty simple — no more than 250 words, and use the photo as a prompt.

“I’m going to live there,” he said, jabbing his dirty finger at the picture in the book.

The castle in the picture loomed high above the city.

“Ach, wee laddie, that’s nae place we will ever live,” said his mother.

“Not we. Me!”

His mother looked at his ragged dirty clothes and shook her head sadly.

“Mama,” he said, “someday I’m going to walk right up there and –“

“Nae, wee laddie. Ye cannae!”

“But I will,” he insisted. “I’m going to walk right up to the big gate.”

“Ye ken there’s a gatekeeper? He will nae let ye in,” she said, trying to be gentle with her words, but realistic for her son.

“Ah, but he will Mama! I am sure!” he said, so earnestly that she felt her heart breaking as she looked into his face. “My hands and face will be clean! I will scrub them!”

“Aye, but yer clothes, wee laddie,” she said.

“My clothes will be new. I will work hard for them!”

“Aye, I ken you will, but –“

“Mama, listen. I will walk to the gate with clean hands, clean face, new clothes. The gatekeeper will look at me, and maybe he’ll growl.”

“Aye, he will most definitely growl.”

“‘State yer business,’ he’ll say.”

His mother nodded.

“I’ll smile up at him and say, ‘”‘Sir, my mama is the best cook in the land. She taught me how. I want to work in your kitchen.’ He’ll let me in.”

She hugged him and cried.

This is my response to the Unicorn Challenge: base the writing on the photo, no more than 250 words.

It feels slightly audacious to try to write a brogue I’ve only read. How’d I do?

“Damn! This manual is ridiculous!” Joe said. He said on the floor at the edge of the veranda, marking pages with his fingers while leafing further into the book.

“What are you looking for?” His neighbor Alex peered over at him

“My TIFU meter isn’t functioning. I’m trying to figure out how to reset it.” Joe replied without even an upward glance. “Damnation,” he muttered while continuing his search.

“Teefoo meter?” Alex puzzled. “What’s that?”

Joe’s head shot up. “What?! Don’t you have one? TIFU stands for This Is F….” His last words were drowned out by blaring car horn.

Alex blinked at him. Finally he said, “I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This Is Fu…” A loud car drowned out the words this time.

Alex shook his head. “I still didn’t get that.”

“Damn,” muttered Joe. “When you wonder if the problem is you or the situation, you get the TIFU meter, turn it on, fit the wand in the upright holder so it can sense whatever, and the meter will read whether the situation is ….” More traffic noise. More car horns.

Alex asked, “Could you please say that one more time?”

“Fu–” Airplane. Bus horn. Fire whistle.

Alex watched Joe mouthing the words, probably shouting them, over and over, but there was too much noise.

Until there wasn’t.

“–CKED UP! THIS IS F–” Joe stopped his shouting. It was quiet momentarily.

Finally he said, “It’s situations like this that broke my meter.”

This is my response to the Unicorn Challenge. It’s a simple challenge: write no more that 250 words using the photo as a prompt.

One of my coworkers refered to his FU meter today. I looked at him, puzzled. He explained, without the niceties of street noise drowning him out.

“Damn thing is busted,” he said. “Either that or this situation is TOTALLY F–“

The front desk phone rang at that moment.

I was literally saved by the bell.

“What does domestic mean, Mom?”

“It has to do with home. Why do you ask?”

“See that sign? It says, ‘Domestic animals.’ So a domestic animal lives in a home? Don’t all animals have homes?”

“Yes, but a domestic animal lives in a people home.”

“Like a dog?”

“Yes.”

“Like a cat?”

“Yes.”

“Like a mouse?”

“Hmmm… well, that depends. If the mouse is a pet in a cage, I suppose it’s domestic, but if it’s living in the walls of the house and raiding out cereal cupboard, it’s not.”

“Do people put mouses on leashes?”

“Mice.”

“Do people put mice on leashes?”

“I’ve never seen that, but people do a lot of strange things.”

“Why can’t domestic animals go on the beach?”

“Probably because they might ‘go’ on the beach. You know, poop or something.”

“A wild animal might do that, too. I betcha wild animals DO do it.”

“Yup.”

“So if I caught a mouse that lived in the walls of the house, I could bring it to the beach and I wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“I suppose…”

“But if I made a tiny leash and put it on my pet mouse and brought it to the beach, I would get in trouble.

“AND if I caught one of those coyotes I hear howling at night and brought it to the beach, that would be okay, because coyotes are wild, right?”

“Please don’t try to catch a coyote.”

“I just want to understand the rules, Mom. Sheesh.”

Unicorn Challenge — write no more than 250 words based on the photo prompt.

Here’s the actual photo:

I used the photo feature of Google translate to read the words.

Jenne Gray had already translated the sign, though. Her translation: ‘Domestic animals, even on leads, are banned from the beach from 6h – 21h’.

It still begs the question of wild animals.

“As a token of my gratitude, I want to give you a gift.” The little man who was speaking was still brushing dirt off his odd sparkly garment and examining the rips and tears caused by the dogs.

Dan shook his head. It all seemed surreal. He had seen the dogs chasing the man. He had watched them biting at his legs as he disappeared through a little hole in the dilapadated door. He yelled and kicked the dogs to drive them away before opening the broken door to check on the man.

And there the man sat, on the floor, studying his hands and legs for injury, tsk-tsking at the holes he would have to mend in his leggings.

“Are you okay?” Dan asked. “Can I help you?”

“No, no, no,” replied the man, his voice high and squeaky, like an old door hinge. “Let me give you a gift.”

He withdrew from his pocket a small ornate key.

“This key will open one of those three boxes,” he said, gesturing to three boxes that Dan hadn’t noticed on a shelf in the corner.

“The red box holds love. You will have a life full of love,” the man said, “but also great heartbreak.

“The blue box holds adventure. You will go and do amazing things — the sky is the limit — but have no one special to share them with.

“The yellow box holds enough — nothing amazing, but always enough money, enough people, enough time.

“Which will you choose?”

Unicorn Challenge again. So simple: write no more than 250 words based on the photo prompt.

I looked up “SERRURERIE” and learned that it’s a locksmith’s shop — hence, the key.

But seriously — which would you choose?