2026 Writing Challenge: Write On Prompt - I Remember Part 2 (My last first date)

 Note: This is the second writing exercise from Tuesday's Write On meeting. I took one of my "I Remember" statements and developed the fiction piece below. 

My Last First Date

 

We decided to meet on neutral ground, that’s the way we put it in the emails. A truck stop off I-80. Actually, the “World’s Largest Truck Stop,” according to the billboards I had passed over the last twenty-five miles. Is that what Iowa is known for then? Gone are the days of feeding the world with their corn, now they can wear T-shirts proclaiming they chowed down on a hamburger at the stop where the most truckers pause to sleep, eat, shower and do whatever else happens in such places. Enough of that already, it was neutral ground for us two old goofs, to hell with its size and standing in the grand scheme of things. 

Wanda is from a little town in Nebraska. Someplace with a couple stop signs, a gas station near the interstate and a handful of folks getting by the best they could. 

I still work in Chicago, if you call it working. It’s mostly staring at a computer screen and pecking at the keyboard to answer inane questions in emails. I remember the glory days when the customers called and screamed in your ear. Now, they just use all caps, failing to realize that such practice guarantees their correspondence won’t be read. When I’ve pecked enough for the day, I go back to my dingy townhome in Gary, Indiana.

We agreed to meet in the emptiest part of the parking lot. Her in a green Toyota (I am too old to care what kind of car she drives), and me in my black F-150. I would have preferred blue, but they would have had to special order it, and you can just guess what that meant for the price. “Any color you want, so long as it’s black,” that old nut Henry Ford shouted from his grave. 

I suppose if we had thought about it more, we could have picked a classier place to call neutral ground. There were probably dozens of weirdos arranging all sorts of mashups in the parking lot of this truck stop at this exact time. Druggos passing bags of pills. Perverts meeting to do pervie things. Animal owners walking their dogs, waiting for the mutts to poop. All the worst kinds, basically. Perhaps, we mislabeled it “neutral ground,” when we really meant cesspool. 

“Knock it off,” I say. “Be positive.” 

Yes, I talk to myself. That’s what seventy-year-old bachelor’s do. No one wants to listen to us, so we just hold conversations with the one set of ears we know can’t get away. Yes, I am an old dog with old tricks, trying something stupidly, giddily new. I am meeting a woman for the first time, and we both have agreed this will be our last first date. Quite the promise, isn’t it? Well, we’ve never been married to each other or anybody else for that matter, and we’re going to take a few looks at each other here, grab a bite to eat, and then it’s either full-speed ahead to the altar or thanks for coming and have a nice, lonely twilight to your life. I hope it’s not the later. I’d like to have a few golden years with a good gal. 

No pressure, right. 

Of course, I arrived a half an hour early. That’s the old baseball player in me. If practice started at 4, you came at 3:30, so you could stretch and then warm up for fifteen minutes. Not that my baseball career ever amounted to much. The best I did was draw a walk in the third inning of some meaningless game that my team lost by eleven runs. I never even swung the bat. Yet, baseball trained me to be early. What I didn’t think about was it meant that I had thirty minutes to really think about this woman. 

Wanda. Was she a fish? Why did I start a conversation with a fish? She’s sixty-eight. If she ain’t lyin’. For all I know, she could be lying about all of it. A single woman. Retired teacher. Physically doing OK, considering her age. She can see. She can hear. She line dances on Tuesdays. She once changed her own tire in twelve minutes. All lies, a panic rising in my throat. She’s probably a nineteen-year-old Asian boy named Phong, who drinks too much Mountain Dew while playing internet tricks on lonely old men. 

“Phong,” yes, I say the name aloud. Where have I ever heard that name before? 

A green Toyota pulls into the parking lot. Well, someone was coming. Perhaps a fish. Perhaps Phong. Perhaps my future wife. 

2026 Writing Challenge: Write On Prompt - I Remember (Part 1)

Note: Last night at Write On, we accepted the "I Remember" Challenge as described below and then completed two prompts off that exercise. The first was to write a poem off one of our "I Remember" statements. I will post the second prompt in the next day or two. 

The “I Remember” exercise.

Joe Brainard wrote a novel called: I Remember

It contains a collection of paragraphs all starting with “I remember”.  This is the inspiration for this exercise, and if you’re stuck for what to write, is a great way to get the mental gears turning.  Simply write “I remember” and continue with the first thing that pops into your head.

Spend 5 minutes writing a short collection of “I remember” statements.

Here are a couple of examples from Joe Brainard’s novel:

“I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off.”

“I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.”         

 My "I Remember" statements:

I remember falling 12 feet from our barn’s hay mow.

I remember standing in a beehive.

I remember walking the gravel road from my grandparents’ house to my uncle’s house.

I remember driving on I-88 to move to DeKalb.

I remember breathing a sigh of relief for drawing a walk in a meaningless at-bat in a random little league game.

I remember my last first date.

I remember a toothpick sticking out of my foot, and a van door sliding over my thumb.

______

After that exercise, we were challenge to write a poem inspired by one of the statements we wrote. We spent about 15 minutes on this.

It takes a bit of courage...

Go play in the road, they would say

Just a funny expression, indicating get away.

Down the driveway, gravel under toe,

Another place to be, just a mile or so.

It takes a bit of courage, finding a path.

 

Go be a young man, they would say,

A throwaway direction, then see you in May.

The foot on the pedal, down the fast lane,

There’s no way of going without any pain.

It takes a bit of courage, finding a path.

2026 Writing Challenge: NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest Entry

Note: I entered the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest last weekend. I had 48 hours to write a 1,000-word story based on the following prompts: 

Genre: Fantasy
Setting: A Snack Bar
Object: A Flyswatter

The idea below came to me almost immediately, and I liked it, but not sure it fit the flash fiction requirements well. 

Two Old Heroes at the Edge of the Festival

 

The Tallow music carried across the festival grounds as the daytime games and contests relented to the evening revelry. Baldir grimaced, and for Galadrin, it was still bizarre seeing the dwarf’s facial features so clearly. Baldir’s once plush beard was gone along with so many other aspects of their former adventurous lives. The dwarf travelled the festival circuit these days, selling ale and various seasoned meats on skewers at an outdoor stand. Patrons didn’t appreciate the famous beard dipping into their ales or brushing against their chicken or lamb, so Baldir shaved it shortly after becoming a food peddler.

“Seven Dread Lords have forsaken FarHaven over the last thousand years, and every time, the cursed Tallow have followed them while the rest of us have fought against the evil, but at every blessed festival, there’s nothing but the pounding drums and blasted horns of the miserable Tallow music!” Baldir seized his flask, chasing his bitter thoughts with a healthy swallow of dark ale.

“When this valley was filled by a forest and fantastic creatures, the jubilant anthems and sorrowful laments of my elven ancestors echoed here,” Galadrin said. “Now the forests and the creatures and the elves have vanished from this place.”

“Aye,” Baldir didn’t say anymore. They were friends, more like brothers, but neither could fully erase the deep-seeded resentments felt between their two races. The great elven realm of Noltha Fey once ruled this region and often quarreled with the dwarves of the Wolf Fang Mountains to the north. Both races did things to dishonor themselves during those conflicts.

A DragonFly landed on their table top. The split-wing bug had a body the size of a baby’s fist that appeared to overstress its skinny six legs.

“Remember when these damn things used to spit fire?”

“I am old enough to remember when they talked.” Galadrin remembered how DragonFlys were once intelligent and often devious, but now they were empty-headed nuisances scavenging for crumbs. The world was changing, and Galadrin wasn’t sure anymore for the better.

Before it came near Galadrin’s skewer of chicken, a wooden mallet with a wide face and pointed barbs smacked down atop it.

“Damn buggies,” Lara said. She was the wench of Baldir’s food stand, and Galadrin suspected their business relationship extended beyond that. She lifted the swatter, the DragonFly’s body was impaled on one of the barbs, and wiped the table with a rag with her other hand, removing the blotches of green and yellow innards.

They were the only three at the stand, which was arranged on the outskirts of the Anniversary Festival. The crowds were enjoying the music and temporary taverns in the center of the activities, leaving the two friends alone in the torchlight.

“Twenty-three years,” Galadrin pondered aloud the anniversary of Arturo’s coronation.

“Aye, about twenty-five since we vanquished Darorath Bloodstone,” Baldir snorted, “Not that it’s talked about anymore, and most say the Doom of Alecsandri or the Velkan Trolls or the Charge of Zaelwo Hill are figments of old soldiers’ imaginations.”

Galadrin sighed. Thousands of elves, including two of his brothers and one sister, died at the Charge of Zaelwo Hill, but in the end, they had broken Darorath Bloodstone’s eastern forces, allowing Galadrin to march his remaining force straight to the palace. Concurrently, Baldir’s regiment overwhelmed the Velkan Trolls at Metahischoo.

Now Baldir shilled skewers of meat, and Galadrin was part of an exhibition that celebrated elves’ customs and culture. He and his remaining kin were curiosities for women and children to stare at.

“Arturo has brought prosperity and peace,” Galadrin said.  

“And compromise.” Baldir’s bitterness was once again clear, as one of the most notable compromises was deploying the Wretches, the deformed former soldiers of Darorath Bloodstone, to the mines. A move that had undercut dwarf society, forcing most to scatter for work. Like the Tallow, whose culture had thrived after being enemies to man, the Wretches were said to be flourishing in the mines. Arturo believed this sort of progress would undercut any future rebellions by the two groups.

So far, it had worked: No war in twenty-five years, the proliferation of stone roadways and increased trade and commerce, and improved health and wealth. But, the elves and dwarves of the FarHaven with their thinning numbers and lost homes were diminished, and old adventurers like Baldir and Galadrin were relegated to the fringe and to lore.  And the magic, once so prevalent in FarHaven, was dissipating. Everything was turning to stone, steel and gold, choking the mystical and miraculous from the hills and valleys.

“I have heard whispers that an Oracle has foreseen the rise of another Dread Lord. Could be tomorrow, could be a hundred years.”

“Aye, I am already too old to fight, and if it’s a hundred years, I won’t see it at all. We dwarves live a long time, but not forever like you elves.”

Galadrin eyed the two empty skewers before him; elves traditionally hadn’t eaten meat, but now he couldn’t seem to get enough. He wasn’t positive that immortality was a guarantee anymore. A bright flash burst across the sky, followed by a thunderous boom. The pyromancers’ fireworks show was starting.

“Will Arturo’s heirs withstand an evil uprising?” The dwarf grabbed their empty mugs and skewers.

“I imagine a new hero will be required.” Galadrin had met both heirs, noting they were accustomed to comfort. They might have the old blood of Arturo’s line, but they lacked their father’s honor and grit.

“Another man sent to save us,” Baldir snorted. “The Gods should choose another race to rule next time.”

More fireworks blasted, and the two old heroes watched silently. They were removed from the story now; they could feel it.

“It was good to see you, my friend,” Galadrin said. Baldir nodded.

Galadrin journeyed toward the darkness, away from the fireworks, the festivities, and the memories. He wished there were a true forest near, one where he could hear the birds and echoes of old elven songs.