Our June Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #156, provided by sagacious ’20—21 Intern Sage Millen, challenging participants to interview a grandparent/older friend about a memorable moment from their childhood and to write that memory as a first person story. This clever prompt afforded those who participated with the opportunity to get closer to the elderly than ever before, allowing them to literally inhabit the perspective of their interviewee. These submissions followed no similar narrative arc, though each and every one did provide a unique window into various cultures of the past. Submissions ranged from tales of a smoking car radiator stuffed with gum to a mishap with homemade firecrackers in Taiwan to a poetic vignette about a car crash, plus much, much more. Thank you to all who submitted this month; it was a pleasure to read your work. In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “4 Blocks” by Katherine Bergsieker, 13, (Denver, CO) “Nature’s Lullaby” by Mariana Del Rio, 12, (Strongsville, OH) “Still Life in Which Everything is on Fire” by Arishka Jha, 12, (Redwood City, CA) “A Love that Lasts a Lifetime” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 11, (Newark, OH) “Rocket Trouble” by Natalie Yue, 9, (San Carlos, CA) Honorable Mentions “My Friend Tommy” by Tilly Marlow, 12, (Bristol, UK) “The Burning Finger Fix” by Nimay Shah, 11, (Portland, OR) “The Stubborn Fever” by Nitya Shah, 11, (Portland, OR) “Across the Fields” by Ava Shorten, 11, (Mallow, ROI) “The Secret Fruit Patch” by Emily Tang, 12, (Winterville, NC) Katherine Bergsieker, 13, Denver, CO 4 Blocks Katherine Bergsieker, 13 “No, I know, and then he said…” “Oh my goodness, really?” My car is filled with laughter as my friends and I drive home from a baseball game. The sweltering St. Louis heat is unbearable, so we decided to come home early. At sixteen years old, I recently received my driver’s license (!), and though inexperienced, I am perfecting my driving skills in our neon orange station wagon. “Alice, I swear I told him that I wasn’t interested..” And soon we were all cracking up, howling with the laughter that comes with hanging out with your two best friends. Tears slipping out of my eyes, we manage to squeak like mice and then choke, causing us to laugh harder. The only things around me are my friends and the aged leather seats of my car. Suddenly, bang!! The force of something harder than life, harder than death, harder than I could ever possibly imagine, pushes me out of my seat belt. Tumbling to the bottom of my car, I am down by the gas pedal, crumpled like a rag doll. The laughter stops, and for a moment it is so quiet you could hear a fraction of a pin drop. “What was that?” I whisper, and peer up from above the driver’s seat. I’m ready to make accusations—who did this, what happened to my car, what even is this? And then I realize it’s no one’s fault but my own. I step out of my car and see the hood of my beautiful, loaned car smashed against a cherry red convertible. “The… c-c-ar is…” I can’t bring myself to acknowledge the destruction of my annihilated car lying in front of me. “Sarah? Alice? Can you come out of there?” Slowly, each of my friends emerge from the car, gasp, and shudder. Finding her ground quickly, Sarah asks, “Is anything broken?” My eyes scan over the car and over the engine and over a piece of metal jutting out from the side. Wait. What? I kneel down and examine the radiator (my driver’s ed class made me memorize all the parts of a car). It’s full of holes. The force from the car accident caused my radiator to tear. “Radiator’s torn,” is all I have to say for Alice, the world-record holder in gum chewing, to get an idea. She hands us each two packs of gum. “Chew.” She spits hers out and gently places it in a hole in the radiator. “Look… we can have the gum patch the hole.” “Why do we need to patch the hole in the first place?” Sarah asks. “We have no other way of getting home,” I reply, the gravity of the situation dawning on me. Soon after sorting out all of the insurance issues with the convertible driver, we’re all chewing gum and patching the holes… first 5 pieces, then 20, then 50. Little wads of pink gooiness stick to the burning, broken radiator. Once we’re ready to start driving, I hop into the driver’s seat and press the gas pedal. I thought it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t half wrong. I thought we were screwed. I wasn’t half wrong. But I was wrong about thinking that it wouldn’t work. Because it did. In a way. The engine whirls to life and we cautiously begin the wild trek back home. The gum serves as a patch and oh my goodness, it actually works. Until we remember that radiators get hot to the touch as they work. So anything on the radiator at the time would melt. Newton would be proud. Alice is not. We stop and chew more gum. Sarah stays optimistic. I face the trepidation of knowing how my parents will react to our childish idea to patch a radiator with gum. Advance 4 blocks, add more gum. 4 more, more gum. When my house finally comes into sight, I breathe a sigh of relief. “Lily Smith! What a disgrace! What happened to you?” my mom calls from the porch, looking up from her knitting. I exchange knowing glances with Sarah and Alice before hopping out of the car. The radiator, and the gum, and the car accident, and the laughter, and how while it was horrible, it was kind of sort of barely worth it. “Well you know how Alice loves gum, right….” Mariana Del Rio, 12, Strongsville, OH Nature’s Lullaby
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Mother
Caretaker of the House, Cooker, Organizer of Paraphernalia, Player of Music, and Reminder of Kindness; Motivated, strict, loving, Mother of our Home: They tell me your house is small with little room to work and I believe them, for I belong in this house, smelling every scent there is to smell and touching everything that is there to touch. They tell me this house is beautiful: with the lamps shining brightly through the windows and the shrubbery out front cut to its perfect place. They say they see the order of the crimson bricks and I reply: I see them every day, walking along the path, or climbing up the trees, facing our house. They say they see the woman with the basket of laundry, hanging up fabric with clothespins on the line, maybe tending to the flowers and I turn once more and say: I know that woman from all my life, you might say I see her daily. I say: Come and show me another woman who does as much work as this: washing dishes, taking flower’s care, helping out with our belonging animals, and feeding the hungry mouths that need food. No one can be better who does as much work as she, sweet care she gives to all, questions she asks out of curiosity and care. As strong as Hercules himself, using this through her mind and body, clever with her soul and spirits that perform the way she is now, Caring, Loving, Strict, Firm, Trying, failing, retrying, Under the sheet of moon or in the middle of the dusty dawn, finding ways to go through the busy work of day, Under the rippling sun with work to do in yards and rapid trips to drive, never giving up through all the tough times, Under the scary circumstances of arguments, giving advice and gaining trust through all that she tries to teach us, Under the times of impossible, where nothing seems to get done or ever begins to work with determination and effort, Smiling! Smiling the motivated, strict, loving smile of strength, having pride to be Caretaker of the House, Cooker, Organizer of Paraphernalia, Player of Music, and Reminder of Kindness.
Falling in Love with Oreo at First Sight
Every month I have a habit to plead my parents for a hamster. One cold breezy night, my mom, dad, and I went shopping, and my dream came true. “Hey, look, there’s a PetSmart here, you could go get Adela a hamster, if there are any.” My dad exclaimed. My mom smiled and said she would; I was very thrilled! I was finally getting a hamster! When we sauntered in, my mom inquired about where the hamsters were. I met two Long Haired Syrian hamsters at first. An employee came and helped us choose. “There is also one over there, hiding in his bedding,” the employee said, pointing to a cage. I looked down and saw a hamster staring at me with a pile of paper bedding over his entire body. “What gender are they?” I asked the employee. He answered that they were all male. “The Syrians are more defensive than the other one; the Winter White hamster is a little shyer,” the employee added. I decided to get the Winter White. I named him Oreo because of the mix of colors he has– a soft and fluffy gray coat and a snow-white belly; it looks like an Oreo milkshake. The shape of him when eating looks like a round snowball. When we put Oreo in his new cage, he loved it! After that night, I decided to switch to some hamster care videos on Youtube. I saw a channel called Victoria Raechel. I checked it out and discovered that Hamster balls aren’t safe for hamsters, because their feet could get stuck in the air holes. I quickly told my dad about it and we removed Oreo’s ball. I also learned that hamsters are small animals, but they still need a lot of space; my dad added a big bin to the cage to give Oreo more space. Oreo lives safely upstairs in my dad’s working room which is next to my parents’ room. Every night, my parents could hear Oreo running wildly on his wheel, which made it too noisy to sleep. My parents had to switch it into a different type of wheel, named Silent Spinner. Now Oreo runs on his wheel but doesn’t make a sound at all. So, my parents now can sleep soundly in their room. Every hour I check on Oreo and feed him a little grain mix, popcorn, worms, and broccoli. Oreo has grown twice as big as he used to be! Oreo is living the best life a hamster could possibly have. Oreo is a marvelous hamster; I knew that picking Oreo instead of the others was a spectacular idea. He is lucky to be with me. And I am lucky to be with him.
