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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
4 comments:
Colour Me Really Really Red
It all started with a McDonald’s ketchup packet, the ones that you try to open with your teeth and then the plastic suddenly lets go. Splat, the ketchup landed on Frank’s shirt.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. His lucky money envelope with its jaunty rabbit’s ears got hit as well. A pungent odour of slightly sweet and vinegary tomatoes assailed his nostrils.
“Damn, damn, damn!” It was the last last last straw he vowed. Enraged, he approached the cashier and asked for the manager.
Beside Frank stood another guy, dressed in drywall dusty coveralls. Oddly, he was holding a dozen red roses. He smiled as Frank did a double take and said, “Got to keep the old lady happy on Valentine’s Day!”
“Huh? Oh yeah, true.” Frank looked at his watch. The manager was nowhere in sight.
“What you gettin’ that special someone this year?” the drywaller asked.
“Oh, well, I’m ‘between’ relationships, I guess you could say.” Frank thought right away that that was too much information.
He nodded. “Yeah, I hear ya. The ladies don’t much like my hours and man, last year, with the whole Olympic scene I was barely ever home. But this year things are goin’ well.”
“Good. Great” Frank looked at his watch again and asked the gangly young kid to ring for again for the manager. The kid walked away and disappeared through a swinging door.
—235 words
NOTE: I don’t really have a “plan” for a story here, just a need to use a couple of our discussed red items to jump start the narrative. You might try the same and see where it takes you!
Color Me Red?
In my culture, red color as a symbolism has many connotations, either positive or negative. On the positive side, It can be associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, and passion; on the negative side, it usually goes with violence and jealousy. In my opinions, the most popular connotations are wedding-red and “red-eye” syndrome. As you all may know what wedding-red means, I wound rather talk about red-eye.
In China, when we gossip about some people’s possessive characteristic, Instead of saying: they are jealous, we say, they have red-eye syndrome ( as similar as the western saying the green-eyed). I bet everyone has experienced jealousy in his or her lifetime. Many of them do not necessarily have serious consequences.
However, the consequence can be as terrible as you could imagine. A silent case has been recently stirred up because of a newly murder case of a Chinese wife allegedly poisoned her husband with thallium. Sixteen years ago, Zhu Ling, a beautiful young girl, who was the popular student in China’s one of the best university-- Tsinghua University in Beijing, had been poisoned by highly toxic thallium. She was the gift student in many aspects, sports, music, and her major—chemistry analysis. One of her classmate and roommate had be investigated—she was the only student who would have had access to thallium, announced by the school. But this suspect’s background made the case highly sensitive—her family has close relationship with government. The suspect, not as outstanding as Zhu Ling, was the princess from where she belonged. When her pride confronted with Zhu Ling’s Excellence, that was probably how her jealousy made the case, allegedly. Unfortunately, no one was charged in this case. The victim remained in hospital suffering from serious neurological damage, while the suspect released from the police. Although the victim’s parents appealed many times, this silent case has no conclusion so far, because of many reasons: denying form the school for negligence, family influence over the case, the ruin of all evidences.
When I recalled this case, I was sighed for how terrible the jealousy could be. For the negative connotation of red color, I prefer not wearing in red, just a personal choice.
She stood there smiling with shiny rose colored lips. She was wearing a slinky red dress and high heels to match, holding a glass of Merlot in her right hand and a lipstick stained cigarette in the other. She walked over to where I was standing with a sexy stride, every step accentuating the curves of her body with feverish eloquence. She looked at me with a fire in her eyes and said in a low sultry tone
“So, what brings you to the Nebula Lounge tonight?”
“I heard they make the best Bloody Marys in town” I said trying to not look intimidated.
“Their cherry Bellini here is to die for. Maybe I’ll let you buy me one later on.”
My heart was pounding as she gave me a subtle wink and turned around and walked to the powder room. I should have noticed the red flags telling me to leave this girl alone but I couldn’t help but feel a devilish playfulness as I pondered my next move to paint the town red with her.
Color me Red
By Maria
I have a friend whose name is Marianne. I love hanging around with her because she is so cheerful, kind and sweet like an angel. One day, she told me that that her birthday is coming soon. She said, “Please come on my special day.” I replied, “sure why not -- you are my bosom friend”.
Since she is my close friend, I keep on thinking what to give her. I have several selections in my mind to give her stuffs such as red roses, red lipstick, red blush-on, red t-shirts, red stockings, red nail polish, red long sleeve knits, red active pants, red handkerchiefs, red towels, and red slippers. Now that I have gathered all these red stuffs, I thought about wrapping it all in a red box and a red wrapper.
I think I am ready to go to her occasion. When I entered Marianne’s house, I was so surprised of her interior, it was full of red color like her sofa and love seats, curtains, table cloth, figurines and other little things around her have a scent of red. I asked her in a polite manner, why do you prefer red color? Marianne answered me that red, is a color of fire and blood, which is associated with energy, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire and love.
Isn’t nice to learn the virtues, beliefs and favorites of a friend close to you?. I love to respect and learn from others as it will help me to grow as an individual. Marianne has many qualities that can color anybody’s day red including me.
Fri Feb 18, 09:27:00 PM 2011
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