The Whole World

My favourite birthday presents at age seven were a magnifying glass and a globe so big I could barely reach around it. I imagined scaling those bumpy peaks beneath my fingertips. As the birthday party wound down, my grandfather hobbled over.

            “Can you find where we are?” he asked.

            Grampa trained the magnifying glass on the spot where I held my finger. “

            Ah-ha!” he said.

            “What?” I asked, my head bumping his as we squinted through the magnifier.

            He laughed. “I think you found the first place I twisted my ankle running the mountains when I was your age.”

John Sheirer


John Sheirer is an author and teacher from Massachusetts, USA. His latest book, “Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories,” won a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award and a New England Book Festival Award. Find him at JohnSheirer.com. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

100-word challenge

Image
Entries for the 100-word challenge can be sent to worthingflash@gmail.com  at any time. The winner will get a copy of the cheerfully entitled "Murder from Beyond the Grave" signed by Derek and Angela McMillan. They also get the kudos of winning the challenge! 100 words is the upper limit but entries can be fewer than 100 words if you so desire. There is no restriction as to subject or genre. You do not have to live in Worthing to enter. "Normal" stories for #worthingflash are still welcomed of course. The upper limit is 1000 words and there is no lower limit. Any genre or subject is welcome. 73,000 people have visited the blog so plenty of people will read your work.
Read more

40 Units

  “ You take forever to order just like with everything else, you haven’t changed at all have you?” A familiar voice with an unfamiliar face calls from behind. A long-lost friend welcomes unfamiliar emotions. We stare at each other in silence because I don't want to have small talk. I know her life ain’t easy, and at the same time, I still fall into the same small talk I desperately want to avoid. Cause just looking at her I know it’s not easy. Taking care of four kids by herself while working at Church's chicken ain’t nothing to even smile about. But I still ask her “How's everything” because I have no clue what else I should say to you. I want to make a joke, cause you know me as a class clown but life is no joke, and I know that better than anyone. Life's not fair in the slightest and I’ve always known that from being in foster care. Yet even I didn’t think life could be so cruel to just steal Rufina’s life from her. You tell me about how tough things ha
Read more

Sawtooth

Image
Sawtooth - Karen Schauber - He waves at me with that sawtooth smile and halloumi complexion, and I swoon just like the last time (last guy). My bus leaving in ten, but I jump up and squeeze past the bulky woman seated next to me, her closed-loop reusable plastic bag bulging with a thick baton of Hungarian salami, fragrant spicy olives and pungent Bryndza, Limburger, and Epoisses cheeses—she mentions meeting her beau for a picnic by the lake, him bringing the libation and the worsted wool blanket—as I zoom to the front of the bus begging the driver to let me off, and I don’t even want a refund, I just need to get off. Hiram is perplexed but willing to indulge as I force his arms open for the hug of a century, I’m squeezing so hard he issues a little cough, but I don’t let go because I think I’ve found what I’ve always been looking for and realize that I can make the Carpathian Mountains my home after all. I’ll learn to sew pretty embroidered blouses and sell them at the ma
Read more