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

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

Childcare

Image
Originally published in https://fiftywordstories.com/2023/12/27/derek-mcmillan-childcare/ Tom was a very badly behaved lad. Dick was frankly a demon. Their parents were careful to keep quiet when they were in the cradle. Harry’s parents were forever playing their Rod Stewart records. He was a very well-balanced child. Perhaps if you spare the Rod you spoil the child. Derek McMillan is a writer in Durringon in the UK. His editor is his wife, Angela. He has written for print and online publications in the UK, USA and Canada. His latest work is the cheerfully- entitled audio-book "Murder from Beyond the Grave" which is available on eBay. Check it out. Click Here
Read more

Demons

Image
Demons cannot do harm in real life. In dreams and reveries? Untold damage. People in the village were saying that the girl I met on the common was a demon. They seemed pretty certain about it too. This was ridiculous. Erica had long blonde hair and blue eyes. In those days all demons were foreigners and she did not look like a foreigner. Even so, I got her to swear blind that she was not a demon. "Do I look like a demon?" "No." "Well then." "So you're not?" "No, Tony, I am not a demon. I could swear on a Bible." She did and the Bible did not burst into flames either. The village was Sodbury but Erica actually came from Nether Sodbury which was a twenty minute walk away. Nobody in Sodbury ever went there. To say that Erica haunted my dreams would make her sound sinister. Let's just say that I haunted my own dreams with images of Erica. My family would not countenance a marria...
Read more