The following is my submission to a little writing exercise/contest from Writer's Digest. "Promptly" is a running blog that helps prompt writers to get creative... and get to writing! For this one, the instructions were simply: "In scene, explain why there's a red and yellow substance on your shoes, a black one on your gloves, and a smile on your face." Lately, I've been working on getting some art supplies together to send to an orphanage in Haiti. This is where my inspiration came from. While this scenario is completely fictional, I want to thank my friends Caroline and Dave for making it easy to come up with character names. :)
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Caroline’s long skirt flares and whips around her as she twirls about on a makeshift concrete dance floor. The man she’s dancing with is her grandfather’s age, has much darker skin than her, and is barefoot. A row of children sit to the side, watching and giggling as Caroline smiles at them every fourth beat or so. But, there is no music. Just the humming of Caroline’s dance partner.
When the impromptu performance is over, the dancers bow as forty-eight little hands clap enthusiastically. Caroline gracefully removes her gardening gloves to clap for her partner. Caroline is beaming. She’s also blushing a little.
After a few minutes, the children settle down and Caroline tries to turn their attention back to the task they had been working on before the dancing interrupted them: they must finish their artwork before all of their paint dries out. Art supplies are scarce in Port-Au-Prince, and she doesn’t want to waste one drop of paint. As she sits down on the dirty floor next to the youngest child, a few of the kids continue to giggle at her. She tries more instructions in French, but they keep laughing. She investigates the source of the hilarity, and among the Creole and laughter she manages to recognize the word “shoe”.
Caroline looks down at her shoes and gasps as she realizes that she and her dance partner had danced right through the kids’ paint. Not only was there paint on her shoes, but there were also red and yellow footprints all over the floor of the newly built classroom. She jumps up, grabs a rag and tries to wipe paint off the floor, but it’s too late. The warm breeze flowing through the open-air classroom had dried the paint almost instantly. She reaches down to test several areas for wet paint, but only manages to discover a black substance on her gloves as well. Even that won’t come off.
Completely embarrassed and disappointed that she has ruined the floor, wasted paint, and damaged the gloves that she planned to give one of the nursery workers, she rises slowly from her knees in the middle of the room. Suddenly, Caroline hears a gasp from behind her, and she knows it’s the mission trip leader, Dave. She slowly turns to explain, but before she says one word, he proclaims:
“It’s beautiful! Caroline, how did you do this? It’s wonderful. We have to take a picture.”
As she poses with the kids and the floor, Caroline explains. “I was helping one of the workers sand and paint the new chalkboard. He was humming a song, and I was trying to tell him that it sounded pretty. Then he just grabbed my hand and led me out and we started dancing.”
After a quick flash of the camera, the children hurry across the floor to dance around in Caroline’s red and yellow footprints.
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The offical link is HERE.
Very creative!! I didn't know you were a writer! I'm super impressed!
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