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Write on Wednesday - Small Expectations

From Ink Paper Pen...
This week's writing prompt is:
Imagine yourself as tiny as your thumb.Where would you live? What would you do?
...and here's what I imagine would happen to me!

Small Expectations


Nobody else notices.
Not even me at first.

I mean, that's a huge serviette holder, I tell myself. HUGE.

It's one of those things, those mundane objects, so mundane that it's been chosen by a small town to be made into a giant statue in the utter conviction that no other town would care less to make a giant serviette holder.
We're home to the Giant Serviette Holder. We are unique!

So that theory lasts as long as it takes me to realise I'm analysing the Giant Serviette Holder from where I sit on the fat lip of the Giant Coffee Cup. Same town. The same cafeteria. Yep, even the same table. Home to the Giant Coffee Cup.

I'm blinking, finally, but perhaps over-staring. If you stare at something hard enough, does it just...seem awfully big?

I look down to where a bacon strip extends for half a mile, a pink undulating road crisp with boulders of salt and streaked with long, luscious gutters of fat. Surely the road less travelled, Mr. Peck. The end of the porky road, like a busted bridge, falls into nothing. Only, off the edge of a white plate.

A pudgy mountain of yellow edges the bacon road, lightly quivering, the way I should be, if it wasn't for my propensity for delayed reaction. Yes, undetectable to the standard human eye, scrambled egg does, in fact, quiver.

How did I become so small? I have a memory from the moment before, the thing I did to cause me to shrink to the size of a fake nail. But alas, for some reason the memory is too big and overwhelming to fit in my tiny brain. I have to make new tiny memories.

I remember the serviette holder. I remember the quivering scrambled egg. This is going to take a long time.

I jump down the side of the coffee cup, practically slashing my face open on the sugar grains lining the saucer. But I'm good at smelling sugar. I can remember something small and inconsequential like that. This isn't sugar.

On the table, over the edge of the amazingly not-all-that-smooth surface of porcelain I'm standing on, I see the sachet, ripped open at one end and lying there like a sleeping bag for a giant.

Salt.

Who's ever put salt in their coffee? Has anyone on the planet even tried it? No, how would a caffeine addict manage that, even with the jitters of a drunken surgeon.

Well, I can't say I remember doing it. But I will say: don't ever, ever, add salt to your coffee!



Write On Wednesdays 

10 comments:

Sarah said...

Melinda - this is wonderful!!

The little details like the quivering scrambled egg - being the size of a fake nail - the whole thing! Truely wonderful!

Melinda Chapman said...

Oh wow - you rock, Sarah! Thanks for such great feedback! :D

sjp said...

A certainly peculiar piece that leaves me craving a giant fry up, dont think I will be able to have breakfast again without contemplating the giant serviette holder :)

Ramblings of an Honest Heart said...

I love it! Great details and a great imagination!

Sam said...

The description of the food gives a whole new dimension to food! I'll never think of scrambled eggs or bacon the same way again . . . This is a really great, descriptive piece!

Meg said...

I LOVE it!! Brilliant. Love all of your descriptions. You have captured all the smells, textures of the food soooo well! Meg

Melinda Chapman said...

OMG! Thanks everyone for such amazing feedback! I'm so glad you liked the piece. :D

danneromero said...

cute. what a great perspective. on a cup of coffee. nice write.

Stephanie said...

This is awesome! I could smell, taste, and see the food. I love the way you describe the bacon and eggs! Brilliant work!!

Claire said...

That was beautiful! I loved the tone of your writing, and the idea was great! Awesome job on this prompt!

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