PROMPTuesday #144: Return to the Classics

Boy. First of all, I’m LATE. I know. It’s Wednesday. Secondly, I haven’t updated much lately. I’ve been other places, but still. I miss my space here. Thirdly, I am once again re-running a “Greatest Hits” prompt. This one originally came from May, 2009. But I love it, I really do, and I plan to do it again.

Here’s what it is:

What was your favorite toy as a child? Write a vignette about playing with it. (What did you feel? Who were you with? Where did you live?)

Let’s hopelessly date ourselves with this one. What do ya say?

Meanwhile, for any new readers, PROMPTuesday is a once-a-week deal where I issue a creative writing prompt and hope that people take it and run. PROMPTuesday submissions appear in the comment box below the PROMPT post for all to read.

To read PROMPTuesdays gone by, please click here.

Meanwhile…If you would, post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

This was my response:

I didn’t expect to live there long. We never stayed in one place. Maybe a year at the most, and so I remained unsettled. Not in a bad way so much, more like a hummingbird moves from petal to petal, finding nectar in each color, yet keeping in flight, ready to dispatch itself any minute.

Each year, a new school; sometimes two or three, and so on. Neighbors to meet, musty basements in which to watch Bozo’s Circus with another girl my age, or eating sandwiches at the same yellow and chipped linoleum table, made unexpected in a different kitchen. Although the same.

It was there at the table I wrote my first story, The Ball I called it, a cheap rip-off of Cinderella, but I remember using “anxiously” in a sentence and my mom proudly showing the lined paper bound by a purple construction paper cover to Sister Laura, my newest first grade teacher. I still have that book. And each time I drag it out of the closet under the stairs I am back on an Elk Grove Village sidewalk, winding my favorite Lemon Twist toy around my ankle, daydreaming or maybe worrying about what other street we’d both be on next year.

What was your toy?