Wednesday, May 16, 2007

3 Word Wednesday XXXVI



Welcome to Three Word Wednesday. Each week, I will post three (or more) random words. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write something using all of those words. It can be a few lines, a story, a poem, anything. I'll also attempt to write something using the same three words.

Leave a comment if you participate. Many fun and interesting people might visit your blog.

This week's words are:
gain
oblivious
jewelry


To gain some perspective about and an appreciation for Samantha Henry, one needs to know a couple of things. She could hit a baseball farther than any girl or boy in the ninth grade at Overton High. A couple of guys may have surpassed her by tenth grade, but no one was sure. You probably could have gotten even money either way.

She played baseball on boys teams all thru little league and only switched to fast-pitch softball so she would have a chance of getting a scholarship. All the boys called her Sam and she never minded much.

I had been in exactly three what I would consider to be real fights in school. Two were basically draws, the most memorable of those being when Jerry Terry slapped me in the face like a girl. The other I lost, to Samantha Henry, in fourth grade.

I still remember the momentary inability to breathe as my stomach smacked against the playground dirt. A few of the kids laughed about it the following day until Sam threatened to beat up the next person she heard making fun of me.

Kids change a lot those early and middle teenage years, boys not nearly so drastically as girls. Sam seemed to struggle with these changes more than most. As other girls began to wear makeup and jewelry, more girly clothes and do more girly things, Sam--the proverbial tomboy--continued to wear jeans and t-shirts, little if any makeup and never any jewelry.

While her friends began going on dates and having real boyfriends, guys seemed oblivious to Sam. She was, in their minds, just one of the guys. The longer this went on, the more it began to bother Sam. She wouldn't go to school dances, and skipped the homecoming game that year.

Then there was the morning Sam came to school, barely recognizable, in black pants and a frilly blouse. She wore earrings and a necklace, more makeup than normal, and had her chestnut hair curled. I'd never seen it anything but straight. She didn't look bad, at all, just different.

It took everyone a moment to recognize her. As she walked down the sophomore hall looking straight ahead, students seemed to part like the waters of the Red Sea. I'll never get that image out of my mind. The farther she walked, the louder the buzz grew. A few snickers could be heard. Then Billy Applewhite spoke up.

"Sam? What happened to you?" he asked as if he still weren't sure it was really her.

In that instant, everything and everybody seemed to come to a standstill. The hall was deathly quiet. Sam stopped on a dime and turned in the direction the voice came from. Locating Billy, she glared at him.

"Don't call me that. My name is Samantha," she spoke in a measured, slightly threatening tone. I'm not sure if she was gritting her teeth or if I just imagined she was. That should have been enough. But Billy in all his infinite wisdom wouldn't let it go.

"What did you do to your hair? It looks... stupid!" he spoke as if he were talking to his little brother.

Clearly Billy was lacking in manners, not to mention good sense. That was not the sort of thing you say to any girl, but especially not to Samantha Henry. To make a short story shorter, Samantha beat the living daylights out of Billy. They both got sent home from school early that day.

I never saw Samantha wear any jewelry or curl her hair again until our senior prom. I was honored to be her date, and very careful not to call her Sam.

"I was the quarterback in the back of classes. She was the whiz kid in horn rimmed glasses..."

25 comments:

  1. Hi Bone! I have to say, I'm REALLY enjoying these 3 Word Wednesdays! I never feel like writing anything until I think about the words and then *poof*, an idea forms and I'm off furiously typing.

    Hope your week is going well and thanks for stopping by!

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  2. mine's up :)

    hope you are having a good week..
    Shelby

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  3. dude mines up, I'll check in tomorrow to catch yours if you post. ;)

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  4. I think it should be called 3 word whenever.

    I did post mine because it was more fun than doing what I was supposed to be doing

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  5. Mine is up as well:

    http://readingtoknow.blogspot.com/2007/05/3-word-wednesday.html

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  6. I took the easy way out this week, but I have posted a short one. Have a great Wednesday.

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  7. hi everyone. it's me again. this is my second shot at this exercise. hope you all drop by and give me your thoughts. thanks!

    http://blueper.blogspot.com/2007/05/chase.html

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  8. Karen: Glad you're enjoying them. And I hope you're week is going well, too.

    Shelby: Thanks for participating. Hope you are having a good week, as well :)

    ATag: I did post, albeit not as quickly as you :)

    Pia: 3 Word Whenever. It has a certain relaxed, indifferent feel to it. I like it.

    Carrie: Thanks for playing. I shall be by to read it later.

    Joan: Short is acceptable :) And thanks.

    Uberjam: Welcome back. Thanks for participating again.

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  9. I enjoyed it, and was glad that your character was her date :)

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  10. I forgot to mention how much I loved the first line

    You, Bone, know my thing for Southern writing. It was great Southern style writing

    And how the character of Samantha was developed

    Jason last week--Samantha this week

    I spot a pattern here from a certain TV show I DVR but don't watch

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  11. You go into a lot of great detail in this post, Bone. Some of my favorite lines where you paint a vivid picture are:

    I still remember the momentary inability to breathe as my stomach smacked against the playground dirt.

    As she walked down the sophomore hall looking straight ahead, students seemed to part like the waters of the Red Sea.

    To make a short story shorter, Samantha beat the living daylights out of Billy.

    I really liked that we didn’t know the narrator’s connection to Samantha until the very end. I waited the entire story to find that out, and it totally is what sucked me in.

    She didn't look bad, at all, just different.

    I laughed and laughed at that. Typical boy ;)

    Great story this week, Bone: you really made Samantha come to life for us.

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  12. Bone, this is my first time participating although I have lurked before. I loved your Samantha story, all the details! Can't wait to read more of yours and the others.

    http://meeaugraphie.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-word-wednesday-although-day-late.html

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  13. wow, ok so this sounds exactly like what happened to me at the spring banquet...well no one said I looked stupid but they were staring. ;)

    I loved this! TC is right you brought samantha alive! I knew he was going to get with her!! :)

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  14. Shelby: Thank ya.

    Pia: Funny you should mention that, because when I was trying to come up with a last name, I kept wanting to call her Samantha McCall.

    TC: Thanks. I really didn't have an ending in mind when I started. But that seemed like a good way to tie everything up.

    Marcia: Thank you and welcome :) It's always good to have new participants.

    Tagster: well no one said I looked stupid but they were staring

    LOL Well, people stare for different reasons. Thanks.

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  15. Hey Bone, back to read your work.

    I have to ask - HOW did you get my diary? I mean seriously, Sam is me, Sam I am. *grin*

    I am this character (except for the baseball stuff - insert drama and you could be talking about me).

    I absolutely love how you show Sam's insecurities without getting into her head. Her behavior says it all. And I would love to learn more about the narrator and Sam's relationship and what happened after senior prom.

    I like her. We could be sisters. :-)

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  16. nice story. still working on my 3WW

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  17. i didn't get around to writing a 3WW this week, but I enjoyed your story--I remember a few girls in high school who had overnight transformations... well done.

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  18. That was funny, I was {maybe still am} a tomboy and had no problem with it, maybe because I don't really look like I could wrestle some fairly big guys to the ground (but I can and have).

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  19. Dad handed me a piece of *jewelry* and said ''take it down to a size 9''. So I used the little jewelers saw to take a chunk of the band off the ring, to make it smaller.

    After that I turned on the torch and was about to solder when dad came back over and started talking about a few other jobs he and I needed to finish, I listened away, *oblivious* to the fact that one of my gloves was getting torched. After a few moments (when the glove started to smoke) I let out a yelp and doused the glove with water.

    Dad responded with (as far as I could tell, words of wisdom) ''well when you *gain* a bit more experience you should be able to talk and torch without any trouble, but until then I think you should cut back on the chit-chat''. THE END..............NOTE: I never torched anything I didn't mean to. My father is a jeweler, I also set stones and made/repaired a lot of jewelry when I younger [I even have jewelry tools {from Sweden)that have been in the family for 150+ years (from my Swedish father's side) and are still being uesd].

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  20. I really liked your story, but I was expecting the narrator to have married Sam and have a happy house full of kiddos. Glad you aren't totally predictable. Perhaps the narrator wasn't married to her 'cuz the author is still single?

    I caught part of a Seinfeld yesterday while flipping through the channels...it was the one with the Crazy Mailroom guy at J Peterman & the Mentors.

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  21. I keep being drawn back to this story

    If you have never read "my dog Skip" by Willie Morris, read it. The movie is great also

    I'm drawn to the first paragraph, and many lines throughout

    The more I read it, the more I think "wow, if I didn't know Bone, I would find some way too. Major talent alert."

    It's as if you have taken all your gifts and put it into one story that should be in an anthology

    The Sam/Samantha thing is but one oh so true detail.

    I never thought of it being hard for girls to go from tomboy to full fledged teenage girl before, as I wasn't--a tomboy, I always was a girl

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  22. I got this address from you comment on Marcia's page and thought, what the heck-I need a Wednesday Prompt. I will be participating from now on and I will put my post up asap. I have already linked you with your button to the top of my blog. (I just looked at your code, hope that is okay). Thanks for another great idea.

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  23. Karen: I absolutely love how you show Sam's insecurities without getting into her head.

    Thank you. That means a lot. That was what I was trying to do, as it's tough to write things from a female perspective. Thanks for coming back to read my story.

    Xinh: Thanks. I'll be checking back to see when yours is up.

    Sage: Thank you. Yeah, I remember several instances like that, too. Funny how that happens.

    GirlFPS: Wow. That's very interesting about your father being a jeweler and the jewlery tools. Now, about these guys you've wrestled to the ground...

    Renee: Perhaps the narrator wasn't married to her 'cuz the author is still single?

    Let's not dig into the author's head too deeply :) I'm glad it wasn't too predicatble.

    That's a good episode... Well Eddie, let's just replace 'hail of shrapnel' and 'scar tissue' with 'string of pearls' and 'raspberry scones'.

    Pia: Well, thank you. You're much too kind. And good to know you were always a girl :)

    Clockwork: Welcome. And thanks for linking back here.

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  24. I finally posted mine on Monday!

    I wrote a terza rima. Linked your blog to mine too.

    here is mine:

    Click Aftermath

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