Day 1992: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: he shook his head

Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay

“So while you all were away, I was thinking about things we could do to make life better for everyone around here,” eight-year-old Gracie Trent said to her friends Amanda (7) and Edwina Ludlow (8) from next door, “and I have the perfect idea.”

Sgt. Vincent Trent backed all the way up from what he was doing, knowing his baby daughter's ideas were generally quite worthy of attention...

“What?” Amanda and Edwina said.

“You know how it gets real nice and cool in the evening when the wind starts going through the trees, at just about the time when we have to go inside and get ready for bed?”

“Yep,” Amanda said.

“It's so annoying,” Edwina said. “That would be like the best time all day to be out here playing.”

“So, this is how we fix it,” Gracie said. “Trees really like wind, so, we chop a tree down, bring it here, glue it onto Melvin's turntable – we can put papier-mache on it for safety – attach the turntable to an engine, and just turn it around and around so it will be a big natural fan for us. You think Grayson has a big enough Lego engine?”

“I'll find out,” Amanda said, and ran and got her six-year-old brother Grayson to come back with her.

Gracie described what she wanted, and Grayson thought about it for a long time.

“If you get a dead tree, maybe,” he said. “Living trees have a lot more weight.”

“Well, that would still work as a fan, and there would be a lot less needles or leaves to clean up,” Edwina said.

“You know what you really need, though – it's not what I do, but I'm sure Papa or Uncle Sarge can hook the turntable up to some jumper cables and let the car engines run it,” Grayson said.

“That'll work,” Gracie said, “and we have like three cars, so nobody's gasoline bill would have to go that high.”

“Exactly,” Edwina said.

“Okay,” Grayson said. “I'm just going to ask Grandma if she can start giving me and Robert extra glasses of milk along with George and Andrew, and if you ask Milton, he can start growing too so we can all go chop down and get you the tree you want next month.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gracie said.

“Yep,” Amanda said.

“Perfect,” Edwina said.

Sgt. Trent passed his hand over his brow, and Mrs. Melissa Trent wrapped her arms around him as he shook his head.

“What's wrong, Vincent?”

“Oh, nothing – I just realized what we and the Ludlows are doing, while the Four Little Horsefolk of the Apocalypse are out there, swinging their little legs, drinking water, and planning to rotate these big mountain trees for a fan on the front lawn … our job is to get them to adulthood really knowing how to do things, because if this is where they are at 6, 7, 8, and 8, we're all dead if we don't!”

“What?”

“Go ask Gracie, Melissa.”

Mrs. Trent came back shaking her head.

“We just gotta pray Grayson and Lil' Robert don't hit that growth spurt for another ten years,” she said, and she and her husband both broke down and laughed until they cried.