Wednesday's Words on a Friday



On Wednesdays, Delores, from Under The Porch Light, has a meme which she calls

“Words for Wednesday”.

She puts up a selection of six words which we then use in a short story, or a poem.

I’m hopeless at poetry so I always do a story.

It’s a fun challenge…why not join in?

This week's words are:

1. sparkling
2. pudgy
3. goddess
4. surprising
5. wrinkled
6. talent

We also have a sentence, well, part of a sentence: "in darkest night, on silent wings of ice"
which I won't be using today.

Here is my story:


Renae stared at the image of herself in the mirror. She'd been pudgy as a toddler, (her mum called it "baby fat"), then pudgy as a child, her mum called it ("puppy fat"), but now she was fourteen and still pudgy. There was a roll of fat hanging over the waistband of her skirt.
She'd come to realise that pudginess would stay forever if she didn't do something about it. 

Taped to the top corner of her mirror was a photo of a former top model, Cindy Crawford. 
To Renae, Cindy was a goddess. There'd been  a story about Cindy in a recent gossip magazine, showing photos of Cindy in her heyday, Cindy as a child, Cindy as she was now. 
Still looking like a goddess, it was rumored Cindy had a little plastic surgery to stay looking as good as she did. 

Renae was sceptical. She'd seen pictures of women who'd had "procedures" done and they looked nothing like Cindy. Some of them had facelifts so tight, their eyebrows practically disappeared into their hairline, giving them a permanently startled look. Others had botoxed their lips so much they looked as if someone punched them in the mouth on a daily basis. 

Cindy didn't look like those ladies. Her face was smooth, but there were little laugh lines at the corners of her eyes, they wouldn't be there if she'd had plastic surgery surely?  And her neck was still wrinkle free too as if she'd never been fat and had to lose weight suddenly. Renae thought of their neighbour Mrs. Bethany, who had lost pounds and pounds last year and whose wrinkled neck now looked like a scrawny piece of chicken skin. 

Looking at her image, Renae decided that she wanted to look more like Cindy. She wanted to enter in the school talent show this year, but to stand out amongst all the other girls, Renae would have to lose at least fifteen pounds. She sighed as she thought about her mum's cooking. Her cakes and pastries were legendary throughout the town; Mrs Leibowitz regularly took the blue ribbon at the annual show. Renae had been eating those cakes and pastries all her life and had come to realise the so-called puppy fat was in actual fact pastry fat. 

She didn't want to hurt her mum's feelings, but she also didn't want to be pudgy all her life. There had been newspaper and television articles about the dramatic rise in numbers of diabetics lately, diet was suspected to be more than half the problem, with mention of sedentary lifestyles. Perhaps that was the key to talking with her mum. If she brought up the diabetic angle, maybe Renae could talk her mum out of the "croissants for breakfast, doughnuts for after school snack and chocolate cake for dessert" routine.

Renae sat on her new desk chair and planned the speech she was going to give her mum at dinner. In the meantime she munched on sliced apple and sipped at sparkling mineral water instead of her usual strawberry milk and doughnut. It was surprising just how good water tasted when it had a few bubbles in it. This could really work, she thought. I'll eat mum's dinners, but have smaller slices of cake and stick with apples and mineral water for after school. I wonder if mum will agree to eggs for breakfast instead of croissants with jam....I'll mention the eggs have protein which will keep me going until lunch, that should help.

Comments

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Pouty lips are not botoxed but injected with fillers such as collagens, buttock fat or silicone. Botox is a toxin injected to paralyse facial movements (such as frowning, raising eyebrows) to prevent wrinkles. Hence Botox is usually injected into the forehead, not into the lips.

    Facts checking/ research is essential in writing stories....

    Otherwise, good attempt.

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  3. mm; I'm guessing Renae doesn't realise this yet. (But thanks, I'll remember it from now on.)

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  4. Pastry fat is a really nice touch.
    Good luck Renae, but I think your mama is going to put up quite a battle.

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  5. Elephant's Child; maybe not. We'll see.

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  6. A well written story about a very sensible girl. I hope she has more will power than I do. Great job using the words.

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  7. I do hope that Renae reaches her goal. I feel for her and recognise that teenage angst about body image (I grew up with Diana Dors sized boobs in a Twiggy world and would have done anything to get rid of them!)

    That was really well done, River, as I could immediately tap into those feelings - words really do have the power to move people.

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  8. A very timely post, and well done! It shows how parents can contribute unknowingly to childhood obesity. Stay strong, Renae! (Please write a follow-up!)

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  9. Nicely done! Good reminder for all of us, too, no matter our age to avoid those sweet snacks and eat something healthy:)

    betty

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  10. Delores; she's sensible now, but let's hope she doesn't get carried away with the dieting.

    Marie; I had a short skinny body with a 34B bust when I was twelve. I eventually grew into it, getting taller and just a little heavier so I matched. Now I'm too heavy and it's all in the boobs and bum, plus a spare tyre around the middle. "Pastry fat"

    Susan Kane; I remember being told to finish what was on my plate at mealtimes, I was okay with the mashed potatoes part, but couldn't eat the meat. Oddly enough I was very skinny. But I hated being made to eat and never forced my own children. We didn't have a lot of sweet stuff for them either, unlike my own childhood where dessert followed dinner many nights.

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  11. betty; "a good reminder to all of us", she says, to the one who is right now eating chocolate cake with jam and cream filling.

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  12. Thank you for one more fantastic write-up. Where else could everyone get that type of info in such a great way of writing? Ive a presentation in a few days, and I am on the search for such information.

    Cccam Server

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