Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by David M. Gascoigne and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. coveted 2. single 3. lunch 4. chance 5. wallet 

and/or: 

1. earned 2. sense 3. school 4. pester 5. owner

also including Charlotte's (https://krydderuglen.blogspot.com)  colour of the month: bright red orange. Sadly I am unable to change the colour of the text 😢

Here is my story:

From early childhood, Elise had known to not pester her parents for things they simply couldn’t afford. Her dad had a full-time job, and her mum made a bit of extra cash sewing dresses and school uniforms for several families.

But there were siblings too, older and younger, and money didn’t stretch as far as it could have with both parents smoking many cigarettes daily and her dad spending quite a bit each weekend betting on the horse races trying to get rich, and drinking a couple of beers. She was thankful he didn’t get drunk and smack them all like Celia’s dad did.

Celia, with the fiery red-orange hair, often came to school with bruises. So Elise never asked for things, certainly never for money, that was something that had to be earned by working, and being only seven she was still at school five days a week.

That didn’t stop her from admiring and wanting the things many of her school friends had. She coveted daily; the shiny shoes, the bulging pencil cases filled with glorious colours, some girls even wore a different dress to school every single day, though there were a few that wore the proper uniform, it wasn’t a rule until you got to highschool.

Each morning, Elise would put her plum jam sandwich lunch into an old bread wrapper and place it in the bottom of her school case under the books so the wrapper would not come undone.

One day on her way home from school, she found a wallet lying under the pine trees that separated the northbound side of the road from the southbound side. Elise liked to walk along that wide middle section and pretend it was a forest. The wallet was old and flat, she sensed there was no money inside, but she looked for a name or address so the wallet could be returned to its owner.

There was none, so Elise decided she would take a chance and keep it. It was very worn, maybe someone had just thrown it away and wouldn’t miss it. She could pretend she was a grown lady and the wallet was only empty until payday when it would be magically filled with money.