Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

You remember how, when you were in high school, a challenge would appear and align itself with so much of your secret desires and less-then-private insecurities? Maybe it was a growth (ahem! hyper-hormonal activity) spurt or, very possibly, the girl who represented the ideal future, (but actualized nothing but the role of some in society to be cannon fodder in the battle for adulthood). Anyway, you knew you could do it!

So, with all the mature judgement of (any) adolescent male at virtually (any) time in history, when confronted with a crowd seeking recruits to wear an emblem and march off for the honor of god and country (and a shot at the maiden in the tower), we said, “Sure! A Six Sentence Challenge. Between and among participants in Denise’s weekly writing prompt bloghop, the Six Sentence Story. Sounds like fun What could possibly go wrong!”

I’ll tell you what can go wrong in one word: Nick (aka Spira) and Ford (aka the Atomic Mage… the Atomic Mage!!! jeez with a blog handle like that, what could we have been thinking? “Heck, it’s only a wrestling match, strictly intramural, here’s your opponent, Andre   …the Giant!) lol

But a challenge is a challenge. Strong force binding quarks? The force of gravity on an apple. pshaw! Nothing to peer pressure.

Anyway. Being a clark, we thought, lets go back and see if’n we can build any confidence by looking at the first of these writing exercises, you know, back when zoe ran the ‘hop. Below is one of the first Sixes we wrote, from July 2015

Though they weren’t around at the time, if ceayr and Doug and Keith (think: 21st C Marlon Brando from ‘the Wild Ones’ that crew) and Chris and Jenne and Mimi… hey! Tom!!  Or, for that matter Paul , if theys not already writing their own sixes, we’ll be out in the parking lot after last period. oh well, it’s only blogging

Today, is a Six Sentence Story, a challenging and enjoyable writing thing that Friend of the Doctrine zoe (aka Ivy) throws most ever week!

The tree stood for as long as Jennifer could remember, it was there when she left her small town to attend college, it was there when she returned briefly, to take those few things that she could not bear to have strangers pick through and sell, and here it (still) stood.  As she approached, on this wintry day, she gave more care to her steps, as if the passing of time made her linger, not for fear of falling, but merely to delay. Pulling at her coat, producing what her late husband would refer to as ‘the self-hugging of the well-tailored woman’, she smiled, despite the discomfit that she felt.

‘The time has come to remember and let go” she thought, as she stepped carefully over the protruding roots, in a one woman minuet, around the base of the tree. It was only in the last quarter of her circuit that she saw, carved in the trunk, the passing of time causing the names, to be absorbed by the growth of the tree. Rather than being erased, the two pairs of initials had become part of the trunk and so, a part of the living tree.

 

*