Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is the Doctrine’s contribution to Doug‘s new bloghop: The M of M.
(You should go check it out! Totally with instructions and a bunch of writers with mad wordage skills. Yeah, and we’re there as well??!)
This week, availing ourselfs of only 250 words, we are, all of us, invited to write a story involving the following prompt:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley (often go astray)
“Measure twice and cut once,” the five-year-old boy looked at his father who stood at the fluorescent-lit workbench, held up a ruler. Both had taken refuge in the basement workshop to escape the house above and the emotional discord waiting where the other half of the family rested.
“Plan your work and work your plan,” the boy, now a college professor, stood at front of the freshman engineering class, looked down at his dimly-lit lectern and smiled, “Failure is the bastard son of building without knowing everything about your materials.”
“And this will be the baby’s room,” smiling abstractly, the young man glanced at the girl at his side. A diamond on her left ring finger reflected light intermittently, as she leaned forward over the LED-lit drafting table.
“Don’t you understand? She is everything to me.”
“My father used to always say, Failure to plan is planning to fail.” Pacing through the flickering light of the church, the groom stared at the man charged with holding the ring and the cell phone. The device came to life with a sound, an unnatural sequence of tones; half musical and half incantation, the new century’s soul-less equivalent of a trusted guardian.
“Is that her?!! Is there anything wrong? No, just read it to me!” The best-man complied, in a tone as stilted as the grammar in world of texting instead of speaking:
“I don’t love you. You never asked me if I did. Sorry to ruin your plans for my life.”
About clarkscottroger
A superlative piece, clark. Deeply enjoyable. You’ve captured the zeitgeist perfectly with: ‘The device came to life with a sound, an unnatural sequence of tones; half musical and half incantation, the new century’s soul-less equivalent of a trusted guardian.’
Thanks, Doug. (I had to restrain myself on the matter of communication in the 21st C)
Excellent!
ty, M
Oh my! Those damned engineers…well, she figured out technology was the only way to get her message heard, I guess.
Very well done!
there is a certain worldview for engineers, into which I can only guess the spirit of
Damn!*
Killer last sentence, Clark. And a well set-up story, with a real rhythm to the sentences. I’ll remember “Failure is the bastard son of building without knowing everything about your materials.”
*And you know what that means in your blogosphere!
I do!*
(As to my tendency at a messy layout in my comments, Hey, tarot cards, they are shuffled first, no?
* Why yes, and I appreciate your reference to what I hope is not a staling** bon mot
** not a 100% certain that is a ‘real’ verb
“Measure twice and cut once,” had me momentarily distracted from the off, as I reflected on a fairly lengthy history of my shortcomings in that regard. A great story, with a pithy last line worthy of all that went before.
Excellent piece, dear chap, and who can blame the young lady for fleeing a future with this cliche-ridded pedant!
A veritable tragi-comedy or, as you might say, lol!
cliche-bliddy-ridden!
I used to wonder, in a distant past characterized by excessive youth and un-tethered ideals, why the attractive girls allow themselves to be drawn in by such obvious shallowisty*?
* not a ‘real’ word