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I teach fifth grade, nothing complicated: slavery, ratios and proportions, why the good side always prevails in war. Half my students at the Army base are children of Second Cavalry, currently deployed; the other half First Infantry, now stateside, soon enough to ship out again. These kids pull extra duty at home with a soldier parent gone to war; they grow up fast and live with doubt. Mostly, though, they act like fifth graders whose parents love them and have a job. For a few, the sufferers of pre-traumatic stress syndrome, I guess, the nightmares precede the loss. For others, the combat death of a Mom or Dad does just what you’d expect. I have a classroom full of kids who go to war by webcam and, just like soldiers in the field, they react in all the ways a person could to being shot at every day. I often wonder what they hear in the background during those calls to the war zone. When individually they panic, I talk to them of training and preparedness and ask them if their Dad takes living seriously, and show them on the map just how big a territory he has to hide in from the worst of the fighting. If they ask me why my wife didn’t make it back, I say she served four tours before that last one, that long odds caught up with her, that her life was courageous. I don’t know if it convinces them. It’s just that certain afternoons when the room is hot and stagnant, arithmetic will lose its charms and I can tell it’s time to put the books away and try again. We understand that, they tell me every time. But why? We’ve heard those reasons, too, they say. But why? Why, really?

Copyright © March 25, 2007

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Let’s all have a laugh at humanity, while we still have a sense of humor about us. It’s getting dark out there, my friends, where we make what we call our livings, but here in the room, where our private movies are staged and we are stars, it’s blindingly brightly lighted by design, mirrored and multiply-reflected, white on pink on stark white sheets and shadows flee before us. Still. We’re funny. Could we be naked and not be funny? Seen in our entirety, with back-story and motives, we’re charming and slightly ridiculous. Our mismatched genes, those cross-wired brains, these farcical downward story arcs make us sympathetic supporting characters if not small heroes, certainly not villains, but from an individual angle, directly overhead from a distance of, say, here to the mirror on the ceiling, we look exactly like the funny animals we are, pink and poignant, poking one another. In the mirror to the side of the bed, I catch a glimpse of a creature that has no business in my fantasy. He’s not at all how I pictured myself just now with my eyes closed playing for romance and yet, he’s doing exactly what I think I’m doing to this gorgeous reflection of you, and yes, you look indisputably fantastic, identical and fine, here and in the mirror, so who’s that stand-in with my haircut, doing such an unconvincing impression of me? Tomorrow we take down all this diminishing glass. We’ll do what we’ve always done. My eyes will be your only mirror, yours mine. We’ll look at each other and find ourselves. And just before we start to laugh, we’ll catch a glimmer of how we’re loved and get a sense of why. Then when we laugh, we’ll laugh until we cry like no animal we know.

Copyright © March 24, 2007

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299-WORD NOVELS

Character, conflict, emotional impact. And sentences! Everything you want in a novel, without one extra syllable.
  1. davidbdale's avatar

    Thank you so much, anhinga, but I wouldn't want to try it without the other 199. —David

  2. davidbdale's avatar
  3. anhinga's avatar

    All you need is 100 words to make an emotional impact. Touching.

  4. Unknown's avatar

    Brilliant, brother. Just simply brilliant.

  5. davidbdale's avatar

    This Very Short Novel has a strong resemblance to Simple Lessons of War from almost 20 years ago, but is…

Behind the Pseudonym

The pen name davidbdale honors my mother Beatrice (Bea) and my father Dale

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