Inspiration for Litterature 1.
June sat by the lake eating her peanuts. She only allowed herself to bring a small, single serving pack because she knew she would eat far too many peanuts otherwise. Self control had never been her strong suite.
She liked to sit in this spot. She sat her most afternoons during the school year. She enjoyed watching the children walk by on their way home from school. It reminded her of her own daughter who she hadn’t seen in years. It was her lack of self control that had gotten her in trouble, thus the little bag of peanuts.
They had taught her the best way to avoid control problems was to plan ahead and keep yourself out of situations that require control. It works, for peanuts anyway.
The park was quieter than it had been on Saturday. There had been a birthday party, full of balloons and streamers. The grand finale had been a pinata hung from the rafters of the picnic pavilion. Lots of screaming and laughter revolved around that pinata. When it’s smiling face had been bludgeoned open by numerous strikes from blindfolded children everyone sat down to enjoy some birthday cake from styrofoam bowls.
June wondered to herself, what was styrofoam anyway? One of her guilty pleasures here in the South was getting a large iced tea in a styrofoam cup with those little, oblong ice extrusions. To call them “cubes” is not accurate, they really are little ice extrusions. How do they make those? And why do they make the iced tea taste better?
June saw one of the park workers, Karl, making his daily rounds to pick up trash. He stopped near the bench where Black Hat Man sits to eat his lunch to pick up the insulated sandwich bag with his trash grabber tongs. June didn’t know Black Hat Man’s name, she only knew him as Black Hat Man. They had never spoken, but June didn’t like him. She had occassionally seen him there, eating his lunch. Each time he would simply leave his trash on the bench beside him and then get up and walk away. The wind or the birds would have their way with the remnants of Black Hat Man’s lunch and Karl would have to use his trash grabber tongs to pick it up later in the day. What kind of person simply gets up and walks away from their trash?
June turned back to watch the children continue their journey home through the park. One of the little girls was running to catch up to her friends. Her backpack was nearly as big as she was and as she ran, it bounced side to side jerking the little girl's frame violently. June noticed the top zipper appeared to be open and as the little girl ran she saw something flutter out. June momentarily thought of trying to alert the little girl, but she was too far away, so June put the empty peanut wrapper in her pocket and strolled over to investigate the dropped object. It was an empty wrapper from a kid’s meal treat from Wendy’s. The colorful exterior with bold lettering designed to make one think that the object within was much more mystical than the disappointing contents. Why had this little girl saved this empty wrapper?
As June stood there, contemplating the wrapper, her eye was caught by something else in the grass. It was a blue ink pen, and there, a few feet beyond was a plastic, mechanical pencil. These must have been in the little girl’s backpack and fallen out along with the wrapper.
June leaned down and picked up the pen and then the pencil. She did everything on her phone these days and couldn’t remember the last time she had used a pen or pencil. It took her back to a time, before her troubles, that she used to write letters. She grew up in the era of ‘pen pals’ and had a pen pal in Kansas that she had never met in person. It sounds weird now, but her fifth grade class had gotten paired with a class in Kansas and each child had been assigned a pen pal. They wrote letters back and forth for a school year. Most quit writing to each other after the end of the year, but June and her pen pal continued writing each other through high school. She enjoyed writing those letters. She hadn’t thought of her pen pal in years.
June hadn’t written a letter in years, but maybe. She had an address. She didn’t know her email address or phone number. June didn’t want to know that because it would be too easy in one of her moments of no control to say or do the wrong thing, but with a letter she could build in rules. She could write it and then not mail it for weeks. She could read it and re-read it and have safeguards to be sure she didn’t say or do anything again that would hurt her like before.
Maybe, just maybe this could work.
Maybe her daughter would like to hear from her again.
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