Flash Fiction Friday

Waiting Room Word Search

Word SearchWe met when I was thirteen, and we were married and had an apartment of our own when I was fifteen. My husband went into the army as a sergeant, that’s how well he did on that test they gave him. We are looking to move to Mississippi. He can be on the police force there without the crime and danger we have here. There will be the heat, of course. That is one thing. But we’ll have air conditioning. Then there are the bugs. Mosquitoes as big as flies and cockroaches as big as waterbugs.

One thing I won’t miss is the snow.

Our younger son wants so much to go into the military like his father, but they won’t let him in because of his learning disability. My other son was killed by a drunk driver, 25 years ago on the first day of spring. You heard of Tougaloo College? In Jackson? He was there, in his first year. But it was a blessing. I thank God every day for the blessing. There were five in the accident. The drunk driver and his two friends were okay. My son’s roommate pulled my son from the car. He thought he was just unconscious, you see. Even with two broken knees himself, he pulled my son from that car before it exploded, and he told me later he was sure he had saved him. He didn’t know he was already dead. But it was a blessing. He didn’t suffer. My grandson came in April, and he’s the spitting image of his father, just like him, tall and lanky and slow talking, and that baby was a blessing to me.

It’s that grandson who got me to doing these puzzles. He told me to do five a day, so I got this book at the dollar store, and I do two in the morning and two at night and one in the afternoon. I like them easy. Two of my aunts were just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, both at the same time, so I made an appointment with my doctor to see if there’s a test I can get to see if I have it. But my grandson said these puzzles will keep my brain clear. He’s a good boy, just graduated from college and taking an online class on the computer, to learn something else. I forget what.

My first boy, he goes and signs up for the army after high school so he’ll be able to go to college after, and they send him to Nicaragua and he comes back without a scratch. Then he goes to college and gets killed.


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