Writers Workshop: Tales of the Playground

It's Thursday again, and you know what that means! Yes, time for Mama Kat's Writers Workshop! Huzzah! The prompts this week are:

1. If I sent you four hundred dollars today what is ONE thing you would spend it on and why. ps I want my change.
2. What are your kids talking about?
3. Tell us about a local news story that's all the buzz right now in your neck of the woods.
4. Share some blogging advice.
5. Tell us about that time at the playground when that thing happened.

I'm going to write on all of them this week, just to have the challenge.

If I were to send you a hundred dollars today, what is ONE thing you'd spend it on? An iPod. I want one so bad that I almost can't stand it, I'd even settle for a used/refurbished one, and that's probably what I'll end up getting. They're giving away a few of them at work this week, and I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that I might actually win one.

All I know, is that if I have to spend much more time using this stupid RCA piece of junk, I might have a mental breakdown and end up throwing it through a window or something. It said it was a 4GB when I bought it, now it says it holds 1.98GB, but when I put music on it, it only gets to 900MB before it tells me it's full. I've formatted the thing several times, with absolutely no luck. I hate the stupid thing!

What are your kids talking about? How great of a Mom I will totally be one day if I ever get around to having them? How they can't wait to be here? Technically, that's called beyond the grave, because they don't physically exist yet. Trust me. I can most definitely wait.

Tell us about a local news story that's all the buzz right now in your neck of the woods. How about the 5th graders in American Fork (UT) who are being charged for sharing pornography with other 5th graders? There were two 11 year olds who pulled up pornography on the school computer, where it was supposedly "blocked." They're discussing charges of dealing "harmful material to minors" for both children. 3

Honestly though, they're minors themselves! Sure they should probably be reprimanded, but where is holding the school responsible for not monitoring the computer lab or properly blocking those sites? They're 11 years old, how can you charge them with something like that?

Share some blogging advice. Be yourself. Don't hide who you are because you're afraid of people reading it and thinking poorly of you, because if they do then they can bugger off. Be you and write about what you want to write about, because that is the only way you'll be interesting to anyone who should be reading it.

Tell us about that time at the playground when that thing happened. There are a few experiences here that I will share... When I was very young and in Kindergarten, I was hanging upside down from the monkey-bars when a bee landed on me and stung me on my lip! The prick from the sting startled me so bad, that I slid off of my perch and landed on my head in the damp cedar chips below. Bawling, I ran to my teacher who made me wear a band aid on my face for the rest of the day.

When I was in second grade my two best friends were Rebecca and Daniel. You see, Daniel and Rebecca were an item, but I had a big crush on Daniel. Though I'm not sure what chain of events took place exactly, I do know at some point little Danny ended up my boyfriend too. My visual mind still remembers holding hands on the swing set with him, and Rebecca sitting on my other side-not at all mad about anything. We just shared and never had any hitch in our little childhood friendships. Why can't it be like this when you're adults? It seems as adults we always have something to be jealous about, or something to be angry, upset, or to hold a grudge over. Children don't have these feelings until we teach them to feel this way. This seems extremely sad to me, how we corrupt their innocence with our own negativity.

In 5th grade there was this boy, his name was Chase. Chase was a bit of a bully, and used to pick on me quite a bit. By this time I was quite a chunky kid, and he could be pretty cruel. One day we were having a particularly nasty little bicker in class, so he waited for me on the playground after school to continue his teasing. What the dear little 11 year old failed to realize, was that I had been raised on a farm with a bunch of male older cousins that I had learned to emulate; I wasn't having it. That is the day, my tiny childhood fist met his tiny childhood nose. Suffice it to say, we were pretty good friends the rest of my time at that school.