Succinctly Yours Week 218: It’s All Ghouda

It’s time again for Succinctly Yours, a micro meme assigned by the delightful Grandma of Grandma’s Goulash. Each week, Grandma posts a photo so that we might do our homework and compose a story of 140 words or 140 characters or fewer to go with it. The bonus word this week was “cheese.”

Spurious High was forced to close its doors after the science fair scandal. Students brought a project showing what they’d learned about the moon’s layers of cheese.   139

Cheese Preparatory Academy closed down after a student was removed for being lactose intolerant. The board overturned the dismissal as intolerance of intolerance.   140

“I agree with the cheese board,” superintendent Colby Romano was quoted as saying. “We seek to embrace all dairy-digesting abilities here at Cheese Prep.”   132

The student, mild Brie Gruyere, was not bitter. “I plan to transfer because I can reach for the sky at Pizza Pie High,” she said, “but Cheese will always be tops.”   133

Me, to high school French class: Oh my gosh, quit complaining!

Girl: We’re teenagers. It’s all that we do.

Boy: It’s hormonal! We can’t help it, am I right?

When You Sort of Want to Kill a Mockingbird

It was the end of the school year in a second floor high school classroom with the windows open. I was giving a final exam. The room was pin-drop quiet. So quiet, the sudden sound seemed amplified. The kids jerked their heads up and gave me questioning looks. I was thinking, “What the…?”

It was the sound of a large number of young children laughing as if in play—just like the sound of a playground…but not. Something about it was slightly wrong. Off. Horror movie laughter, almost.

I mean besides the fact that it was right outside the window. The second-story, high school window.

Creepy? You betcha.

Last year I started hearing jungle noises blasting from the back of the landscaping section of a nearby Lowes store. At first I wondered if this was a recording. Then I realized no store would blast that noise on purpose. It had to be a mockingbird! I went home and looked it up, and sure enough, mockingbirds have been known to imitate car alarms, frogs, roosters, and even barking dogs. The one that had camped out among the wheelbarrows and shovels and paving stones sounded like it had spent time around peafowl.

The high school where I was working the day of the creepy laughter is just a football field away from a grade school. Why wouldn’t a mockingbird mock a sound it had to have heard most of the day five days a week?

Wish I had a recording, though. Move over, Edgar Allen Poe. This bird was WAY creepier than a crow. I hope I hear that sound Nevermore.

Have you ever heard a Mockingbird mock something weird?

Eat, drink, and be scary. ~Unknown

Succinctly Yours #167: School's Out

It's time again for Succinctly Yours! The idea of this fun challenge is to use the picture to tell a story in 140 words or 140 characters. The bonus word was “radiate.” For some reason I felt this week's photo begged for a limerick, which I've never tried before. I followed the rules for the first one, but cheated terribly (and alas, forfeited the bonus) in the second. Still, I had a lot of fun. Thank you, Grandma's Goulash! 

There once were three men from Pompeii

whose walking was more odd than I can say

when running on a track

one did radiate back

but the third was the one blown away. (130 characters)

There once were 2 brothers from Algiers

Who attended M.S.W.* for years

During the graduation pomp

They did flail and romp

And from the ground graduated over their peers. (140 characters including the asterisk)

*The Ministry of Silly Walks

Mr Pudey: …I have a silly walk and I'd like to obtain a government grant to help me develop it.

Minister: I see. May I see your silly walk?

Mr Pudey: Yes, certainly, yes. (He demonstrates.)

Minister: That's it, is it?

Mr Pudey: Yes, that's it, yes.

Minister: It's not particularly silly, is it? I mean, the right leg isn't silly at all and the left leg merely does a forward aerial half turn every alternate step.

Mr Pudey: Yes, but I think that with government backing I could make it very silly.

~Monty Python