A Not-So-Perfect Gift, A Saturday Centus

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Well here it is, week 32 of Saturday Centus (fashionably late again, as usual) and time to whip out another 100-word short story based upon a supplied prompt.  Or I could just go to Starbucks and play solitaire while pretending to write the great American novel.  Nah, that gets old after a while.  Probably better to write the story.  After all, what would Jenny do?  (WWJD?)

For those who don’t know who Jenny is, she is Jenny Matlock of the blog, off on my tangent, and the spiritual leader of us Centusians,  a ragtag collection of literary folk from around the globe who enjoy making up stories and shopping at Walmart dressed very inappropriately just for the attention.   Perhaps you've even seen photos of some of us online.

Okay, so not all Centusians like to do the Walmart thing (you know who you are), but they do all like to make up stories.  And many of them do it very, very well.   In fact, there might even be a future congressman amongst them.     

Each Saturday morning we assemble at Jenny’s blog where the divine Ms. M shares with us our writing assignment for the week.   Then we set about making up our little stories which must include the prompt as written and no more than 100 extra words.  It sounds easy but it can be challenging at times, particularly since vulgar illustrations and filthy cuss words are not allowed.  (Fear not, maybe next year.) 

After we are done writing our stories, we link our contributions to Jenny’s meme post so that the whole world can read them.  The world, in turn, then contacts their friends who work in the publishing industry.  Then publishers offer us six-figure book deals and we go on 50-city book tours riding in pimped out luxury buses while dining on caviar and champagne, desperately trying to remember the little people who first told us to follow our dreams.  I don’t know what happens next because the drugs usually wear off by this point.

Anyway, if you haven’t participated in Saturday Centus by now you really should.  It’s what your fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Henkle, would have wanted if she were still alive and had not perished in that tragic blimp accident.  This week Miss Jenny handed us a doozy of a prompt to use in our stories.  The prompt is “An involuntary gasp of shock escaped my lips when I opened the shoebox and saw the pointy-toed shoes…”  

Here is my Saturday Centus contribution for this week.  I have entitled it:

A Not-So-Perfect Gift

I’ve never been a big fan of white elephant gift exchanges, but my office has one every Christmas.  While others unwrapped cool stuff like Chia Pets or glow-in-the-dark armadillo flashlights, I always seemed to end up with the ugliest, most useless crap you could imagine.

This year, to avoid getting something lousy like a crocheted toilet paper cozy, I planned to choose a package that had the right size and weight, because bigger is generally better.

Well, at least less sucky.

Crossing my fingers, I chose a nicely wrapped box.  An involuntary gasp of shock escaped my lips when I opened the shoebox and saw the pointy-toed shoes.

“Pink stilettos,” I said glumly.  “Merry Christmas to me.”

He who laughs last thinks slowest

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