Five drabbles

A drabble, as I do it, is an exactly 100-word story, not counting the title. Five follow.

Most of them were already posted on my first blog but I wish to have them on this one as well. There is something about this limitation that fulfils my need. Set limits to your child, or she will write. 🙂

In July last year, before I returned to my homeland for the summer holiday, I wrote:

I just wrote my first book.

It will never see the printers, be sold, make money.

It’s been written for the audience of one, with one life in mind.

And as a direct result of internet it is comprised entirely of drabbles. Seventy, one for each year lived.

I even invented Slovenian word for it: “drabljica”.

He has not seen it yet.

Writing it made me realise what a high standard of loving me he has set, and that I might as well be a bit more lenient towards all the rest.

It’s not that they will ever reach it.

The next one I wrote in December last year after a lovely walk in Trastevere.

I steak you

Just today in Roma I entered a shop with many shirts.

I saw a shirt that I would buy if it wasn’t in one colour only, ugly brown. On it were a bear and a girl (or was it a boy?) walking hand in hand. The bear was huge.

They appeared pensive. There was a think bubble with a drawing hovering next to each head.

In hers was: A heart.

In his was: A steak.

The reason I entered this shop was its name.

It is called: Trust Nobody.

He said later: “But they didn’t need to be so blunt.”

Actual day in Trastevere. The shop is a bit further along.

Here is one that rolled off my chest in gratitude after a vet visit.

“Bronchitis,” he said, “from the worms. Do you want to observe them under the microscope?”

A very hands-on vet. In his case, hands blacker than black, delivering the shot gently and deftly. His forest green scrubs in a magic dance with his skin tone.

And later again, after single-handedly handling the dog and the X-ray machine: “Look, these are his lungs. And this is the shadow.”

My Italian is getting there, his Italian has a Tuscan home. Good that you’re native, and there. Even though you couldn’t see the worms.

“It’s because he’s a human, not a machine,” you explain.

The next one is about something that really happened, like everything I write about, years ago:

A visit to his daughter. We enter the trailer. She’s in there with a colleague, gypsy-looking. They have upturned coffee cups, inspecting the grounds.

The gypsy looks straight into my eyes.

“Why doesn’t she do it, I can see she knows how.”

You must know this about me: I’m of earth and the sea. I can land an ear and offer a perspective, but I don’t do it this way.

The shock doesn’t show.

I take the cup and feel his eyes widen.

“There will be a three-way, and you will stick to the middle.”

Such fraud. Unless it’s Freud.

Actual coffee serving in Das ist Walter, Ljubljana, Slovenia, cigarette and all.

The last drabble shows exactly how I do it. It happened two years ago when there was a Pearl Jam Trieste concert ticket to give away.

A spare best band ticket awaits somebody to complete the expected 30,000 people. Sis told her facebook, put an ad online, nothing.

I tell her to go wider, call long-lost people. I can hear her thinking over the phone. She will.

Later, a message: “Done, the ticket goes to the best possible candidate”. Do I want to be told or prefer a surprise?

It only takes a second.

“Sašo Jovanovič.”

“Come on, Manja,” in mock disappointment.

And only she knows that no, I wasn’t cheating. Her gallant prom date didn’t inform me of her call.

She did say best possible.