My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie NOTE: As part of a lesson I taught one of my students, I typed a second response to the OneWord prompt "Achiever," which was from September 23rd. After this, I proceeded to expand the story a bit more. While again, this is not your run-of-the-mill Storyteller, it is a chance for me to show off a slightly different pattern in my writing - as well as show how tempting it is to add even more to a completed OneWord blurb. Enjoy. In order to be an achiever at anything, you must first learn to care. For Thomas Estrel, caring was not exactly a quality he necessarily shared with his peers. In fact, he was superb in the peculiar, yet understandable, art of apathy. Every day, when he went to school and went from school, you could find him with his flat gray cap lopsided on his head, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, and an unlit cigarette drooping from his lower lip. Not because he was trying to be artistic, but because he typically forgot his li...

"Excuse me, boy!" barked the lady from the counter. "I ordered this without mustard. Without! Can't you get anything right?" I stared as my coworker blushed a darker red than I ever thought scientifically possible. It was clear that he had some sort of mental disability, and I knew he was trying his damn hardest. So I reached over, snatched the burger from the woman's fingers, and snapped, "Here, we'll fix it. But could you go a little easy on one of my best employees?"