The Excuse for Not Writing (Number 7)

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

The Excuse for Not Writing (Number 7)

By Plot Roach

Here is my excuse for not writing today:

I had a creative writing prompt picked out and ready to go. The story was really going to be something awesome, outlandish and just a little bit heartwarming.

And the I was kidnapped by a balloon stomping, cleat wearing lumberjack.

I can explain, really.

You see, I went with a friend to the opening of the Super Cheap Mega Gift Mall here in town and things got a little out of hand. But let me start from the beginning…

My friend, Lisa, loves to enter contests. She enters as many she can, even when it costs her more to play the game than the prize is worth. So it came as no surprise that she won tickets to the opening of the mall.

We got there early, to enter yet another contest: the ever-coveted door prize. This one was a chance to win a vacation for two to any one of three vacation prizes. The winner would get first choice, then the second prize winner would get the second pick and the last winner would get whatever vacation was leftover.

So we got our hands stamped, waited in line and filled out information cards with our telephone numbers and emails. I just knew that it would come back to haunt me later on in the form of a telemarketer calling me at seven am on a Sunday morning (while I’m trying to catch up on sleep) to ask me if I want to buy a timeshare for a condominium in the middle of a place I’ve never heard of.

So Lisa waited with baited breath as they announced the three contestants and I stood off to the side, not really caring either way. I never win anything. Ever. I’ve tried to live like Lisa, and I’ve gotten burned every time. So I just took it for granted that I wouldn’t win.

Then they called my name. I had won, but had an instant sinking feeling in my gut. Nothing good would come of this, I was sure of it. I tried to give my place to Lisa, but was told that it was non-transferable and if I didn’t play, I would not get a thing from them. So, grudgingly, I played.

They lined us up with mall staff “partners”, dressed in crazy outfits. I got the biggest, hairiest guy they had, dressed as -you guessed it- a lumberjack. But as an added accessory to his outfit, they gave him a pink tutu.
The rules of the game were that I had to ride on his back as he stomped balloons with the cleats on his boots. I was to direct him where to go, seeing as he would be blindfolded all the while. And the more balloons of a specific color, the more points we got, and so on and so forth.

The other contestants ended up riding a man dressed as an ostrich and another man dressed as a clown. How they picked these outfits, I’ll never know. But my guess was that the crazier the costume, to more of a crowd that they would draw.

In any case, they signaled the start of the race, and all of the riders were shouting orders -or trying to, over the noise of the crowd. Finally I got some sense and started “steering” the lumberjack in the direction that I wanted him to go. We ended up winning, but by the end of the ride, my “mount” was cranky from having his hair pulled in all directions like reins.

I was given a choice of vacations from Hawaii paradise, to mountain climbing or a trip to Disneyworld. Chilling out on a Hawaiian beach sounded great and I’ve always wanted to go to Disneyworld, but Lisa kept pushing for the mountain climbing thing. So I gave it to her, figuring that she could take whomever she wanted and leave me at home curled up with a good book and no frostbite or broken bones.

I signed the papers, chose the destination and handed the tickets to Lisa who cried with happiness. The problem was, no one told my partner, the lumberjack, that I wasn’t the one going.

He showed up on my front porch the day of the trip, all outfitted for snow and a steep climb, pounding on my door. At seven am on a Sunday morning. It was okay, though, I had already been woken up by the telemarketer asking me if I wanted to buy into a timeshare in butt-crack-Oklahoma.

I tried to explain to him that it was my friend, Lisa, who would be going with him. And then he told me that the people who were running the contest would be filming the vacation and that I was the only one that could go there with him. If I didn’t go mountain climbing, he couldn’t either. And he loved mountain climbing! So with little warning, he threw me over his shoulder, tossed me like a sack of potatoes into the back of his truck and away we went to the airport where camera crew and tickets were awaiting us for our “dream vacation”.
About ten feet up the mountain I would have given anything to wake up from this nightmare of a “dream”. But instead the idiot lumberjack (now minus the tutu) keep tugging at the line that attaches us to one another, telling me to hurry up, that I’m holding him back. And to top it all off, I wasted all my time in this little fiasco. So now I can’t write on my creative writing prompt.

Sigh.