Crossposted to LJ. This one has been floating around in my head since Steph posted the theme. Getting it from circling thought-memory to words on a screen was harderthan the previous ones. In the past two challenges I wrote, checked words, and had to pad up to the limit. This one was harder. I had to pare away words, and choose them carefully.

Music flows around her. Rough wool scratches her arm where it links through his, and her face, where she leans against him: wool and Old Spice and another familiar scent mingled. She glances up to the choir loft; sharp eyes are upon her, over the top edge of the hymnal. She drops her gaze and shrinks tighter against him.

He reaches in his pocket and offers her a tiny stick of Dentyne. She unwraps it greedily and pops it into her mouth. The burst of sweet and cinnamon blocks, for an instant, that Medusa's gaze.

Ow, wow, on both.

Bev's is all about the texture, which is where I live. And I have certain similar memories to sj's experience with the doctor. And Liese's thing, about being shaken loose? No way to be any righter than that. It's what this sort of writing is supposed to do.

It was jarring to go from the language of the first paragraph to the word "Dentyne." It all has an evocative feel to it, though.

See, that was the part I liked best - from uh-oh to ah-HA!

Dentyne was his default--it was the only gum at the time that didn't stick to dentures. It was also the third element in his distinctive Sunday smell, the one that cements the sense-memory for me.

sj, yours is very powerful. I do wonder if your using the phrase, "awkward teenager" twice was deliberate, for emphasis and comparison?

PC, I'm so pop music illiterate I think I'm getting hung up on the music I'm unfamiliar with rather than your writing. Which I'm still thinking about, so there's worth there for me.

Dentyne was his default--it was the only gum at the time that didn't stick to dentures

YES! My father, same thing. He had a badly deviated septum and he chewed gum to keep his ears from popping, and he was another Dentyne fan, for the same reason. He liked the minty ones, though.

PC, I'm so pop music illiterate I think I'm getting hung up on the music I'm unfamiliar with rather than your writing.

I only mentioned the song for the benefit of those who knew it; it's not really necessary at all to the understanding of the drabble. I wanted some inspiration, and it came up on Winamp, so I wrote about it.

Which I'm still thinking about, so there's worth there for me.

Oh, awesome. Thanks. (I guess I should mention that, unlike the majority of the others posted, mine was a totally fabricated memory. And was supposed to be from a female point of view.)

The second half, where it goes away from the memory and starts talking about the song...is the metaphor as obvious as I thought it was? Sometimes I write something with one meaning and discover it has another as I'm writing it, but then I don't want to call attention to it for fear of being heavy-handed, but then I end up being too subtle.

PC, the metaphor was obvious, yes, but I'd rather assumed that was the intent. It wasn't heavy-handed, and the last line was nice and wry.

Bev, I love the texture (stealing Deb's word) of your drabble. Powerful!

uh-oh to ah-HA!

Deb, isn't that a Robert Fulgham quote? It rang a bell for me.

I'm so happy to have an approachable writing task right now! I've been daunted by my longer works lately, and this is a good way to start to get comfortable in my own writing skin again.

Deb, isn't that a Robert Fulgham quote?

Don't know - I haven't read him. It just popped into my head as appropriate for my reaction.