The first few days will undoubtedly be harder and it’ll get easier, but so far, the creative juices aren’t exactly flowing. Hopefully this little write up brings a smile to your face. It may or may not be based on true events…
295 Words
o0o
She stood, very very still, arms folded behind her back, in the corner, as instructed. Her laptop camera was pointed at her and her headphones blocked out anything but the sound of him going through the one hundred lines she’d just written. She sat at her desk writing them while he watched from 3000 miles away, sent him clear photos of them, and then he printed them out while she stood in the corner, so he could review them.
Other than the rifling of paper, she didn’t expect to hear anything, until his quiet, genuinely disbelieving, “Seriously?” filled her ears. Her stomach dropped but she couldn’t imagine what could have been wrong with them that it would elicit that kind of response. Even messiness wouldn’t garner that. A moment later, he called her out of the corner and she sat back down, facing him – deeply curious but unsure what she’d done.
“Marie, how do you spell diligent?”
Her face immediately reddened and went flaming hot with embarrassment. Spelling was not something she typically struggled with. She put her head on the desk and covered her face.
“Um. Apparently not like that,” it came out as a gentle whine, as she nodded towards the sheets of paper on her desk.
“Spell it for me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Go ahead.”
He wasn’t mocking her at all but he was certainly enjoying her embarrassment – that’s sadism for you!
She lifted her head and very flustered, tried to guess at what letter she’d gotten wrong. As she started spelling it out loud, he stopped her, “No. It’s D-I-L-I-G-E-N-T. And how did you spell it?”
She looked at the lines again.
Strict uniform makes me a dilligent and productive girl.
“D-I-L-L-I-G-E-N-T”
One hundred times. At least she was consistent?
o0o
Honestly, this still haunts my thoughts. And yes, I re-wrote all 100 lines with diligent spelled correctly, even though I wasn’t told to. The consequence for misspelling it was the embarrassment in and of itself, and writing just that word, I think 10 or 20 times?
-M