My "642 Things to Write About" Response

An author friend of mine, Chris Waltz bought a book call 642 Things to Write About.  Chris had this idea for using the book to get himself into writing.   Moreover, he opened it up to his friends and fellow authors to volunteer to do responses of their own.  I thought that this is exactly what I have been looking for as in regards to get back into writing.

After avoiding, overthinking, forgetting and stressing I finally wrote my response to my prompt.  It is rather amusing for me to see how my recent getting into Breaking Bad had an influence on this.

The prompt I was given was, "The people who will live in your house after you move out."

 

“THE NEW OWNERS”

“This space is perfect!”  She kept saying repeatedly from the moment the realtor began the walkthrough during the open house.  His responses varied, pointing out another something they have been looking for in a house, he found in our house.  One thing was for sure, they were not leaving without making an offer to ensure the place would be theirs.

Though we owned the place since it was built, the family and I were moving onto a bigger and better place.  Not only getting our asking price, but making the sale so fast, meant things were heading in the direction we hoped for.  The purchase of the new place would happen quicker and we would be in a newer and larger space. 

Sure, there were some sentimental feelings.  After all, we’d lived her for eighteen years.  For the youngest, my baby brother, this was most of his life.  For the oldest, my parents, a third of their existence.   In between these four walls was not only the passing of time, it was the making of many memories.   

As the packing took place, cleaning and purging out the unwanted while many stories were shared.  Thoughts of how this was going to be the last time we do this or that.  Even the slight feelings of sadness that comes with change, was overshadowed about a new beginning.  In the end, we were all too eager to care.

The new owners were thrilled and could not wait to move in.  They were as eager for us to move out as we were to move into our new place.   The day after we moved out they moved in.  Our old house was being left in safe, caring hands.   Not that it mattered, being it was no longer our house.   It was theirs.

Things I believe would have been very different if we would have known then what we know now.  Months later after the house was sold, the police would end up busting the couple as well as two others who were using the place to cook crystal meth around the clock.  The house would be toast a year later, leveled and everything, including the foundation, hauled away.  Over the next decade the woodlands adjacent to the property grown over, claiming the land, making our house a distant memory.