Kinetic Pink vs. Myrtle Green

There they were, snowbound and quarantined in a small Boston apartment—Mom, Step-dad, daughter, and her significant other, all doing the millennial thing: actively engaging with their cellphones even though face to face communication would have used up less data, and it had been a long time since they’d all seen each other since the “rents,” as Eva called them, lived 8 hours away.

After what seemed like hundreds of clicks and swipes—Mom on her crossword puzzles, Stepdad on the weather report, Nick texting his mom for the 20th time that morning, and daughter Eva on insta (not Instagram as the uninitiated called it), there emerged from the incessant din of pings, whistles, chimes, and synth rifts what was a rarity indeed: a live, in-your face, human voice. Breaking the relentless stream of Online chatter, Eva remarked, “Ooh, this seems like an interesting contest” and proceeded to paraphrase the prompt:

“Create a story about someone who unexpectedly gets $20,000 involving a mysterious small, black book.”

Although Mom considered herself more of a visual artist than a writer, she WAS a former English teacher and was instantly hooked. “Can you send me that?” she asked.

No sooner had she uttered those words than her phone lit up with the black and white logo for the Vocal Media contest. Bedazzled, mom exclaimed, “Wow, that just magically appeared on my screen. How did you do that?”

“It’s Airdrop,” Eva said.

No further explanation ensued. People were supposed to know these things, and if you didn’t get it in a heartbeat, then you joined the ranks of the Neanderthals.

The other Neanderthal in the room, Giorgio, the stepdad, and a non-native speaker, was the first to put forth an idea:

“Ok. There’s this older guy who has a laptop dog (probably meant lap dog), and the dog was dying, but the old guy is too paranoid to take it to the vet. Anyway, the dog is dying, and it dies, so he decides to bury it in the garden, and while he’s digging the hole, he finds a box with $20,000.”

Everyone’s eyes glazed slightly as they summoned up a polite blank stare. They assumed he didn’t thoroughly understand the prompt. (Where was the black book?)

Eva was next to blurt out her thoughts. She had thought seriously about her topic for 30 seconds and couldn’t hold it in any longer. There was a spark of excitement in her eyes as if she was emerging from a winter slumber and tearing through the tendrils of her digital cocoon.

“Ok. So, there’s this old guy (starting to sound familiar). He keeps a black notebook on his night stand, and he wakes up in the morning and realizes there are clues in it for a hidden treasure. He figures out the clues and finds the treasure, which happens to be $20,000; however, it turns out he suffers from Alzheimer’s, and he had written those clues down years before the onset of the disease so that he would remember where he had hidden his money.”

Nick, ever the encouraging cohort, applauded the idea, but Mom thought it sounded too much like The Notebook, and Eva, after careful consideration, concurred. Nick was a bit gun shy and decided not to interject his own idea, which might be shot down by his potential mother-in-law.

Mom, not known for her quick thinking, the timer always going off before completing her Scrabble moves, decided to give the story more thought, and she had plenty of time to think on the 8-hour car drive home the next day, especially after Giorgio made a wrong turn getting on the New Jersey Turnpike, ended up going north instead of south, and penetrated the inner belly of urban decay. But that was another story. The important thing was, she had the outline of a story in her mind by the time they arrived home, and after several days, a final draft.

There were, however, a few more steps involved before submission, namely, researching “Moleskine,” which was a sponsor of the contest. Mom soon realized she had erroneously thought the company made those cotton bandages she had used to prevent blisters while hiking the Camino de Santiago, but that company was “Moleskin,” minus the final “e.” That additional “e” was the difference between wrapping folios and wrapping feet, and the former came in a much larger assortment of colors such as reef blue, myrtle green, and her favorite—kinetic pink. Mom also realized she would need some pictures for her entry and hoped this wouldn’t involve a technological feat beyond her level of expertise. A trip to the local bookstore—yes, they still had those in her neighborhood—was in order.

Opening the door of the store, she scanned the aisles until she spotted a wide array of journals ranging from vegan leather notebooks to bejeweled, locked diaries. There were journals to fit every personality type imaginable, even the Celtic warrior—but NO Moleskine. It wasn’t until she turned around that she noticed the vertical carousel in the middle of the store—the Moleskine showcase, the Manolo Blahnik of the notebook world.

“Ah,” Mom reflected, as she singled out a small, black, hard cover specimen, “Here was a remnant from a time when people put pen to paper, hashing out ideas instead of giving ideas hashtags. Here was a concrete entity that could be left behind as a testament to one’s creativity rather than a vague assembly of nebulous musings that would soon evaporate in cyberspace.

Her mind was awash with mental ramblings when she was abruptly interrupted by a brisk, “May I help you with something?”

She hadn’t noticed the attendant because her glasses had fogged up due to the face mask she was wearing. It was, after all, the time of coronavirus, and what future generations would remember as “The Great Pandemic,” “Flu-maggedon,” “Apocovid,” or “The Viral Vortex.”

Mom politely deferred from assistance and willed the attendant away. She would have bought the black notebook and taken it home to photograph, but she was more of a kinetic pink person, so she decided to take the photo right there in the store.

Little did she realize that a furtive gesture in the journal aisle would soon net her the $20,000 grand prize in the “Little Black Book challenge” on Vocal Media.

A month passed, and the story submission was forgotten until one day when Eva came pounding down the hall of the Boston apartment in a blaze of energy and excitement.

“Oh my god, Babe. I can’t believe it,” she screeched.

“What happened?” asked Nick as he looked up from his keyboard.

“You won! You won that contest on Vocal. They just announced the winners. You got the grand prize.”

Nick, not known for gloating or self-aggrandizing, and usually someone to muffle his feelings, was chuffed. That day, a month ago, when they were all pitching story lines Nick had an idea but decided to keep it under wraps. There was some truth in that old adage about still waters running deep.

The two of them celebrated that night with a bottle of Dom Perignon, a definite upgrade from the usual libations they bought on the discount shelf. The next day Nick bought that notebook he had seen Online while doing his research—the myrtle green one.