For we Baby Boomers, most of us remember when there were no fitted sheets. The first ones were created around 1960 and didn’t become widely available for a while. Aside from the fact you weren’t allowed to have them in Army Basic since one of the things you learned was to tuck a sheet so tightly you really could bounce a coin off the bed, they were probably a little more expensive. Anyway, as their popularity grew there came a change in design that puzzles me. For a long time, only the corners were fitted which did make it easier to pop the corners down and you were done. Somewhere along the line, they started elasticizing all sides of the sheet and it is more difficult (at least for me) to determine where the ends of the sheet are as opposed to the sides. If one has a round bed it doesn’t matter, but for rectangular, as most people have, it can be confusing. As you may have guessed, in changing the sheets on the guest bed to prepare for my sister’s arrival, I maneuvered the bottom sheet two or three times before I got it right. Perhaps it’s either less expensive or easier to set the machines to apply elastic all around; I can’t think of another reason to do this. I do sometimes have the issue as well of the thickness of the mattress straining the corners of the sheets. I have seen the “deep pocket” fitted sheets which I suppose were created for this purpose. I don’t have such a problem as to seek them out and I imagine they are probably carried mostly in the higher end stores. The other aspect of the elastic all around is in trying to fold them neatly. I admit I don’t put a lot of effort into it, even though I do like my linens to stack well on the shelf. I will also admit this is not an overly important matter; merely one of those things I do occasionally ponder. Maybe I’ll raise it as a topic at Happy Hour this evening. For all I know, someone in the group may have an actual answer.

I don’t recall when I first heard about the variety of short story of Flash Fiction, but I was startled at the time. To limit to no more than 1,000 words doesn’t give much room for character/plot development. Most of my stories run 3,000-plus words and some are longer. (https://charliehudson.net/story.html). In pondering the concept, I thought about the number of song lyrics that in actuality do tell a story and those certainly fall within the guidelines. I decide to take one of my stories, “Walking Away”, to see if I could compress it and still maintain the essence. I did manage to get down to 999 words, although I’m not sure that quite meets the spirit even though the word count does work.

In fact, I haven’t written a short story for a while and for some reason, I am often inspired to do a new one when I am traveling. Perhaps it’s sitting around in airports observing and listening to people. It’s not eavesdropping per se, when you consider how tightly spaced most airport restaurants are and when I’m alone, I always sit at the bar if there is room. Then there are so many people these days who carry on conversations on their cell phones with seemingly little regard for whoever may be listening. As a writer, one absorbs these conversations and next thing you know there will be a scene or character created for some future use. Now, I admit, my short story, “Flight Delay”, was pretty much dedicated to a somewhat whimsical aspect of airport travel. The real truth on that one was based on an event which I did ask permission to use. I was determined to find a way to shape a story around the opening line of, “Last night I spent the evening with a lesbian Wiccan couple.” That’s not as easy to do as you might think.