PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook
GETTING THE RUNAROUND
His mother had told him a thousand times. His Dad had said the same thing a few times, but nothing nags like a Mother. Stay in school! Get a diploma! Get a good job!
He was smarter than that. Right after high school he’d got a paying job, while the rest wasted their time and incurred debts.
Ten years later he was making auto parts, while his sister was a doctor, making triple his salary.
All he had to look forward to was the daily grind, round and round. Get up, work his ass off, come home tired – and poor.
***
This little cautionary tale is all Rochelle’s fault. Go to her Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story for the Friday Fictioneers.
Archon's Den 
You could say that like his sister the doctor, he was making rounds.
Or, that what comes ’round, goes ’round.
Randy
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I’ll just let you say it – and nod sagely. 😉
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Just to say that it can work the other way round too.
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True. There are millionaires who never finished high school, but, as Damon Runyon said, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.” 😯
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Dear Archon,
Love the ‘daily grind’ metaphor.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Thank you. The story is largely autobiographical. I worked my last 20 years in a century-old auto parts plant with beams that looked much like the photo. I can still feel the ‘daily grind.’ 😳
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Ohhhh! Your writing is such a boon for parents. What a story!
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My writing is more often down-to-Earth than ‘inspired’ or creative. This one I wrote from sad personal experience. 🙂 😯
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Oh oh.
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And yet, so many of us (yes, me included) chose the early money route… dumb, dumb, dumb…
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There’s always night-school, or online education. I went back for a bit of both.
Of course, in my auto-parts plant, we had 8 people with university degrees, one in Marine Microbiology, making the same parts I was. 😳
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Crazy…
I did go to night school to get my college degree…
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Our daily routines, don’t you love it 🙂
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My daily retired routine now includes naps, with cats. I love it, and don’t miss the old one. 🙂
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I like the flash fiction, Archon. The first time I saw the picture I immediately went to an old Saturday Night Live skit with Steve Martin from the 1970’s. Theodoric Barber of York where Gilda Radner and Bill Murray were going round and round on one of those contraptions in a mill doing repetitive work. I like the way your mind works.
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To say ‘works’ is being generous, but I’ll take all the praise I can get. 😉
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🙂
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Very accurate. He should have read Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. He would have been a rich man by now.
Five out of five daily grinds. I liked that term!
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Thanx for the visit and comment. I’d have thought that ‘The Daily Grind’ was a ubiquitous term. There’s even a small coffee-house chain named that. 🙂
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Hahahaha! 😀
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[…] via Flash Fiction #122 — Archon’s Den […]
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