Kaboom is a cleaning product. I discovered it while I was visiting my son in Florida. I was helping clean his apartment and the product worked. When it was time to take a break, I went for a walk. My son lived in a gated community with multiple apartment buildings. A canal ran through the property and there was a large pond near my son’s apartment complex. The ground sloped downward from my path to the water. The sign at the end of the pond said, “Watch out for Alligators.” Really, I thought as I scanned the surface of the pond. Not a ripple or sign of alligator in sight. I supposed it was a cautionary sign—just in case an alligator did swim up the canal and make its way into the pond. I continued walking. I looked down at the water’s edge and saw a large brown log. A little farther on I saw a small alligator that was about 18 inches long sunning itself by the water’s edge. I looked back at the log and wondered, Was it really a log? Or something else? I picked up a rock and threw it.
Kaboom!
That rock hit the water with a splash and the large alligator (who was not a log) swiftly slid into the water in search of prey. He was about four feet long and moved very quickly. When he verified that my rock wasn’t food, he began hunting. A white crane was wading in the water near the opposite shore. I watched as the alligator swam towards it. Every time the crane looked toward him, the alligator froze. When the crane resumed hunting for food, the alligator would swim a little closer. This process was repeated over and over until the alligator was within range.
Kaboom!
The alligator surged forward, and I watched the crane take flight.
When I decided to blog A to Z, I thought it would be useful to have a list with some ideas of what to write about for each letter of the alphabet. I rambled through sites on the Internet. I thought about things I like to do and things I have previously written. Because K did not have any idea written by it, I decided to pick a number/ Then I would turn to K in the dictionary and write about that word. So, I picked 25. But I didn’t like that word. Kaboom was word number 27. So, I changed my number. I’m allowed to do that. It is my writing prompt and I get to write what I want to write.
There is a fair amount of information available on how to overcome writer’s block, how to decide what to write. Last month I attended a writing workshop on Zoom. The presenter said that writing something often helps him eliminate that block. He takes a piece of paper and folds it in fourths. Now he has eight sections. He sets a timer for five minutes and writes in the first square—whatever comes to mind. When the timer rings, he resets it and moves on to the next block. At the end of forty minutes he may have some writing ideas or he may simply be able to move forward on his current writing project. After he explained this process, each participant in his workshop folded a paper in fourths and the presenter set a timer for two minutes and we wrote something in each of our four spaces. I was surprised at how much I had written in such a short time. The writing in two of my spaces were expanded to become two blog posts: Boredom and Cooking. It is an exercise that I will repeat.