Featured this month is a bookmark story for real life adventurer "Kate K." Kate was in her 70's, or close, when she had this adventure in Maine! Her friend Marilyn, a high school buddy of hers, put Kate in the Book Woman Club after buying a blank bookmark as a gift for her at Plowshares. Welcome to the Book Woman Club - "Kate K."! Of course, she is now mine, a fictionalized character with embellishments from my imagination! But all imagination begins with a spark of truth....doesn't it?
Hand, and then hand. Knee, and then knee, she crawled. She could see the river in-between the missing floor boards. It rushed by beneath her and would win the race, arriving at it's destiny long before her 70 year old,(or so), knees carried her to the other side of the bridge! Her knees screamed and her hands protested. She ignored them and pressed on. Kate was scared, but determined to keep up with the group. They walked and she crawled. They were younger, and she had a life of adventure carved into the joints of her body. Hand and then hand, she crawled. Knee followed knee.
A memory flashed and she was back in high school with her friend Marilyn. Marilyn should be here! Their adventures together often involved crawling! They'd be late to Art Class, (what was that teacher's name?), and they would silently tip-toe to the classroom door and drop quietly to their knees. They would then crawl slowly, pressing an occasional finger to their lips to hush the class tattle-tellers into not telling, and hug the ground all the way to their desks. Hand over hand, knees following knees. They would then rise up behind their desks, like giant octopuses rising up out of a churning and ancient sea. The teacher never noticed! Never caught them! He was so without a clue!
Kate's hands dragged each other over the floor boards while her knees followed. Suddenly, reptilian eyes met hers and she stopped in mid-crawl, her left knee balanced above wood. Her hands trembled as they held her weight over air filled floor slates. Kate's heart quickened it's already fear magnified rate. And with no other weapons in site, Kate's imagination took up her cause and she was a genie, the genie in the lamp from Aladdin. Her head was huge! Her hands and knees began to melting into vapor. The bridge became her lamp and it's end up ahead - her freedom from it's bondage. The art teacher from once-upon-a-time in that long ago class, (what was his name?), had them make paper mache masks of the characters from the Aladdin story. Huge masks that ate up a classroom-year's ration of paper. She and her friend Marilyn were sent on a secret mission to steal all of the toilet paper from the janitor's supply closet when the paper ran out. The class had finished the masks with bunches of toilet paper and flour. They had even performed the Aladdin play at the end of class and Mr. What's-His Name got his Doctorate from those masks that they had made!
Kate raised her Aladdin head and faced the snake. It hissed as she crawled forward. Hand, and then hand, knee, and then knee. She crawled forward.....
