I’m gonna tell y’all one story, although I have hundreds relating to deer. It is the account of the one time I went deer hunting. I know what you’re thinking: “Amy? In the woods? To shoot a deer?” I know, it’s preposterous. There are ticks there. And deer are graceful and agile and beautiful….and I’m so decidedly NOT. I was eleven years old. My uncle, having decided there were no boys forthcoming in the family, had taken me under his supervision for all things outdoors. It started simply enough, with frisbee throwing. I was the blue ribbon winner of my Kindergarten class on Field Day. And Field “Day” used to be a week, in my glory days. But it looked weird when I typed it. Uncle Dale also taught me a great many more things, including varieties of trees, how to tie my lures, how to fish, how to clean a fish, how to double knot my shoelaces so I wouldn’t eat dirt, how to shoot a pistol, a rifle, AND a muzzleloader. I assisted him when he processed deer, and I picked up sticks for the duration of my childhood under his watchful eye. He gave me my first dog and my first knife. He gave me $5.00 for my own crawdad lure, but he didn’t buy me a My Little Pony kite from McDonalds. He’s…
November Writing Challenge, Day 12 It evaded me. Being a bit of a flake, thoughts evade me constantly. Sometimes I’ll be smack dab in the middle of telling a story, get distracted by whatever it may be, and couldn’t tell you for love or money what I had been talking about twenty two seconds prior. I also keep the dictionary app open on my laptop when doing any writing because I can almost think of what I want to say….almost. So if I can put in the word I can think of, I can usually come up with the one I can’t. I’ve never been a hunter, other than that one time, so I don’t have any thrilling stories of how my prey evaded me. What? You wanna hear about the one time? Well sure, I have nothing else to do, besides read a 291 page book by Wednesday for book club. I was in 5th grade and had just completed the Hunter’s Safety Education Course with the rest of my classmates. We’d went out to the dam and shot clay targets with a .410, which was not a big deal, since I’d grown up around a bunch of men that were outdoorsy. Uncle Dale had had me shooting BB guns since I was about 5. (But I still don’t bait my own hook). Anyway, he’d had this…