By R.K. West

As I drive, I am telling Amy, my granddaughter, about that time I rode my bicycle down to the lake, and how it was late in the day and the light made the water the same muddy color as the bike path, and I couldn’t tell the difference, so I just pedaled right into the water, but before I have said more than five words, she interrupts me and says, “Grandma, you’ve told me this story so many times,” and I realize she’s right, but it’s one of my best stories, so I snap back, “Is hearing my story again any worse than watching reruns of ‘Friends’ all night?” and she presses her lips together in that exasperated way, just like her mother — and that reminds me of how her mother, my darling little girl, when she was five or six would get that look whenever we said no to her, and it made us laugh because she looked so much like Shirley Temple, but nobody today knows who Shirley Temple was, so I suppose I could tell that story using a different name, but I don’t think there is any famous person today who fills the niche that Shirley did, and certainly no one so young and sweet, and I begin a mental inventory of the faces I’ve seen lately on TV, and just as I’m working on the name of that redhead who plays a female Columbo, Amy says, “This is it,” and I realize we’re already at the mall, but the pavement slopes oddly and I can’t tell exactly where the driveway is and I turn just a bit too soon, bumping over the curb and getting a gasping grunt from the grandchild, and I realize this has been happening a lot lately, and maybe I need new glasses.

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R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger who now lives in the Pacific Northwest and is learning to paint. West’s recent flash fiction has appeared at Six Sentences, Friday Flash Fiction, Sudden Flash, and elsewhere.