It's A Race (standard:Flash, 214 words)
Author: ErinKelly-Moen	Added: Jun 22 2004	Views/Reads: 3033/0	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
We are all racing against time for our lives, and the realization can come in strange ways.

"It's a race!" my nine year old daughter exclaimed. I was showing her
the varied translucency in the different sizes of French fries we were 
cooking up. I smiled, wryly. 

A race. That word. Race. So many meanings and synonyms to the word, but
when it's over, it ends the same way for us all. 

"Watch," I told my young-wise daughter, jerking the pan, to jump the
French fries back, like a chef, only, it didn't work, two flipped out 
on the first jerk. 

Ha, the aging are funny, knowing too much; including, innately, laws of
physics. I dropped a full Tupperware tumbler of chocolate milk, once, 
to the kitchen floor. It sprayed the cabinets, the ceiling and the 
furthest reaches beyond my reach with splatters of spilled milk. The 
race almost ended there. 

Translucency. What a difficult word to rhyme in middle age. Lunacy?
Lunatic? Lunar moods? I'm a loon ... do you see? Over half-translucent, 
and opaquing, feeling crystallized. I want to chyrsalise, awake and 
aware. But, is it too late? The race ... 

Translucency fades, sight dims, chaos arrows in, genes mutate. 

'It's a race' echoes through my head as I look at the overcooked French
fries, brown, limp, and weeping salt. 

My daughter said they were dead. 

And I agreed.


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