• Micro Fiction Challenge: Golden Sombrero

    Posted Posted by David Duhr in Micro Fiction Challenge     Comments 9 comments
    Mar
    31
    Golden Sombrero

    If the hat in this stock image were golden, and if it were a sombrero, it would be a golden sombrero.

    (To skip the piffle/folderol and get to the contest, go to paragraph #5)

    Baseball’s Opening Day is the surest sign of spring. Yes, it kinda/sorta snowed in NYC this morning, but that won’t postpone the Mets’ 1:10 p.m. start, by which time it should be nearly 60 degrees, and perhaps even a little sunny. And yes, there will be plenty of rainouts, and even a snowout or two, in the weeks ahead, but, as Bart Giamatti wrote, “The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings.” (Of course, the rest of that piece goes something like “Oh my God life sucks hard and winter is coming and I can’t stop time.”)

    My half of the brain trust here at WriteByNight will be taking the afternoon off, but I wanted to get up a new Micro Fiction Challenge before I turn on my glitchy MLB package and bliss out.

    Baseball is a game in which a successful batter performs at a 7-to-3 rate of failure, and one becomes a legend by failing in “only” six of ten at-bats. The most useless at-bat result is the strikeout. Whiff three times in one game, you’ve achieved a hat trick, a term which has its origins in cricket but became popular in hockey, where fans throw their hats onto the rink after a player scores his third goal of a game. But in baseball, a hat trick is bad news. And the dreaded golden sombrero is badder news. If three whiffs in a game is a hat, then four whiffs in a game should be a bigger hat, right?

    (After the 4-K golden sombrero, the creativity goes out the window. Strike out five times in a game and it’s a … platinum sombrero. Six is a titanium sombrero. And only once has a hitter struck out seven times in a professional game, April 18, 1981, when Russ Laribee went 0-11 with seven strikeouts in a 33-inning game, the longest ever played. I can’t find evidence of a term for this, but I might nominate “KKKKKKKaribee.”)

    OK, enough bluster, let’s get to the games. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a piece of flash fiction using the term golden sombrero. Your story does not have to contain baseball. It can just be about a hat. A magical golden hat. Or a simple sombrero that becomes magical by being urinated upon.

    Keep your story to 25 words or fewer, write it out in the comments section below, click “Notify” to keep abreast of your competition, and feel free to use a pseudonym if you’re shy. Be creative, be funny, be bold. We’ll announce the winner in this space soon, and we’ll give a shout-out to our favorites on Facebook and Twitter.

    The winner of this week’s challenge gets a FREE proofread of a piece of writing ten pages or fewer. Because a literary golden sombrero (four typos in a submission) is sure to lead to a batting average of .000.

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    Crystal R Raymond Edwards

    The amber streetlight illuminated him, washing the bold hues of his serape with resinous yellow. A golden sombrero shadowed his face. I ate the cabrito.

    Fred Richards

    German Physicist Friedrich Hammershmotten
    was successful in transporting items from another dimension,
    where he states “…some materials are more abundant…” while
    wearing a golden sombrero.

    R Naddel

    When he turned up in a golden sombrero, all the black hats turned to see, then just as quickly turned away, uninterested. He was just another salesperson, nothing magical about that…

    Jane Hilton

    “Those UFOs look like golden sombreros,” he said, looking up at the attackers.
    “Fourth goddamn time you’ve said that,” she grumbled. “Listen, we need to …”

    Mónica Teresa Ortiz

    I knew a man who wore a golden sombrero.
    To the 7-11.
    To the VFW.
    To the bathtub.
    To his grave.
    His name was Grandpa.

    J. Sommers

    She’d indulge his fetish under one condition: During his golden showers, she’s allowed to wear a golden sombrero. He wet himself with glee, and pee.

    Martin

    Golden sombreros? We ain’t got to show you no stinking golden sombreros! We’ll show you who wears the pinche goddamn golden sombreros! A la mierda los turistas!

    […] over and I’m just now remembering that we have an open Micro Fiction Challenge, ye olde golden sombrero of March 31st. But hey, seems like a lot of y’all forgot about it too, as we have only seven […]





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