An Acre Of Grass

For the getwriting wednesday flash challenge.

***

I wait for the kettle to boil and line up the mugs. They stand fidgeting behind me as I dole out the teabags, excluded observers that they are. The water rumbles.

"Yes, but what am I supposed to do with it?"

I shake my head despairingly. I like my comfortable flat with its tarmac parking space and catalogue kitchen. It's naturally shiny and somehow manages to implicitly resist grit and grime and any kind of unhygienic lived-in properties. I've not quite worked out how it does that, but I have a feeling that the overwhelmingly modern decor helps immeasurably. Don't get me wrong, it's not unpleasantly unlived-in, it's just that the evidence of my habitation only tends to manifest in neat piles of random books and clinical post-it notes attached to the fridge.

"It's a garden, Terri, you don't do anything with it."

Click. Pour. Spill.

Apparently, a garden is the next thing on the list. The latest requisite, indispensable if I wish to progress in life. My friends aren't unbearable stereotypes, they're not the cutesie couples that believe that singleton me is existing in a meaningless torturous existence. But they do seem to have decided upon a certain direction down which to unsubtly nudge me, and now that the unsubtle nudging has been pointedly ignored for several months, they have unspokenly agreed to collectively attempt to handcuff me to a metaphorical and sabotaged steering wheel, so to speak.

"I don't really need a garden. I have a balcony. And potplants."

Wipe surface. Poke sugar pot. Sniff milk.

"Besides, I wouldn't do anything with it, it would just be lawn. Then what would I be left with, grass, however many square metres it was of grass."

I stir, and pass on the teaspoon for them to sort out their own damn tea specifics.

"How big was it, again?"

"An acre."

I'm still busy being pleased with myself for having found an apartment building with a stairway that doesn't stink of urine. There are of course many such buildings, but it takes a certain wage-bracket and lifestyle to gain access to one. I'd really rather just bask in the light glow of my own personal acheivement for a little while longer, and possibly the more indefinite future.

I pause. "Isn't an acre rather big for a garden?" I pick up my tea let them follow me with theirs out of the kitchen to the sofa. "How big is an acre?"

"It's, I don't know, big."

"But not too big, you'd love this place, it would be perfect for you."

They continue, voices ringing with social confirmation. I sit down with my tea and resolve to wait out their ever so convincing contestations.

Posted by Missiedith at April 15, 2004 5:54 AM | TrackBack