How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time…

“Bite Size Memoir” is an invitation by Lisa Reiter for anyone to spend 5 minutes here or there (perhaps with a gorgeous little notebook), recording some snippets about their life. Each week, she provides a prompt for inspiration, so you don’t have to think where to begin. The challenge here is to keep it short with either 150 words of prose or poetry, OR 10 x “I remember ..” statements.

Here’s my contribution to this week’s challenge.

Childhood Illness

My childhood illnesses were not serious, and they were mainly related to winter. I was a stoic and recurrent sufferer of colds, flues, tonsillitis, and chilblains, which were not severe, but they were very unpleasant!

I’ve decided to use the ten-sentence format, this time. I’ve stretched my imagination and linguistic skills (!?) to come up with this almost nonsensical, and slightly silly acrostic poem:

Winter Ills

Woolen gloves tied to my coat sleeves with rubber bands,

Itchy swollen fingers trying to play the piano with two hands.

Never-ending runny noses in class,

Thermometers ancient, mercury, and glass.

Ear aches galore in spite of beanie hats,

Running out of hankies and sniffing like bobcats.

Inventing fake tummy aches to stay home from school,

Lowering voices, mother’s migraine rules.

Lozengers for sore throats and pains,

Sneezing and coughing through the night, once again…

If you’d like to take part in Lisa Reiter’s Bite-Size Memoir, have a look here

If you’d like to see other posts on this subject, have a look here