flynnfamilystorytellers

What’s The Coolest Thing You’ve Ever Seen? Carrie Keiser  What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen? That was the question for this week's story. I’ve thought about this all week. I think it’s a matter of perspective and age.  Had I been asked this right after I went with Jody, Doug and Nancy Robert to Yellowstone for the first time, I would have said Yellowstone National Park was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It is a very cool place. Had you asked me in 1987, I would have said seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. The ocean is an awesome sight, and the power behind water is amazing.  Had you asked me after our trucking trip to Illinois, I would have said Nauvoo, Lake Michigan and the Gateway to the West Arch were the coolest things I’d ever seen. If you had asked me after my first flight in a plane I would have said seeing the world from the window of a plane is the coolest thing I had ever seen.  If you had asked me after my fir

  Mother Daren Flynn 5-6-21 "Mom, the kids at school said I look funny," I said as I ran into the house. Mom turned to me with a look of empathy and held her arms out. tHen holding meant looking into my eyes said, "You do look funny, Daren." That didn't do my self esteeming good. My Mom agreed with the kids who teased me and said I was funny looking. Tears began to well up in my eyes. Mom continued to hold me and as she studied my face her gaze changed from empathy to a look of intent curiosity. After examining me for what seem to me a long time, Mom said, "Daren, you have no eyelashes. That's why you look different." I don't know, to this day, why my eyelashes fell out. I'm sure Mom took me to the doctor to fund out why, but I can't remember. They eventually did grow back and I was no longer "funny looking". at least, no more than normal. ALTHOUGH mom didn't think I was funny looking, she did care about how I looked. I re

Standby —Cary Holmquist.     When I watch a movie or t.v. series, I can get immersed in enough that I seem to feel that I take on the character of the protagonist, and so I suppose you could say that becomes, for a short time anyway, my alter ego du jour. And so, I have become the runners in the movie “Gallipoli,” both yearning to be a part of WWI action AND wanting to stay out of the war in Turkey and save my skin in western Australia.   Or I somehow find the inner resources to survive and escape from the relentless “Alien” and the “Terminator.”  So far, judging by this recitation, it seems that I am stuck in the movies and imaginations of the 1970s and 80s.... It gets really overwhelming when I  am watching an ensemble cast production and so I have to watch the movie over and over so I can feel complete, covering all the egos presented.   And that can perhaps explain why I saw the first “Star Wars” movie 22 times the summer it came out—and why over the years I practically memori

                                                          RAINBOW  Trev lay there shivering and miserable with just one thought ever present in his mind. “If I had just listened.” He closed his eyes but could not block the landscape outside the module from his mind.  Red rock almost to the limit of his vision but just on the edge he noticed it was an unusual red.  This strange color was almost like the pearlescent red on Trev’s first car.  If he let his gaze shift the tiniest bit the color slipped and bounced like a trout fighting a fishing line. The red would dissolve and flecks of white and a sharp silver-blue would appear like the shimmering rays of the sun kissing wave tops as they met their end on a reef.  “Now that is strange” he thought. It really appeared as if the blue had reached out and gradually shifted its hue first aqua, then a brilliant but subdued electric blue.  Leaving just an out of focus rainbow finger.  “Can something be both brilliant and subdued.  This can’t

A Case of Mistaken Identity  April 30, 2021 By: Carrie Keiser It was an ordinary Monday in May nothing to cause me alarm, no warning of the strange things that were to transpire after I left the house. I was running a little behind, the alarm went off at the usual time, but I didn’t hear it. (I know, I know, I can feel your eyes rolling.) Something jerked me awake, only 20 minutes later. I launched into the quickest morning routine I’d ever attempted! Five minute shower, seven minutes to put my face on: moisturizer, a little eyeliner, mascara and a quick lip gloss. Threw my hair up in a messy bun, I had planned a neat French braid, but that wasn’t happening today! I grabbed my versatile navy blue pantsuit paired it with a pale mauve button-down blouse and my favorite flats, rushed to the kitchen for a morning herbal tea and a scone, snatched the truck keys from the hook and was out the door almost on time.  I plugged the address into the maps app on my phone, set the phone in t