100 Word Stories - Bus Wash (Repost from Facebook, 14 November 2009)

While driving my bus through the scrubbers after my route, I kept seeing a fuzzy brown face press against the windows: brush – brush – brush – FACE. Another driver must have found a teddy bear fallen off a lorry’s grill, and tied him there. We see ‘em all the time. I was overcome by sentiment; to their amusement, I slogged through the brushes to free the little guy. I scrubbed him up and poked his stuffing back in. He watched us wash our busses. Then he watched me drive ‘til I retired. Now, Bus Wash sits and watches me watch telly.

This was in response to the prompt of "Stuffing" for Weekly Challenge #186 (week ending 11/14/2009) for the 100 Word Stories weekly podcast. This was the second story I wrote. It was based on and inspired by an e-mail received on a radio "programme" called "Geoff Lloyd's Hometime Show" on Absolute Radio out of London. They had asked for listeners' storied about irrational feelings toward inanimate objects. They had people saying they feel sorry for the last bean in a tin of baked beans or the last piece of bread, getting lonely and missing their friends, and so getting eaten so as not to feel left out. Another listener said that if she drops a single pea on the floor, she drops another one so the first won't get lonely. This story was based on an e-mail from a bus driver who rescued a bear from the bus wash and gave it to his sons. My version was a creative dramatization of the event, and then a fictional variation with the ending.

100 Word Story - Food Wars (Repost from Facebook, 10 February 2010)

Have you ever wondered where those disgusting cultural delicacies came from? Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway:
Every culture hates or fears foreigners, and each developed a way to intimidate them. Drinking games didn’t last long. It became a contest of edible one-up-man’s-ship, a culinary arms race, a game of gastronomic chicken. But you won’t recognize any chicken on that battlefield. The Britons have Blood Pudding. Hispanics have Menudo. Southerners have Chitlins. The Scots entered the war with Haggis. Koreans have Kimchi. The world didn’t know what to do when the Chinese brought animal penises. An immediate armistice was demanded.

This was in response to the prompt of "Haggis" from the 100 Word Podcast Weekly Challenge #198 (Week of 2/7/2010). I would have continued listing foods and countries or cultures, but that's why there's a 100-word limit.