OftenBen War ThatFanficGuy lil ButterflyEffect
Prompt #20. Write about your sister or someone you know named Claire.
I wanted to start off this prompt by saying what I always say about my sister, but you know what? Maybe what I always say says more about me than it does about her. So, I'm going to skip that. My sister has become one of my favorite Facebook friends. You wouldn't necessarily expect it of her, at least you wouldn't if you were me, and you hear all her real-world stories of bartending and drinking and not-really-quite-making it to classes, but the things she shares are universally positive. They make me admire her for her outlook, because you know what? The thing is that you can share anything you want to on Facebook. There's plenty of negative stuff, plenty of cynical stuff, plenty of stuff about how all you need in life is coffee and to be loved, but instead my sister shares stuff like a video of a runner who tore his hamstring running in the last summer Olympics and whose dad was on the sideline. The runner, in obvious pain, didn't want to stop running. He kept trying, limping awfully, in a way that made me flinch to watch. And then his dad came trotting out on the track. He put his arm around his boy, and he ran with him until his boy accepted the reality that he couldn't run anymore. That this shot wasn't going to happen the way he wanted it to. Multiple track officials, in their blue polos and with their whistles around their necks, tried to come up to the dad and stop him, gesture him and his son off the track. The father, his arms around the boy, gestured time and again for the officials to back off. They couldn't help his son. The father and son weren't in the way of the race, not at all, not by that point. And the son, in his father's arms, hobbling along, just cried, and cried. It was beautiful, and it was awful. Most of the stuff she shares is more beautiful, in that way of positivity, than awful, in that way of sadness. That's my sister. That's the outlook she chooses to give the world. How could you not want to be friends with someone who constantly sees the bright and the light in all of that?